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> “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.” Extreme sugar coating with MBA lingos of fo
by dba7dba 10y ago
> “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
Extreme sugar coating with MBA lingos of forced labor camp.
I am GLAD there's no such American plant.
- orionblastar 10y agoYet. Using cross training on the assembly line basically teach everyone all the positions on the assembly line can cut down on costs and improve quality. Use robots for the hard stuff, use people for the sensitive stuff that needs human hands.
- dba7dba 10y agoI'm mostly concerned about waking up 8000 workers middle of the night, and making them work the following 12 hours, because of screw up by someone above them. And the fact that the American Apple executive admires it with the terms of flexibility and such.
- talsit 10y agoIIRC, it wasn't a screw up. It was Jobs changing from a plastic to glass front panel at the last minute because his prototype scratched too easily.
- dba7dba 10y agoThat is a screw up.
- orionblastar 10y agoWelcome to the computer industry. When I worked as a programmer I had to be called into work to fix something management screwed up in and forced to work extra hours for. But yeah I see your point that the workers live in a dormitory environment and not paid much and woken up at the last minute to switch from plastic to glass. My criticism of Apple, one criticism is using slave labor in China to make their phones and other devices. But then almost everyone does the same thing with China. You can't treat human beings that way as it causes stress and mental problems. Many burn out and that is why they have suicide nets installed. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Ins... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
- throwitaway1 10y ago> forced to work extra hours for. You're not forced to work extra hours. You can quit and find a better employer. What you don't understand is that in China workers from rural area can hardly choose where they want to work. They are not living in a free society. Please to compare you're situation to theirs.
- flamedoge 10y agoI am not glad there isn't such American plant yet. I foresee a day where plants are engineered to be flexible and cost efficient enough to mass produce at blink of an eye with a new design. We still have a very long way to go to exploit our own ingenuity, and this is only talking about automation.
- Bombthecat 10y agoWait a few years :)
- petecox 10y ago12 hour shifts sounds very 19th Century! Workers marched in the streets against such things... I thought PRC was founded on the communist ideals of the proletariat? 12 * 2 = 8 * 3. Introduce an 8 hour day and you can hire 50% more workers!
- taneq 10y agoOnly if your unemployment rate is over 33%.
- throwitaway1 10y ago> I thought PRC was founded on the communist ideals of the proletariat? China is a dictatorship which provides capitalists slave like workforce. The capitalists get their slaves and can hypocritically point fingers at China and how bad communism is, and the corrupt Chinese government gets his money. Everybody is happy (except the victims of that cynical farce). That's shows the power of PR and persuasion. I remember 15 years ago people still protesting against China at its terrible working conditions in the west, or against the treatment of Tibet by the Chinese government. Who questions that today ? nobody, not even lefties. Of course Apple could build the iPhone in the west and sell it at the exact same price. It just wouldn't be as profitable as it is and would require significant investments on infrastructure and factories but the "market" wants high return on investment, not just profitability. Worker's rights arbitrage is how corporations like Apple, any textile manufacturer or hardware manufacturer got so rich. Anybody who thinks that scheme made things cheaper needs to look at the insane debts most western countries are running. That's the hidden cost of all that system. That high debt is a sign the quality of life will go down in the west in the foreseeable future.