The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
[Electronics and Labor] - Everyone needs to listen to this story by This American Life
Posts
So what are those people going to do if we suddenly stop buying resources from them? It's not like they have a lot of other options.
Also, could someone please give me a link or something that verifies the whole suicide net thing? It sounds absurd at face value (not that companies don't do absurd things, but). Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence and all that.
I also find it troubling that a more-ethical choice of product is a "luxury" item.
I'm glad you've come around and realized it's not impossible at any price, just extremely expensive!
Organic groceries are not 'more ethical'. Often they're indistinguishable from other groceries, aside from the price.
Even when the products are farmed organically, do you have any idea how terrible that farming practice would be in comparison to standard farming practices if it was implemented on a large scale?
It literally took me one Google search. =/
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/08/03/foxconn-installs-antijumping-nets-at-hebei-plants/
And wait, this means you never listened to the podcast, which is what this entire thread is about? That might be a good choice. There's even a 15 minute fact-checking segment at the end of the story!
So Foxconn is a good company to work for? Would you enjoy working there?
Just because a company is better than its competition doesn't make it a good company.
Is it really that unreasonable to think that a Chinese megafactory is probably not a bastion of human and labor rights?
Rigorous Scholarship
I for one would happily buy the products of a company that fed it's slaves three times a day if the industry standard was two.
You don't bring an entire planet up to first world living standards in one step. You don't even do that for one country. You do it by giving a huge portion of the population incrementally less shitty jobs because that is the absolute most that you can afford to do. Foxconn is helping to do exactly that.
edit: to repost this from the bottom of the previous page:
May 2010 20% is a hell of a raise. Also, Foxconn actually seems to be trying to make things better for their workers. As of about 19 months ago.
As far as western standards are concerned, no, Foxconn is not a good company. As far as developing country standards are concerned, yes, Foxconn is a good company.
That's why improving the standards in China are much more important than simply nitpicking Foxconn - but again, the kind of social uplift needed for changing the standards takes a lot of time (even on a relatively short timescale, look at what Ford Motor Company was like to work for when they first started pumping-out Model T cars vs what it's like to work for them today).
EDIT: Syrdon put it better than I did.
20% of what?
Raising wages for all employees by 20% is a huge expense and they were not being required by law to take it (Apple may have been requiring them at the time, not sure there), but they did it anyway. Why are we making them the bad guy and not their competition?
Off the top of my head, I think Foxconn's workers were making something like the equivalent of 5~ USD per day. So whatever 20% of that is.
So I don't agree that it's 'quite a raise' (it's pitiful), but this notion that we can magically fix wages & working conditions in the developing world by boycotting Foxconn is not only ludicrous, it's counter-productive.
We live in a globalized society, and some industries exploit the poor. But that exploitation might actually be better than the horrible places they come from, and it's actually temporary exploitation that will go away, eventually.
Also, it's impossible to buy some types of products that were made ethically, too, so there's not much choice for me as a consumer. And even still, it actually might be a better moral choice to buy from a sweatshop, for the aforementioned reason that it's better than the alternative for them.
It still sucks, though. And I do get that we live in a shitty time, in some respects. Some people have great lives and other people terrible lives and we just have to deal with that. I guess it's important, at the very least, to at least be aware of the things going on in the world. It's important to know that your iPhone was made by workers making shit for money for 12+ hours a day, and it's important to try to slowly work towards a world where no one has to go through that.
We live, globally, in one of the most prosperous and violence-free epochs that the world has ever known. It's not a 'shitty time'.
I certainly would not trade-in my 1980s+ existence for an existence in the Cold War, the second world war, the first world war, etc.
Because 20% of shit is still shit and not hard to do at all. Why are you lauding them for responding to horribly negative PR?
I added in my full quote because it's sort of important to the context.
I agree that we're living in a much better time than the past. When I said that we live in a shitty time, in some respects, I was thinking forward, to a future where people working in sweatshops wasn't ever preferable to alternatives. If that really is the future, then we'll look back on today's global economy and think it's pretty terrible.
I totally get glowing optimism about the present and I'm right there with you. It doesn't mean we can turn a blind eye to the terrible things going on in our time -- not that you're doing that, of course!
Its probably more helpful (or at least more accurate) to adjust wage for cost of living in a particular area, however I can't find useful data for that. If anyone happens to come across that, I'd love to see it.
1: I believe Foxconn reported about 1 billion in net income in 2010. That 127 million is 12.7% of that. I'm fairly certain that more than a few corporations in the US would be willing to let more than a people die for that sort of a showing on their annual reports.
edit: They responded in 2010. This American Life caught on to the story something like 17 months after it happened. In comparison, the other employers in the area don't seem to be doing anything while maintaining conditions that are either the same or worse and you don't seem to care about them. Certainly, you're directing your efforts towards going after the guys who are trying to fix issues (regardless of cause) instead of the guys who aren't making any changes at all.
I'm a little confused at what your goal actually is here. It seems like you want to punish the people making changes (or, effectively, reward the people who did nothing other than not take a contract from Apple). I don't understand how that helps more people than going after the people who aren't at least keeping up with Foxconn. Care to help me understand how your plan is the better one?
There's goddamn pictures of it.
And WTF happened to skepticism? When a company claims it isn't horrible in X way, despite ample evidence they are horrible in every other way possible, why the fuck would you believe them without further proof? How gullible are you?
It’s dangerous to assume that this is just a temporary situation. It’s easy to compare the situation in China and the 3rd world to the Industrial era of the United States and Europe and assume everything will happen the same way, but that’s not guaranteed. The world economy is very different from then and you have to look at things like culture, government, and geography.
Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding.
They would until a horribly negative report comes out and hurts their profits more than suicidal workers do. Like with Foxconn.
edit: removed extraneous material
The closest examples culturally and geographically are South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. So really that makes the view of export led development as a path to prosperity more solid, not less. All of those countries had a large number of sweatshops in the past and now they have standards of living that are comparable to the United States.
Didn't some of the car plants in South Korea have a problem with self-immolation on the line?
Edit: As a suicide/protest, that is.
edit: on the subject of suicide rates: Did you know that it seems that some states are within 2-3% of China's suicide rate? One of those states beating China's rate? And we're complaining about the people making things better in D & D...
This is my question as well.
Well, Foxconn's numbers for the number of people who have committed suicide isn't being questioned. At all. Everyone from the WHO to the Institute for Analytic Journalism accepts the numbers. The media is freaking out about the ten suicides in a year at one plant without comparing the number of people who work at the plant against the number of people who committed suicide, then compare it to the national average.
What's scary? The suicide rate in America is higher than the rate at Foxconn.
So why did they build the nets? Appeasement more than anything else, If I had to guess.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I suppose the question is like if you want to give your money to the sugar plantation that improves its sector by only beating its slaves half to death to reward that change or just buy maple sugar, which is made without slaves.
Because it prevents suicides or because it moves the suicides to areas where they wouldn't go on your record?
The answer is obvious, but who's producing the equivalent of maple syrup in this analogy?
Find a company that is paying as much attention as Apple and HP are to the quality of life of their workforce, and the non-expoitativeness of their supply chain, who are providing services and technology on the scale that they are.
If you find one, I will be very impressed.
Also, Foxconn is NOT the bad guy here; they are the "less than good" guy.
The bad guys are born of Chinese lax laws on Intellectual property and copyright coupled with their horrific human rights laws that allows shady businesses to make knockoff goods under the worst possible conditions... conditions that make Foxconn look like a luxury resort, and then sell them online or on the streets of major cities around the world. And because a major brand isn't directly involved in the operation, there is nobody to shame in the western world, so they get away with murder, literally.
Foxconn and companies like it are a sign of a country that is slowly evolving towards a real working class.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Also, since its gone a bit without getting an answer (if you're saying Foxconn isn't doing enough, or is only doing this due to negative press, you're someone I'm asking in this):
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/01/us-foxconn-idUSTRE6902GD20101001
So again, after they were getting bad press they improved things.
This was not out of the goodness of their hearts.
this is like the most paternalistic capitalistic yet anti market thing ive read. People find shit to do absent external forces that incentivize absurdly detestable choices, you just gotta subordinate your paternalism for a minute.
Which people? What 'shit to do?' Which external forces? What detestable choices?
Yes, in the absence of an export market, people still find shit to do. That shit to do might include theft, begging, prostitution, or hardscrabble subsistence farming.
The problem isn't that the "detestable choices" aren't necessarily caused by external forces. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. The situation is different for different populations, which is why clumsy fair trade policies that don't take the local context into account can have really bad results.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We should be willing to pay that. Hell, most of us would probably be willing to pay 25 dollars more for every iPhone, Dell, and xBox if it meant we weren't complicit in slavery. Unfortunately, only a media firestorm can communicate that to Apple and its peers, and it this type of story is far more likely to peter out.