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A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

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Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

sandworm101 wrote: post #35
nimbius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

speak for yourself, I work as a full time engine mechanic for a regional chain of repair shops. - its a full time battle just to convince some management that OSHA is real. earplugs and gloves were a luxury item under my last boss. - one of our managers stole tools all the time and fired a technician just to cover his ass. That technician burned his car to the ground with a road flare in a mcdonalds parking lot. -our…

>> two words: angry boomer. Yup. In my early 30s I had one challenge me to a fight after a lifeguard ejected him from the "fast lane" for swimming too slowly. I said I'd meet him in the parking lot, then left the back way. I still wonder whether he showed up. I assume something was wrong with his meds. While riding in a group of 20+ sportbikes we had another try to start a fight with us at a gas station. Twenty peopl…

Any theories as to why those "boomers" are so angry?

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

rayiner wrote: post #38

> The company, Shahi Exports, has more than 50 factories, employs about 100,000 workers and supplies brands that include Gap, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M. Some of these brands had encouraged the company to be more environmentally responsible by switching out the fluorescent tube lights in its factories for LEDs that would consume about one-seventh the amount of energy. Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple o…

> Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple of extra bucks for their Gap t-shirts and Gap can insist that Indian factory owners install air conditioning instead?

Like they weren't already overpaying 100x+ for them. Maybe Gap, H&M and others could cut their margins a bit...

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#53

Post by somberi »

mannykannot wrote: post #17

An alternative way at looking at this is that, if you are pushing your employees to their physical limits, you can squeeze more out of them if you can prevent them from becoming overheated. This is a negative way of looking at it, but I think, unfortunately, that it is realistic. Beyond the short term, the only way this will benefit the workers is if there is something external to limit the ways it can be exploited s…

The horses that draw carriages in New York City, have similar restrictions [1] and [2]:

1. Carriage horses shall not be worked whenever the air temperature is 90 degrees fahrenheit or above.

2. Riding horses shall not be at work more than eight hours in any continuous twenty-four hour period.

3. Carriage horses shall receive no less than five weeks of vacation or furlough every twelve months at a horse stable facility.

[1] - https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2006/new-york-city-adm...

[2] - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/horses.pa...

We as humans can do better when it comes to other humans. We should.

To quote Ben Harrison: I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process.

(https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Harrison)

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#54

Post by boomboomsubban »

rayiner wrote: post #38

> The company, Shahi Exports, has more than 50 factories, employs about 100,000 workers and supplies brands that include Gap, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M. Some of these brands had encouraged the company to be more environmentally responsible by switching out the fluorescent tube lights in its factories for LEDs that would consume about one-seventh the amount of energy. Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple o…

The Gap already has the money to do that. If they aren't doing it now, how would a consumer know these next few dollars would go to improving conditions and not just more profits?

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#55

Post by vladgiverts »

keeler wrote: post #37

While I'm glad that this experiment was done, because it resulted in better conditions for the factory workers, it bothers me that experiments like this are necessary in the first place. I get that managers and owners, qua managers and owners , are concerned with maximizing productivity, but it should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of humanity and common sense that productivity will increase when labourers are t…

Perhaps the problem lies with how our culture views the company as a “machine” (in a metaphorical sense) whose only purpose is to produce some useful output. All that matters is how can you tweak or modify the machine to be more productive or less costly to operate. People in this world view are simply the metaphorical cogs (preferably interchangeable ones). It would be silly to care about a cog the way you would your significant other or even your pet.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It just happens to be the state of modern work culture.

There’s an emerging world view that instead sees a company as a purposeful organism with all the biological messiness and unpredictability that it implies. This organism has its own needs and desires separate from the productive outputs. Traditional management hierarchies don’t exist for it. Instead, each person is like a independent cell that senses their environment and reacts on their own, but for the common good as they’re actually interdependent in each other.

It’s still early, but there’s emerging evidence from the last few decades[1] that this way of being in the world could be more resilient in the long term and may eventually supplant the company-as-machine model.

[1]: [Reinventing Organizations](https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic-La...)

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#56

Post by wiradikusuma »

"There have always been these theories that part of why the Northern Hemisphere grew faster than the Southern Hemisphere was because of temperature issues," — it could also because the weather is nicer outside so we go surfing instead of working?

I'm from tropical country, and there's a saying that you can literally plant a stick and it will grow up a tree. Unfortunately it makes us lazy.

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#57

Post by NTDF9 »

ipince wrote: post #30
NTDF9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of small businesses in India going through productivity transitions and becoming bigger exporters. Air conditioning has been the easiest gain in the last 2 decades. More recently it is mobile payments and computerized inventory and financing. The companies making these investments quickly become local franchises or quality exporters who can charge more. Of course the owners and employees are richer f…

Do you have some example companies to read about?

These are really small neighborhood businesses. I remember walking down the streets and there were some local sweet shops with delicious street food. They used to sell it for Rs 5 (less than 10 cents) at the time.

Add some inflation, air conditioning, hygiene (using gloves for example), seating, led lights and these things cost Rs 30 now (50 cents).

You'd think the price would shirk customers off especially since competition was selling the same stuff for Rs 10.

But no. They got featured in local TV a few times, got large contracts to supply these food items to events. They mechanized their production keeping their recipe the same and franchised their brand, opened websites, created presence in malls and started exporting these foods outside India as a packaged food item.

All this in 15 years.

http://www.jumboking.co.in/

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#58

Post by ggg9990 »

vladgiverts wrote: post #55
keeler wrote: post #37

While I'm glad that this experiment was done, because it resulted in better conditions for the factory workers, it bothers me that experiments like this are necessary in the first place. I get that managers and owners, qua managers and owners , are concerned with maximizing productivity, but it should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of humanity and common sense that productivity will increase when labourers are t…

Perhaps the problem lies with how our culture views the company as a “machine” (in a metaphorical sense) whose only purpose is to produce some useful output. All that matters is how can you tweak or modify the machine to be more productive or less costly to operate. People in this world view are simply the metaphorical cogs (preferably interchangeable ones). It would be silly to care about a cog the way you would you…

That’s a great analogy. Almost all machines have consumable parts to save the rest of the parts from wear (in a car, it’s things like brake pads and motor oil). In companies, the workers are the consumable parts that are chewed up so that the executives and shareholders can thrive.

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#59

Post by arrrg »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
rayiner wrote: post #38

> The company, Shahi Exports, has more than 50 factories, employs about 100,000 workers and supplies brands that include Gap, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M. Some of these brands had encouraged the company to be more environmentally responsible by switching out the fluorescent tube lights in its factories for LEDs that would consume about one-seventh the amount of energy. Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple o…

> Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple of extra bucks for their Gap t-shirts and Gap can insist that Indian factory owners install air conditioning instead? Like they weren't already overpaying 100x+ for them. Maybe Gap, H&M and others could cut their margins a bit...

H&M’s operating margin is at 10%. It seems that many clothing retailers are somewhere around that point. 100× doesn’t even work as hyperbole for me. H&M likely wouldn’t even survive a 2× reduction in clothing prices.

Which is not to say that H&M (or others) are blameless in this. It’s more to say that this is a structural issue.

Re: A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

#60

Post by bipson »

will4274 wrote: post #19
messe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDPR is criminalizing all websites because compliance is impossible I disagree, compliance isn't particularly difficult unless you're going out of your way to do something harmful to your users. > be prepared to come back to planet reality. Please refrain from hyperboly, I'd much rather a civil discussion about this.

> compliance isn't particularly difficult unless you're going out of your way to do something harmful to your users. Please stop spreading this FUD. There are tons of architectures (e.g. Apache Kafka) which were totally sane and require total reorganization to become compliant. Dismissing this as "not very difficult" and adding a snide little attack on anybody who disagrees is untrue and an ad hominem to boot. Comply…

I think you have the definition of FUD backwards
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