Foxconn Employee Update

IRSmurf said:
>.> That's not really the point. The point is, with a system like that, I could CHOOSE to pay a premium for a company that treats laborers well instead of a cheaper brand that treats laborers like slaves.
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Can you really?

Show me a system that meets your requirements using your definition of being treated well.

Also, I don't want to debate what is fair treatment or not but keep in mind that people still line up by the thousands to work there. Are they being taken advantage of? Maybe. Most definitely actually but the alternatives for those workers must be pretty bleak don't you think?

I always laugh a little at the folks who think that if they do not purchase products made by Foxconn that conditions will somehow magically improve either at that plant or anywhere else. If business for them actually suffered who do you think would pay the price? Management? Think again.

Shed a crocodile tear for the workers if you want but taking your business elsewhere will not help a single one of them even if it is realistically possible. But hey, you'll sleep better at night because you didn't buy any Foxconn products right? Grats!
 
Even here in the Philippines comanies which give minimum wage(minimum wage in 3rd world country is extremely low) we dont have those suicide incidents in the workplace.
With other factories in China I havent heard of any suicide incidents. Foxconn is different from other companies in China, Foxconn must be special in a worst kind of way in treating their employees.
Well I guess people here are smarter(not smartest) since they compansate their low wage with corruption.
 
This is what you get from Communism: people being abused with no real way of defending themselves. It happened in Russia for decades. it's happening now in China and Cuba. It's beginning to happen in Venezuela. It just doesn't work.
 
I love when people make a stink about the abuse of laborer in China.

I agree it sucks but its life and its part of an open market place. Developing countries get the so called shaft while they work towards becoming a developed country. The people working their asses off in factories would otherwise have no money and be farmers. Eventually life gets better and everyone cheers. How easily we forget Americas industrial revolution?

At any rate I think its always in the hands of the people.
 
Just a matter of time until they receive as much money as us, unions, benefits, all kinds of BS.

Going to need to look elsewhere for cheap labor. :confused:
 
Methadras said:
I really want to know why any of you care what a Chinese laborer makes? There is so much hypocrisy being flung around I don't know where to begin.
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Because I manage several ODMs with factories in China, mayhap?
 
This reminds me of Zoolander...


"in the good old days, children as young as 5 were able to work as they pleased, textiles, metal forges, but the evil prime minister of Malaysia wants to tell them they cant work"


This shit has been going on for a long time, and we don't make anything here anymore so everyone needs to get used to it, it will be this way for a while.
 
Manaknight said:
thats the issue, you couldn't boycott them if you wanted to.
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It's kinda scary the number of places Foxconn pops up. I was working on my vintage Amiga 2000 computer (assembled in 1987) and found Foxconn components inside.

There's no escaping them :eek:
 
dgingeri said:
This is what you get from Communism: people being abused with no real way of defending themselves. It happened in Russia for decades. it's happening now in China and Cuba. It's beginning to happen in Venezuela. It just doesn't work.
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The fact that they're such a successful manufacturer says otherwise. And the day they raise their "standards" to US level is the day we look somewhere else to build our stuff.

Remember the reason everything's getting outsourced and what it takes to get the price that low.
 
Yet we still keep selling our corporate souls to China :(
 
eh, blame china, blame corporations.

or blame consumers who want cheap goods, blame government who made the price of manual labor to be too high to support those types of jobs in our country.
 
Is it really true that American companies have all their products manufactured in China because in China you can abuse your employees?

Shouldn't there be a law where that would be illegal here for companies to do that?
 
brown_dog said:
Even here in the Philippines comanies which give minimum wage(minimum wage in 3rd world country is extremely low) we dont have those suicide incidents in the workplace.
With other factories in China I havent heard of any suicide incidents. Foxconn is different from other companies in China, Foxconn must be special in a worst kind of way in treating their employees.
Well I guess people here are smarter(not smartest) since they compansate their low wage with corruption.
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You are making false comparisons though. Show me a plant in your country or anywhere else that comes remotely close to the scale of the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen and then compare only if living conditions and everything else are on par. Also, just because you have not heard of any suicide incidents in other plants in China or elsewhere is not in any way proof they do not happen. You should know better.

Furthermore, believe me...China is not exactly a stranger to corruption.
 
Cehr said:
Is it really true that American companies have all their products manufactured in China because in China you can abuse your employees?
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Evil is not the same as indifference. We don't care how it's done, we just want it done cheap.

@brown_dog
Our situation is a bit different. People go on people power rallies at the drop of a hat. Import taxes are through the roof ($10 memory card + $12.00 customs fees, good luck getting supplies). Utilities are insanely expensive (1mbps DSL = $22.00). Foreign investors that are attracted by the quality and low cost labor are eventually driven off by the cost of everything else. There's no one staying long enough to actually capitalize on the cheap labor.
 
Sly said:
For $1,000.00 a unit that only costs about $200.00 to make, you'd expect the ones who make these phones to be well off, only to find out that they're scrimping on the parts and labor like any other product. So if the money isn't going to the employees and making their lives better, where is the money going?

Heck, if the manufacturing and quality is no different from any other company and using the same factories and workers as any other, are you really getting your moneys worth?
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If you are the manufacturer, then I'd say you are getting a good portion of the money from production per unit. Then the mark-up on retail get's better. No one ever pays the fab price, so again, I ask the question, why does anyone care what a chinese laborer make? The laborer is getting paid is he/she not? No one is holding a gun to their heads are they? They are free to leave and find other work if they can.
 
dgingeri said:
This is what you get from Communism: people being abused with no real way of defending themselves. It happened in Russia for decades. it's happening now in China and Cuba. It's beginning to happen in Venezuela. It just doesn't work.
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Of course not. It never has and anyone who advocates such a system is an unthinking moron.
 
Rucker61 said:
Because I manage several ODMs with factories in China, mayhap?
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Yeah, so what? Is that supposed to make the labor rate for a chinese laborer better? If anything, you might be part of the problem. So you want a cookie now?
 
Methadras said:
If you are the manufacturer, then I'd say you are getting a good portion of the money from production per unit. Then the mark-up on retail get's better. No one ever pays the fab price, so again, I ask the question, why does anyone care what a chinese laborer make? The laborer is getting paid is he/she not? No one is holding a gun to their heads are they? They are free to leave and find other work if they can.
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Neither do i. But i ask again, what the heck am i paying for?
 
Methadras said:
Yeah, so what? Is that supposed to make the labor rate for a chinese laborer better? If anything, you might be part of the problem. So you want a cookie now?
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Dude, you asked why anyone would care, his answer was pretty straight forward... oh never mind.
 
Luxor said:
Foxconn is a crappy brand am I wrong? Who actually buys that semi-reliable junk?
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they're in everything. Foxconn isn't direct to market, in that their public face is incredibly small, but they sign multi-million or even multi-billion dollar contracts with all the big producers of electronics: GE (biggest company in the world btw), Sony, Microsoft, Dell, HP, you name it, if its got a PCB in it, Foxconn does it.

With graphics cards and motherboards the space is a little bit more competitive: the other AIB's such as Asus, gigabyte, ecs, etc will bid to get the contract. When Nvidia comes up with a new chip its basically up to the non-board producing AIB's to pick a partner to build the boards --meaning its entirely possible to have an EVGA branded board with parts assembled by Asus in an Asus plant with a chip designed by Nvidia and built by TSMC.

Welcome to mega-industries 101.

spinelli said:
Can you really?

Show me a system that meets your requirements using your definition of being treated well.

Also, I don't want to debate what is fair treatment or not but keep in mind that people still line up by the thousands to work there. Are they being taken advantage of? Maybe. Most definitely actually but the alternatives for those workers must be pretty bleak don't you think?

I always laugh a little at the folks who think that if they do not purchase products made by Foxconn that conditions will somehow magically improve either at that plant or anywhere else. If business for them actually suffered who do you think would pay the price? Management? Think again.

Shed a crocodile tear for the workers if you want but taking your business elsewhere will not help a single one of them even if it is realistically possible. But hey, you'll sleep better at night because you didn't buy any Foxconn products right? Grats!
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The thing about taking your business elsewhere is that its meaningless if you're paying the same price. If you're paying more for the same product then its logical to assume that some percentage of that increase (maybe less than half, maybe less than a quarter, but its non-zero with almost absolute certainty) will go to the workers. In other industries there are plenty of organizations dedicated to ensuring the product was produced in a humane way; eg WFTO, FWC, etc.

The problem is Wallmart, or rather the Wallmart mentality. I'm sure I sound like everybody's dad or grandad and I'm aware this is totally cliche'd and I'm also aware this is blatently obvious, but it bears repeating: its easy to talk about free trade and fair working conditions, but when the dollar hits the counter you want your product cheap, and thus companies specializing in, well, cheap shit with high margins make millions. It might not be cheap-shit from a build quality standpoint, but when something too cheap somebody's always paying something.

So the point would be research your buys, not just for the performance but rather for the production values. But then with the subdivision of labor to such an extreme in modern giga-scale production, that's not really possible (when was the last time you read a report on chemXcon's, a capacitor mega producer who quite probably manufactured the caps used by one or more of your computers or electronics, treatment of their employee's?)

Welcome to 2010.
 
considering annual increases in this country are 2-4%, I would be happy with 9%, even if I was promised higher.
 
ShadowStriker said:
The reason they aren't made here is because of unions. 'Nuff said.
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Nope. My company has never had unions, and we manufacturer most of our products in low cost regions. I'd look at three other drivers: the constant demand by the public for the absolute lowest-priced products; intense competition from offshore companies; and the need for corporate governance to return the highest profits to their shareholders, on a quarterly basis, that drives short-term gains instead of long-term viability.

But hey, I could be wrong.
 
Rucker61 said:
Nope. My company has never had unions, and we manufacturer most of our products in low cost regions. I'd look at three other drivers: the constant demand by the public for the absolute lowest-priced products; intense competition from offshore companies; and the need for corporate governance to return the highest profits to their shareholders, on a quarterly basis, that drives short-term gains instead of long-term viability.

But hey, I could be wrong.
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I guess it depends on how big your company is. I know there are labour unions for garbage collection, city services, etc in Canada, and they raise hell every time their contract is up for renewal. Earlier this year the garbage collection union in Toronto went on strike for weeks, so the entire city didn't have any of their garbage collected. All because their annual increase in salary wasn't high enough...
 
ShadowStriker said:
The reason they aren't made here is because of unions. 'Nuff said.
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There are other factors but this is the main one. It's always been a tug of war between the union and management. You can have your factory picketfenced because you moved the lunch hour from 1pm to 1:30pm or have your plant shut down for months while you negotiate a new salary with the union heads. Rather than deal with the labor union headaches, just drop everything and outsource it.

The only way you can compete is if you lower your salaries to that of a pizza delivery boy. Heck your pizza boy earns more than i did as a system admin!
 
jimmyb said:
Anything short of having a gun to your head is excellent working conditions.
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Any job is better than none. I don't think anyone ever said the workers have excellent working conditions...but they do have jobs and a steady reliable income. Which is more than most of the workers would have otherwise. Jobs they accepted by choice. Jobs they can walk away from if they are unsatisfied (usually).

Many companies in China penalize employees for leaving the company, usually they withhold salary that is owed. In many cases the employment contracts also stipulate the employee will have to pay the employer money if they are unwilling to fulfill a contract. It's hardly enforceable though, I have signed half a dozen of those kinds of contracts and have walked away from four with no penalty. I am a foreigner though so that may play a role. Contracts in China are not worth the paper they are printed on as far as I can tell. It is enough however to scare many to keep working jobs they dislike or under conditions they are not otherwise willing to endure.
 
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