Foxconn Workers On Strike Over iPhone 5 Production 184
itwbennett writes "That army of robotic assembly line workers we mentioned yesterday apparently can't get started soon enough. As many as 3,000-4,000 workers are on strike at Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, upset at stricter quality control requirements with the iPhone 5 and having to work through a national holiday this week. 'According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day,' China Labor Watch said. Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are both blocking searches in Chinese for 'Foxconn strikes.'"
Good for them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Strike, it's the only power they have. Until they get shot for being on strike that is, or run over by a tank.. this is happening in China you know..
And actually, China lets them strike because it hurts the US more than China. It's not like Apple is going to close the slave labor camps any time soon, even if they lose a few bucks.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
surprising really (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how a country with such a large workforce can have any traction in a strike? Foxconn is a huge employer over there. Their working conditions are what most westerners would describe as "sweatshops", but then so are 95% of the rest of the manufacturing plants over there, so despite being unusual for "us", it's not at all uncommon for "them".
I wonder how long it takes for Foxconn to find another 4,000 workers willing to do the job for the pay? I simply can't believe that any of those employees weren't fully aware of what was and could be asked of them. They just want more pay for what's probably more work, and certainly longer work weeks. But if there are three people lined up behind you waiting to do that job for that pay the moment you turn your back, a strike doesn't seem like a good idea.
Strikes and unions just don't make sense for unskilled labor. And just because it's electronics doesn't make it skilled - if you're doing something that could be replaced with a robotic arm, it's not "skilled", skilled refers to mental skills, not physical.
I wish I had more insight into this "chinese holiday" thing though. I get the impression they take it a lot more seriously than we're giving them credit for. I see a lot of the chinese stores going on holiday all at once, it's obviously a widespread thing, maybe that five day vacation is their unwind time for the rest of the year in the sweatshop? In that case I think I can start to understand where it becomes a big deal. Kinda stupid of Apple to expect them to launch a new production line at that time, they had to see that one coming. I would expect them to have had a conversation with foxconn, "can you DO this?" And foxconn either adding a premium to the cost during that time, or sniveling and saying they'll make it happen, to keep their biggest customer. Oh to be a fly on the wall...
Re:big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Which American companies actually pay American Taxes? Not Google, Apple, Microsoft, General Electric, or any other large company that has the resources to hire good accountants. The cost of waste disposal for an assembly line probably isn't that much.
Re:surprising really (Score:5, Insightful)
There aren't that many workers lining up in China any more. Well there is in the interior, but that is not where the factories are (yet). Mass migration from the interior to the coast is no longer very practical.
When you have moved a thousand km away from home and get to see your family a few times a year, you really don't want to lose a day of holiday. You're already likely to spend a day travelling at each end of the holiday.
Anyway, the days of doing low-wage manufacturing in China are almost over. Luckily.
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Strike, it's the only power they have. Until they get shot for being on strike that is, or run over by a tank.. this is happening in China you know..
No, I don't know, throwing a few links would be helpful. China has few human rights when compared to developed nations, but I doubt they'd shoot random people over nothing. "Encouraging" people to not cause trouble is much more efficient in the long term (e.g. you strike you become unemployable; I'm not saying they do this, but it would work better than shooting people). And sometimes the best you can do is do nothing at all, if you push people too hard too often they might strike back.
And actually, China lets them strike because it hurts the US more than China. It's not like Apple is going to close the slave labor camps any time soon, even if they lose a few bucks.
Foxconn workers striking is troublesome for Foxconn, and on a lesser degree for Apple and China. But Apple is an important customer, so I'd bet the one hurt the most, by far, is Foxconn, they might even have to give some discounts to Apple if the strike continues for too long.
I just hope the strikers manage to get something, it's about time the Chinese people can have a share of China's amazing growth.
Re:surprising really (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, unions make far more sense for unskilled laborers. As an engineer, I don't need a union to bargain for my wages. My bargaining power lies in the fact that my skills are in short supply. Companies must pay me competitive market wages because it would take them years to train someone to replace me. Contrast that with an unskilled laborer. They have no bargaining power by themselves because, by definition, they can easily be replaced by anybody else the company hires. Only by joining with all the other unskilled workers do they gain any sort of bargaining power. A single unskilled worker threatening to quit has no real effect on a factory, but the entire group of laborers can effectively shut down the factory in the short-term.
Unions can be pretty fucked up in practice, but in theory they represent the only way unskilled laborers can gain any sort of bargaining power.
Re:I hope you fucking hipsters are proud (Score:5, Insightful)
Gladly. Please point me to a cell phone that is made 100% in the first world and I will immediately buy it.
Re:big surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
That article doesn't really say quite what you're asserting that it does.
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Insightful)
>Apple only opened the Brazil plants because Brazil wouldn't let them sell iPhones in Brazil unless they did.
Anyone else think that we (the US) should follow Brazil's example?
I mean, there it is, a perfect example of regulation bringing manufacturing jobs back to a country. We could certainly use that right now.
Reality check (Score:2, Insightful)
Consumer disk storage is 6 cents a gig. Still a factor of 16 less than flash. As long as that ratio holds there will be no overnight takeover of the storage market by flash. Instead it's a creeping progression largely driven by the mobile market, outside of which the vast majority of mass storage being sold is still rotating disks. Sure a few geeks like me have begun to swap out their noisy, slow hard disks for ssd, but that's a few geeks. The PC market, the cloud, and enterprise storage, which together completely dwarf the mobile segment in terms of capacity, will continue to prefer cheap over fast and quiet for some time to come.
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Insightful)
How dare you speak common sense you protectionist!
While I agree with your point, I have seen anyone that tries to implement common sense laws to protect the US economy labelled and belittled by people that make more profit sending things overseas for cheap labor. If you speak common sense about an economy, you are silenced by propaganda. It's not about the people of the US any longer, it's about the top getting more at all costs (and no, I'm not referring to the upper 10%, more like the upper .1%.
I wrote an article about 20 years ago which was ignored, stating that the shipping of industrial jobs overseas would kill our economy. Hell, I was not alone by a long shot. Numerous economists, philanthropists, etc.. etc.. were already warning of it way before I was. The Ford model worked, and made us prosper. Middle class people spend their money, the upper 1% does not. This is how we get and hold our positions in the economy.
Look at Detroit and Flint. Tons of cash was there for both the upper and middle classes. Every middle class household owned 2 cars, and a mortgage. Increases in pay meant that the middle class purchased snow mobiles, boats, motorcycles, wave runners, hunting gear, fishing gear, "Big Screen TV", etc.. The middle class money tends to be very liquid.
The upper class in Detroit owned houses they rarely stayed in. They go on trips, they don't spend locally. They invest to get more money and property, they don't purchase locally and definitely nothing trivial like a snow mobile or wave runner. If they purchased a boat, it was an investment boat and again not generating money locally. That makes sense, it's how the wealthy remain wealthy and increase wealth.
The lower class in Detroit were all in line to become middle class. They stood outside the auto plants applying all the time, took shop classes, got GEDs and went to school all in hopes of getting to the middle class.
So when we sent all the middle class jobs overseas, the economy collapsed. At first, the wealthy still had money. But in short order, even they lost out. Property values dropped massively sticking everyone that owned property with huge debt and no capital. The lines stopped forming at the plants, and people started dropping like flies out of school. Now once prosperous areas in Detroit are like ghost towns.
All of these things were called out in the 80s, before NAFTA was passed and the plants were moved first to Mexico then to China. Not by me, but by countless economists gave warnings and said "DON'T DO NAFTA!". Those guys were told that they were just being protectionist, if they were heard at all.
Re:big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/02/press_release_general_electric.php [ctj.org]
General Electric's (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.
Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), "GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any." But don't worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), "our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital's recovery."
As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE's effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.
"I don't think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE's long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be 'normal,' " said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. "But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid."
Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.
GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010." The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero -- or less -- in federal income taxes in the last three years. The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/ [ctj.org].
The difference between the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes and GE, is that GE makes billions of dollars per year.
Re:big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.
No, just for the big ones. The small ones have to pay a lot more.
Re:big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget payroll taxes, fuck this doublespeak. The implication is that they don't pay any taxes, this needs to be actively combated.
FFS. Payroll taxes and State taxes do not go towards paying down the Federal Deficit.
GE does not do its part in paying the tax that would prevent the bankruptcy of America.
Your pedantry does nothing to advance a solution.
Re:Good for them! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Tiananmen protests were against the government, the "Communist" rule (which today is mostly just a word rather than a philosophy), and lack of free speech.
It was also, as you mention, 23 years ago.
These protests are against working conditions at a private employer. The Chinese government are also a lot more interested in foreign investment these days, and the wanton murder of unarmed workers is not a good way to let the world know they should move their business there.