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Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

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Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#141

Post by em500 »

javajosh wrote: post #121
em500 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production? Maybe their position is that they have not established as a fact that there is slave labour in concentration camps in Xinjiang? Have you considered that as an alternative possibility? From the article: > The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced,…

Intel has no motive to falsely allege forced labor use in China. In fact, Intel has every motive to ignore abuses so as not to alienate the CCP. So, your implication that Intel jumped the gun and made false accusations without proof lacks motive, at the very least.

The motivation was likely some compliance move with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act according to the TFA. There is no indication that Intel's initial wording was prompted by their own investigations in Xinjiang.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#142

Post by FredPret »

michaelt wrote: post #128
FredPret wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is very much supposed to do whatever the owners tell them to do. If they don’t like it, they can resign in protest. Having said that, someone at Intel, owners or managers, are way off track here and in need of severe consequences. They picked the wrong side.

Shareholders haven't resolved that Intel must or must not use slave labour. And a court isn't going to second-guess the management if they judge the cost savings of using slave labour don't outweigh the potential for reputational damage. As such, management are free to act either way.

A flaw in the system to be sure. As a former INTC owner, I dumped my stake a while ago.

I think there should be far more shareholder involvement in general. We are far too acquiescent as a group.

If you polled every direct and indirect INTC holder (you may be one, unknowingly) about slavery and concentration camps, you’d walk away with a near 100% mandate for taking all measures against it.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#143

Post by onphonenow »

simion314 wrote: post #92
network2592 wrote: post #32

> It apologised last month for the "trouble" it had caused, saying that its commitment to avoid supply chains from Xinjiang was an expression of compliance with U.S. law, rather than a statement of its position on the issue. So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production? To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are…

>slave labour in concentration camps Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?, In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill. Someone you keep in prison is called different and people kept in prison for political reasons have also different label, religions/race imprisonment might also have a different label.

No - it's a pretty bad use of language here. You have a better grasp of english than a lot of english speakers!

Traditionally if it's a prison the term is prison labor.

In a concentration camp you'd have forced labor. That is probably the language that would be used by groups actually working in this space.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#144

Post by dirtyid »

ei8htyfi5e wrote: post #104
jchook wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s economic warfare against a destabilized region that only recently quelled constant terrorism. The US casts a blanket assumption that ALL products from the region are produced by slave labor unless proven otherwise. That’s backwards. And meanwhile US government and corporations have no problem buying products produced by US prison slave labor, or overseas child labor.

It’s absolutely not backwards. When you have a million people in a concentration camp in a given region, and China is known for shipping these slaves around their country to work in factories, to make sanctions and targeted policies more difficult to apply, can you maybe see why a rule of thumb has been created black listing an entire region? This is their choice. Cause. Effect.

Is that why US also sanctions John Deer from selling tractors to XJ when XJ wanted to automate cotton harvesting because paying "slave" labours high wages was unprofitable. Almost like US wants to XJ to rely on manual labour to perpetuate coerced labour myth. Cause. Effect.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#145

Post by 999900000999 »

mrweasel wrote: post #114
rastapasta42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big difference is that Uyghurs are not rapists and murderers, and they didn't commit crimes. What's wrong with prison labor in US? Those criminals committed acts deemed bad for society. We could either pay for them to stay in a fancy hotel, or make them pay back debt to society. This is not comparable to imprisoning people based on ethnicity.

Aren’t people in prison to get rehabilitated? They don’t really repay anything to society by working for pennies for a prison run by a private company. In fact you could argue that prisoners are stealing job from others by working for next to nothing.

You also create strange perverse incentives to keep as many people in prison as possible.

And those people in prison working for pennies per day ,as you've alluded, take jobs from free people. If you want to see peak absurdity, California has legions of prisoner firefighters.

But you can be a firefighter with a felony on your record, so while the state of California is fine with paying them peanuts for risking their lives, it won't make them full-fledged firefighters once they're released.

If any other country was doing this, our various propaganda agencies would be crying foul.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#146

Post by Loughla »

michaelt wrote: post #128
FredPret wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is very much supposed to do whatever the owners tell them to do. If they don’t like it, they can resign in protest. Having said that, someone at Intel, owners or managers, are way off track here and in need of severe consequences. They picked the wrong side.

Shareholders haven't resolved that Intel must or must not use slave labour. And a court isn't going to second-guess the management if they judge the cost savings of using slave labour don't outweigh the potential for reputational damage. As such, management are free to act either way.

I would argue that 'shareholders' aren't able to influence these decisions at multi-national mega corporations, because many don't even know they are shareholders. Think about Joe Blow from the US. He has a managed 401k or some such investment. He has no idea the 'low-risk' fund offered through Edward Jones invests in Intel or Google or whoever. He has no idea he plays a part in this.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#147

Post by tharne »

simion314 wrote: post #92
network2592 wrote: post #32

> It apologised last month for the "trouble" it had caused, saying that its commitment to avoid supply chains from Xinjiang was an expression of compliance with U.S. law, rather than a statement of its position on the issue. So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production? To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are…

>slave labour in concentration camps Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?, In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill. Someone you keep in prison is called different and people kept in prison for political reasons have also different label, religions/race imprisonment might also have a different label.

> Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?

"Slave labor" is a phrase used in English to express morally unacceptable working conditions where the workers have little to no power, as if they were slaves. It's commonly understood that those workers are not slaves in the legal sense.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#148

Post by erdos4d »

mlindner wrote: post #81
syki wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China the government tells companies what to do in the furtherance of state aims. In America and elsewhere companies tell government what to do in furtherance of corporate aims. For instance the overthrow of governments on behalf of banana companies and oil companies. What we see now is China exerting influence and power and we aren’t accustomed to having another country do this toward our companies/interests.

This is a rather skewed and incorrect view of history. In America and elsewhere companies do not dictate policy. They can help edge it in a direction they want, but the large swings of policy are out of their control. More so you're generalizing America to the entire west and excluding other Asian countries like Japan.

>In America and elsewhere companies do not dictate policy.

Huh? In the US large corporations commonly write the laws that get passed. They literally do dictate policy.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#149

Post by michaelt »

baybal2 wrote: post #18
bravo22 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel shareholders can now vote to ensure Intel takes a stand against China, if they choose. But it seems those individuals do not want that. So Intel is doing what it is supposed to do -- operate in accordance with wishes of the shareholders.

> Intel shareholders can now vote to ensure Intel takes a stand against China, if they choose. But it seems those individuals do not want that. Good question, who are Intel shareholders?

Intel is chopped up into tens of millions of tiny slices, and everyone with any form of retirement savings has a handful through some sort of fund.

Generally these people barely know they're shareholders, they receive none of the paperwork needed to vote at the AGM, they have a slice several orders of magnitude too small to exert any influence, and they have no way of identifying or contacting other shareholders to take any sort of coordinated action.

Anyone who expects X to be done by shareholders is going to be disappointed.

Re: Intel removes Xinjiang references from shareholder letter

#150

Post by LegitShady »

krono wrote: post #12
causality0 wrote: post #4

We were happy to embrace the philosophy of sociopathic capitalist companies when it meant getting our cheap electronics built in factories with suicide nets. Now that it means giant companies care more about China's opinion than ours we want to posture about loyalty and moral responsibility.

Or maybe we're generally okay with these companies exploiting the Chinese to our benefit, but not with China exploiting the resulting situation to theirs.

there's no 'we' here.
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