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Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

theatlanticwire.com

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Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#71

Post by ugh »

maratd wrote: post #22

One of the hallmark properties of a market economy is that you have choice. You don't like your compensation? You quit. The truth is that everyone at the factory is there because they want to be. Because it beats being back on the farm. But still, Foxconn created the problem. When Western media freaked out over the suicides, Foxconn got scared. They started making their employees sign non-suicide agreements. What? Th…

No. It’s exploitation, pure and simple. It might be better than the alternatives but it’s still exploitation. I simply cannot comprehend how you cannot have empathy in such a situation.

Industrialization – over the course of more than one century – led to a more prosperous, just and healthier society in many western nations. That doesn’t negate the millions of workers who were exploited along the way.

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#72

Post by vacri »

philwelch wrote: post #65
pm90 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice observation, but are you sure that the analogy is equally applicable? China has a much bigger population than either Korea or Japan...

Foreign demand only speeds up the process; it's not a necessary component. The Western world went from no industrialization at all to sweatshops and tenements to riches within 150-200 years or so with no rich foreign countries buying their exports. (I'm thinking 1750/1800 to 1950.) That's only three times as long as it took Korea and Japan. China could make the same transformation based entirely on domestic demand th…

You're missing that it wasn't just factory workers that created all that wealth - current developed nations benefitted massively from the immense amounts of wealth they pulled from the 'new world', an option that is no longer available these days.

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#73

Post by vacri »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #23
redthrowaway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could buy a Galaxy Nexus, made in Korea. I agree, those workers are probably better off working at Foxconn than if they stayed in rural areas and survived by subsistence farming, but it's still a moral grey area. It's akin to saying that slaves lived longer and in better conditions picking cotton in Alabama than growing beans in Africa. It might be true, but it doesn't make it good.

Your analogy isn't applicable. What made them slaves is they were not allowed to return to Africa to do whatever. The Foxconn workers are not slaves. They can go back to farming or choose another job. An employee who serves you is not a slave because he makes less than you.

What is it with the assumption that every employee is an ex-farmer?

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#74

Post by whatusername »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #64
philwelch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few decades ago, buying anything made in Korea or Japan was fraught with the same moral dilemma. Until we bought so much stuff from Korea and Japan that Korea and Japan turned into rich countries. You could buy stuff that was made in America, but crack open a history book sometime--this was how America became a rich country, too.

I'm the first to admit I'm quite ignorant of my own history, let alone the economic history of Korea and Japan, but surely you aren't suggesting that if we keep buying stuff from China they will turn into a rich country and magically increase the working conditions?

Basically that's how it's worked for everyone else.

And that's working for China. As has been pointed out -- 12 hours in a factory beats 16 hours in a rice paddy. These people aren't slaves -- they are working hard to secure a better life (mainly for their children).

China is turning into a rich country. Go and watch this video: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-... and play around with the gapminder tool: http://www.gapminder.org/world/

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#75

Post by philwelch »

vacri wrote: post #72
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign demand only speeds up the process; it's not a necessary component. The Western world went from no industrialization at all to sweatshops and tenements to riches within 150-200 years or so with no rich foreign countries buying their exports. (I'm thinking 1750/1800 to 1950.) That's only three times as long as it took Korea and Japan. China could make the same transformation based entirely on domestic demand th…

You're missing that it wasn't just factory workers that created all that wealth - current developed nations benefitted massively from the immense amounts of wealth they pulled from the 'new world', an option that is no longer available these days.

On the other hand, they had 19th century technology. It's hard to tell who's really better off.

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#76

Post by srdev »

knieveltech wrote: post #53
Karunamon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're going to basically have to resign from your job and probably stop using every piece of tech you currently do. I know this sounds overly snarky, but it's true. Those are the options. Either get out of tech on "principal", or realize that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and use these devices to help change the way of things.

You're really blithely willing to label avoiding manufactured products that where constructed on the back of what equates to slave labor as "cutting off your nose to spite your face"? Simply put, until market pressures are brought to bear on companies like Apple to clean up their act on the manufacturing and sourcing side of the house nothing is going to change, regardless of what you do with your ipad.

The point is that nearly all the modern computing technology you're using is using what you call "slave labor" at some point in the supply chain. You name-drop Apple, and the article name-drops Microsoft, but its also Intel, IBM, Samsung, Sony, Acer, Asus, MSI, EVGA, and a myriad of other high-profile tech companies using Foxconn. It'd be more instructive to make a list of companies that are not using them. And even then, whats to say that they're not using equally poor labor that just hasn't been publicized like Foxconn has?

In other words, in order to ditch every piece of technology that's got a foundation in human exploitation and suffering, you practically have to ditch technology altogether. That computer you were using to post was probably built in part on human exploitation.

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#77

Post by anigbrowl »

philwelch wrote: post #41
zasz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let me see if I got this straight. Foxconn workers are picking between two shitty jobs. Job A is worse than Job B. Job A is so bad that they are threatening to commit suicide. What kind of choice is this?

Genuinely suicidal people don't threaten to commit suicide, they just do it. These people tipped their hand by coming off the roof without Foxconn conceding to their demands. If idle threats to commit suicide are a surefire indication that someone's being mistreated, then millions of teenage ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends are mistreated, too. Threatening to jump off a building shows even less conviction than a genu…

The Chinese attitude to suicide is completely different to the one in the west, which everyone commenting here is missing. Worker suicides would cause a tremendous loss of face for Foxconn while preserving the face of the workers' families. The point of an anti-suicide contract is not to prevent people from feeling suicidal but to prevent the individual who signs it from holding that over Foxconn as a threat. If someone committed suicide after signing such a contract, the contract has priority and the loss of face would be from the worker's family.

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#78

Post by nitrogen »

daenz wrote: post #29
joedisky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just gave me a great idea for a movie plot. "Blood Smartphone". A movie about Chinese family working in FoxConn and struggling through live; lots of blood, tears, sweat, abuse, poverty and death. And at the end, a dumb american teenager with bracelets buying an iPhone and downloading Angry Birds and Plants versus Zombie all happy and excited.

I can see the transition shot already: a SnorriCam (one of those cool mounted cameras) following the smartphone down the assembly line, past the family, in dingy blue factory lighting. It loads into a box, onto a truck, into a shipping container, over the ocean, unloaded, and finally in a cheery white and shiny Apple store. The teenager convincing his parents to purchase the phone says "but everyone else my age has o…

in dingy blue factory lighting.

All the photos I've seen of the factories in question are as well-lit as American factories. The working conditions are poor, but they're far better than what early American and British workers endured during the industrial revolution.

Also, such a film would only be complete if it documented the nerve and joint damage caused to American vinyl and PVC manufacturers not given proper ventilation. Would you listen to a blood record, or defecate in a blood sewer pipe?

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#79

Post by yummyfajitas »

louislouis wrote: post #55
pjkundert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: you are using one of the most ruthless [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade ] command economies in the world as an example of the ills of Capitalism?

I'm not just talking about China. It really doesn't matter which country the factories are in. The poor will always get exploited. Be it child labour in India or Indonesia, or closing of GM Flint Michigan. Exploitation of the poor is at the root of capitalism if you think about it from a basic level. It's all about making profit, and for that you need cheap labour provided by the poor, globalization provides an abund…

I'm confused. If a company pays people money to build stuff for them (as in India or Indonesia), you criticize them as exploiting the poor.

And if they stop paying people money to build stuff for them (as in Flint Michigan), you also criticize them for exploiting the poor?

Re: Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

#80

Post by mc32 »

vacri wrote: post #72
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign demand only speeds up the process; it's not a necessary component. The Western world went from no industrialization at all to sweatshops and tenements to riches within 150-200 years or so with no rich foreign countries buying their exports. (I'm thinking 1750/1800 to 1950.) That's only three times as long as it took Korea and Japan. China could make the same transformation based entirely on domestic demand th…

You're missing that it wasn't just factory workers that created all that wealth - current developed nations benefitted massively from the immense amounts of wealth they pulled from the 'new world', an option that is no longer available these days.

During the age of conquest Spain was able to extract natural resources (such as minerals), but for the most part, Britain, Portugal, France benefitted from the trade with their colonists --not trade with new world peoples.

I think it could be argued that this reliance on natural resources by Spain, contrasted with commerce favored by Britain, for example, resulted in the slow decline of imperial power by Spain. I think by the 1800s, Spain had pretty much ceased to be economically relevant vis-a-vis the more commerce oriented Empires of the time.

A crude analogy would be China selling to their diaspora outside China proper.

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