12 ms·

We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

293 points by samd 16y ago

dean 16y ago
"China does not have unions ..." Oh the irony. A communist country that exploits its workers like a true capitalist.
- akgerber 16y ago
  China, of course, only being nominally communist.
  - eru 16y ago
    And capitalists only exploiting workers when it pays.
- josefresco 16y ago
  One could argue that China is either the worst of both worlds (capitalism/communism) or the best of both worlds.
  - eru 16y ago
    Or something more nuanced.
- jhancock 16y ago
  China is in no way a communist country. What is was before can be left to the opinions of those that experienced it. What it is now is most certainly not communist by any definition I know. China is very uneven in its protections. Wal-Mart attempted to preclude unions when it opened in China, much like it has managed to fight them in the U.S. Somewhere between citizens and government, it was decided Wal-Mart could not do this; Wal-Mart was clearly told that unionizing was protected by the China constitution. Of course, this is a grand exception to the standard that the boss controls the game more than government rules do and government regulation is highly uneven.
latch 16y ago
"Everyone tries to keep an eye on the time, constantly looking at their watches. Time crawls by very slowly." In fairness, time always moves slowly when you stare at the clock...
gluu 16y ago
I thought this was going to be about grad student life
SamAtt 16y ago
"China does not have unions ..." China might not have unions but they do have child labor laws and if those aren't doing the trick I don't know how a union would. It's a market with a poor, easily exploitable labor pool desperate for work (they have double digit unemployment in the rural areas and the nation's average salary is under $6,000 a year). So I can't see how a union would help unskilled workers when the factory could easily fire the whole factory and have it full again within a week
- jhancock 16y ago
  Its my understanding China's constitution does protect unions. China is a nation of many provinces, each differing in their respect to national rules. Even within wealthy, better regulated provinces like Shanghai, behavior is highly uneven. I have seen cases where unions and other labor laws (maternity rights is a huge one) were heavily weighed in favor of the laborer. Its still not enough.
mburney 16y ago
I thought this was going to be about working in an American corporate office
- kwyjibo 16y ago
  I thought it was about running a startup in the early days ;)
watmough 16y ago
So, hypothetically, wage parity might be achieved by Chinese workers making 5 - 7x more than they do now, whilst American worker would make 5 - 7x less. Obviously prices in the US for healthcare, food and housing need to come down somewhat.
- lsc 16y ago
  I think what we see is a (hopefully temporary) situation where there are people so poor that they are willing to work cheaper than machines. Because Americans are not going to go back to doing that work, it's not really a situation where Chinese labour is competing against American labour. the Chinese labour is competing against American /machines/
  - watmough 16y ago
    Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines. There was a story on feats of Chinese manufacturing on YC not long ago, showing a guy sewing Chumby covers in 4 seconds flat. No machine could do that. If you go look at HobbyCity, there are 30 gram brushless motors that are efficient, and can suck down 9 amps. Great for powering foamies, and most likely built and wound by hand. Cost $9 and up. It's hard to conceive of an America that could perform such feats. It's been and gone. I don't know if wage pressures will push wages up in China, but I do know there are a lot of qualified people unemployed, and plenty of unemployed unqualified people, and a government that needs to steer away from a housing and stocks bubble. I'm not expecting this to be temporary, much as I wish life for the Chinese workers could improve. Disclaimer: Typed on an iMac (Made in China), Mitsumi/Apple Bluetooth Keyboard (Made in China), MS Mouse (Made in China).
    - lsc 16y ago
      "Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines." Sure, on the things that humans do better than robots, like sewing chumbies. My understanding is that china imports a whole lot of manufactured parts (computer chips, etc..) does the final assembly step (the one where humans can compete with machines) and exports the result. Some people say that much of our trade imbalance with china should be re-assigned to other countries that sell the chips to china, where they are assembled into a final product and sold to the US. For example, I'm typing this on a Lenovo brand thinkpad; It was Assembled in China by a Chinese company. But, the CPU is made by intel (and nearly all Intel fabs are in the first world, many of them in the US.) and the ram and SSD is made in Korea. The LCD was also made in Korea. I haven't taken apart the battery assembly (which was assembled in china) but it would not surprise me at all if the Lithium Ion cells and the controller chips were made in Japan. It seems to me, then, that most of what I paid for my Lenovo was not actually being paid to China; China was just the cheapest place to aggregate and assemble all the components. As time goes on, there will be more and more things a machine can do better than a human can; that is why I don't think it's a problem for the US that china has dramatically lower prices for rote labour. You can't get a high school student to hand-craft a microchip, no matter how hard you work them. The other thing about China is that there is a huge gap between unskilled work and skilled work. Much larger than here. I mean, here, there is maybe a 10x-20x (give or take) difference between the hourly rates of our lowest-skilled workers and our highest skilled workers (I mean, if you discount managers.) In China, this difference is much greater; The very skilled workers are paid at almost 1/3-1/2 global parity. I'm helping a Chinese friend set up a hosting company in China, and he tells me that he's going to need to pay close to the equivalent of USD$40K a year for a good software engineer. (I mean, someone with a masters or better.) I mean, that's a lot less than US rates, but it's not pennies. Hell, It's slightly more than I paid myself last year.
weezer 16y ago
I don't condone conditions like this, but everyone should be able to put this in the context of the general standard of living in China. I've been to dorms in Chinese Universities and they don't look much different from the dorms these workers live in. The average income per person is $6,600, but still 10% of China's population, mostly rural people, live on less than $1 a day. (There are some very rich people in the cities bringing the mean up) The people working in these factories are mostly rural youth, not well educated, doing the best to provide for their families and earn more than what they can doing small scale farming. I'm not convinced that how our western eyes view things is the same as how locals view this. Even taking home $.50 an hour like the article says means $2000 a year. If you used to be making a dollar a day, this factory job is much better than a dead end job as a farmer. Just keep that in mind.
- huherto 16y ago
  Very good comment. They are better off with these jobs than without them. Still, they should have some basic working conditions. Such as max 45hrs a week. 2 week vacation a year, etc.
  - weezer 16y ago
    The Chinese government has three (approximately) week long holiday periods around the lunar new year, labor day, and national day. For factories like the one described in the article, they can expect up to about 30% of their workers to leave on vacation and not come back.
  - ibsulon 16y ago
    Factory workers here would revolt if you limited them to 45 hours. Many regularly work 60.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    Right, because working more than 45 hours a week is a crime against humanity and here in the civilized West nobody ever works more than that rollseyes I have a cushy office job but the friends from my adolescent years are now mostly blue collar.workers. Those who have their own businesses (one-man shops: plumbing, construction contractors, painters, those type of jobs) work 50 to 60 hours a week, plus client meetings and paperwork in the evenings and on Sundays. Those who work in factories work regular weeks of 40 hours and they put "Yay! I'm getting overtime!" statuses on their facebook pages when they get to work another 10 or so hours, either during the week (evenings) or on Saturdays. Of course sometimes they complain too when their boss asks them to work on the day after a big soccer game or whatever and when they had rather slept in, but in general the overtime is what makes the pay quite good - so it is mostly considered a perk to get to work overtime. That is in Belgium, if that matters.
binarymax 16y ago
The comment that kept jumping out at me was using a bucket as a shower. I was living in Thailand for about 1.5 years and apart from my lavish westernized apartment in Bangkok, about half the places I stayed in had buckets for showers. The first time I used one I kind of complained, but I got used to it quickly. Then, when I moved back to England, my girlfriend at the time lived in a council flat. There was a bathtub but not enough water pressure for a shower. Luckily by that time I was an expert with the bucket.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Even fairly rich Indian families often use bucket baths rather than showers. I know of a a wealthy stock broker in India, and his estate is unusual in that it has a shower. He never bothered to hook it up to the hot water since no one uses it.
- SanPedroGrouch 16y ago
  As an American I need to ask what is a council flat? Is that like what we might call "public housing"? (Cheap, often low-quality) And how did you like life in Bangkok?
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Yes you got it: cheap public housing. Councils are the local area authorities (either county or town level).
  - Quarrelsome 16y ago
    Yep. It used to be the case that council housing was given as part of social care and/or at subsidised rents. It still is, to a degree but nowhere near the amount it used to. Originally it was part of resettling the displaced population after WW2 and the bombing of the UK. The Tories back in the 80's decided that "home owners" were Tory voters so introduced a "right to buy" scheme that enabled tenants to purchase their properties at discounted costs. This means that a lot of council property in the UK is now actually private property. A lot of people made a lot of money with these purchases due to the recent housing booms. However it is a case of location, location, location as some lost money as in some locations properties can be practically worthless (Hull or Burnley being examples).
rubyrescue 16y ago
How do people who are appalled by this not contribute to it without exiting the world of technology altogether? I can't imagine the factories for Apple or Dell are any better... Is there a "no-sweatshop" watchdog organization for tech that says what equipment is manufactured in better conditions?
- lsc 16y ago
  how effective do you think such an organization could be? For example, the first job I worked at the age of 14-15 was below 'minimum wage' in my area and thus could be called an 'illegal sweatshop' but realistically, considering my background and options (I had no immediate financial need to work; this was my 'foot in the door') it was just some kid getting some experience. The thing is, I didn't go to school. (I mean, I went to highschool, but that's little more than babysitting. I didn't go to college) If you want to get a job that requires a degree without having that degree, you need to do that job for a smaller company that is paying you way below market rates before you can do that job at market rates. It's the way it works, and it worked out fine for me. I ended up making more than anyone I grew up with. I'm not saying that my situation compares with that of the Chineese teens; I'm just saying, you need to be careful to define sweatshop in a way that would protect those who need protecting, without getting in the way of those who don't. My stepmother made me quit my first job after she found out that not only were they paying me under the table, they didn't have workman's comp. I was being "exploited." I mean, I was being exploited. But it was a hugely positive experience with me. The shady computer repair place sold me discounted used computer parts for years to come, and I was able to get a (legal, minimum wage, with school credit) job at one of the local county offices that was a customer of the shady computer repair place the next summer, so it all worked out okay in the end, but without getting that foot in the door, who knows how long it would have taken my career to take off? I'm not saying yours isn't a worthy goal, just... you need to be careful with it.
  - rubyrescue 16y ago
    I appreciate your anecdotes and I had similar experiences, but I don't think those examples are comparable to the life of a factory worker in China. I agree there's no simple way to define the standard, but there should be a higher bar than this.
rajdevar 16y ago
i am feeling lucky to work in U.S.A (best country to work) after reading this..i think i shouldn't brag about a few extra hours i work.
- Quarrelsome 16y ago
  "best country to work" have you heard of France? I think they have a maximum 30 hour work week. :O Although I guess this depends on your definition of "best" ;)
  - middus 16y ago
    I think you have been misinformed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek
  - krschultz 16y ago
    What are the other differences? I'll take 5 extra hours a week for keeping a much larger part of my pay after taxes and avoiding the unemployment they have. And I'm not a conservative at all, I'm one pushing for higher taxes when necessary, but even I think that hours at work is a terrible way to measure happiness at work. I had a 40 hour a week job and I hated it, now I have a 50 hour a week job and love it.
    - korch 16y ago
      I'm sick of seeing the right-wing's tired old, sacred myth that "American's pay less taxes." It's total BS. While this isn't targeted directly at the poster, since you seem pretty open to figuring out the truth, but the hint of this myth is there. Why is it that everyone who trots out this myth feels like they can ignore the "non-tax" taxes of FICA(social security & medicare)? If you add in what you pay to FICA(social security & medicaid), and also add in the out of pocket expenses you bear for your own health care, now the average American's tax burden is not only almost identical to most of Europe, but is probably a tiny bit higher. Around ~50% or so. The US federal gov't sure as hell benefits by having half the voting population(Republicans) believe this myth. It's just deceptive accounting semantics—make everyone pay something, but don't call it a "tax", voila, now you can claim to have far lower taxes than any other G8 nations! But it's a lie. I think most Americans are plain fools when it comes to taxes. No wonder the gov't is able to spend $0.53 of every tax dollar on war and killing poor, non-white human beings, and NOT have riots in the streets, or their greatest existential fear: a mass scale tax "protest" movement. And don't even get me started on how stupid everyone is for the annual tax season "refund" rigmarole. What kind of idiots(other than our insolvent banks) give the Federal gov't an interest free micro-loan over a year?
potatolicious 16y ago
This article, IMHO, is written by someone who has no idea how things work just about anywhere that's not the industrialized West, and is shocked and appalled that things aren't as awesome as they are in the US of A. It's a also a reminder for those of us who live in such ridiculous comfort and freedom that it can get much, much worse. That being said, I think this article is sensationalist tripe: > "The idea that ‘without sweatshops workers would starve to death' is a lie that corporate bosses use to cover their guilt." Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this. It's a straw man; her family was extremely poor, but not in danger of starvation. Without sweatshop labor she wouldn't have starved to death, but she also wouldn't have been able to go to school, get educated, get employed in a white collar job, and eventually move abroad. Anecdotes do not data make, but knee-jerk emotional reactions and weasel words don't help anyone. > "To "shower," workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket to take a sponge bath." I hope the author realizes this is common in Asia. Hell, that's how I grew up - showers were somewhat foreign and scary when I first encountered them. Surely there are more convincing indictments about the evils of this workplace. > "We (who?) would respect us? We are ordered around and told what to do and what not to do. No one in management has ever asked us about anything. There is no discussion. You feel no respect." This is why I can't take this article seriously - this is also how factories work in the West, where labor laws are followed and abuses minimal. Do we seriously expect factories to be a creative, communal endeavor where management talks everything over with line workers? This isn't office work. Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11. Looking at the pictures in the article, this place looks no different than a million other factories in any other developing country. In fact, the conditions look downright sanitary, which isn't always the case. To me this isn't much more than another comfortable Westerner shocked and appalled that conditions are so much worse everywhere else in the world. Hi, welcome to reality. > "While working, the young people cannot talk, use their cell phones or listen to music." ... and this is different than other factories how? Even in the West this is basically the case. What, do you think a production line is happy happy fun times where workers chat on a bluetooth headset with their friends while assembling electronics? > "Workers need permission to use the bathroom or drink water." It's an assembly line! How privileged do you have to be to consider walking away to the bathroom randomly at work to be anything but a luxury? Hell, it's a luxury that even in this country many people do not have. > "Security guards search workers' bags and pockets as they leave the factory." Same in the USA, especially in warehousing/supply chain jobs. The only thing really convincingly bad about this particular workplace that the author has exposed are the long hours, but this is also typical of the country it operates in. Workers are paid for their overtime, and many in fact prefer it - many are doing this only as a means to something else - education, rescuing family from poverty, etc, and overtime means they get there more quickly. I really don't see anything egregiously or especially bad this place compared to any other factory one might come across - and it reads like a hit piece against Microsoft.
jpcx01 16y ago
That about sums it up for me too. Well maybe not the prisoner part, my situation is purely of free choice.
zackattack 16y ago
What sucks is that when human workers are interchangeably minimally skilled commodities, management has no incentive to create a more humanized work environment: it causes no variation in output.
cryptnoob 16y ago
This is BS. Over the past three years, unprecedented photographs of exhausted teenaged workers, toiling and slumping asleep on their assembly line during break time, have been smuggled out of the KYE factory. That's what they do there. Even the office workers do this. They turn off the lights, and for 20 minutes, they all put their heads down on their desk and try to nap. You may be put off that such behavior is "mandated". What if you don't feel like napping? But it's not "exhausted workers" passing out from lack of sleep. What crap this is. "photographs ... smuggled out"? Really? I've taken these photos myself, with factory management standing next to me. To western eyes, seeing a room full of workers sitting in silence with their heads down, in the middle of a work day, is interesting, and I wanted to show my wife. No "smuggling" was necessary.
norswap 16y ago
The strong focus on Microsoft made this article sound suspicious to me from the start, but it got worse as I read.
peterwwillis 16y ago
14 and 15 year olds should not be working in sweatshops. what the hell is wrong with the people defending this? this isn't the pampered western worker vs the average 3rd world worker, this is kids being forced to go without sleep and effectively without a life for pennies. fuck that. i know most people will argue something like "they are probably lucky to get it." it's still bad for them, and trying to justify the bad conditions with arguments like 'its expected of them' really exposes a true lack of empathy for one's fellow man and some pretty selfish reasoning.
- deleted 16y ago
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- sketerpot 16y ago
  If you have a better alternative, do feel free to post your ideas.
- chc 16y ago
  I have empathy toward them and their harsh circumstances, but the thing I recognize is that the alternatives are mostly WORSE. In opinion writing, one of the key rules is that it's useless to simply complain about something — we have to offer a workable alternative. Failure to do this is one of the reasons why Bush's Iraq War was considered such a failure: He had a hugely successful plan to topple Saddam, but he didn't know where to go from there and lots of people suffered for it. So I feel for people in bad conditions, but it's also important to have perspective about how bad "bad" can be.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I can understand your sentiment (Im sure I once shared it too). However please bear in mind this is a huge culture clash problem. Extended visits to the region will throw things in a new light (like it did for myself). Now, clearly, conditions definitely are a problem in many places. However the general theory of working at 14/15 is more of a cultural thing and not an issue. I don't think it's correct to dictate society rules such as "thou must not work under 16" just because we happened to stop that practice several years back. I find it a bit sadistic that we wish to dictate that sentiment to others... Of course us then exploiting that work environment is a whole other problem. Additionally; what's the solution? Stop all these kids working? What are they going to do? Really, seriously? Increased wages would be good - that is certainly something we should encourage.
gxs 16y ago
I think the conditions in this factory are actually quite above what you can normally expect to find, and for that kudos to Microsoft. My mom used to work for a guy that imports ceramic tiles from China- now those workers had conditions that were just plain awful. While I definitely don't condone these actions, I think the author perhaps should have aimed his venom at a more deserving target.
cloudkj 16y ago
I feel that some of the pictures are taken out of context and portray an inaccurate image. In Asia, it's common for schools and workplaces to allow students and workers to put their heads down for naps in the middle of the day. The article uses an image of workers seemingly "collapsed" on the work bench as the first picture to depict harsh working conditions, which is misleading.
dkimball 16y ago
The defensiveness of some of these comments is unsettling. Inhumane conditions are inhumane no matter where they are, and no matter what the situation is in the society; it is never right to do to one's workers what this article is describing, not even if there's a lot of competition for their jobs. This is the kind of thing that explains why the United States is not lassiez-faire capitalist anymore; and it emphasizes that we should forswear our addiction to shopping cheap, in favor of buying what is produced in a morally licit fashion, and genuinely punishing corporate leaders over whom the US has jurisdiction and who knowingly go along with this kind of thing. I don't mean sanctions directed at the corporation: I mean punishing the individuals who sign off on or turn a blind eye to this, and I think that a crucial part of any such punishment, in addition to a long prison sentence, is the confiscation of the individual's personal fortune -- since this kind of person (well, almost always "this kind of man") sees money as score, and his objective is to die with a score high enough to leave his initials on the game's attract screen. I want to emphasize here that this is not partisan United States issue, either. I am a serious Catholic; I vote Republican and like the Tea Party movement; and I know that this kind of thing is wrong, and that you don't have to be a Green, "pro-choice," or a gun-control advocate to recognize it as such.
- roel_v 16y ago
  Pray tell, what is it exactly about the conditions described in the article that is "inhumane"? I don't see anywhere that people are being forced to work more than 8 hours, on the contrary it clearly states that overtime is optional. Most of the points that are made in the article are standard practice in factories here in Western Europe, like timed bathroom breaks, can't use phones while working etc. The photos are misleading too, at least the ones with the people sleeping on the assembly line. While unusual in the West, in my (admittedly limited) experience with Asia (and China in particular) it is much more normal and culturally accepted to take a quick nap during breaks, while waiting for a train/bus, .. anywhere where there are a few spare minutes. This article makes it seem like these people are whipped to work until they literally fall asleep on the assembly line. I'm not saying that there are no cases of abuse of factory workers; I'm pretty sure there are, and I in no way want to defend those. I live in an area where there were documented instances of people being whipped if they didn't cut coal fast enough, as little as 150 years ago, and that is a black spot in our history. However if this article describes the worst factory they could find, and if the situation that is described is the worst possible description of reality, it seems to me that capitalism has given these people something that they could only have wished for 50 years ago.
confusedcitizen 16y ago
If an individual decides to be highly competitive by working crazy hours, is that considered bad? Will her colleagues complain to the labor department? A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit, complaining about labor practices, is the biggest oxymoron. Surely, the Chinese industries tactics are understandable? In order for the Chinese manufacturing industry to be competitive, they indulge in such practices. If you want to remain competitive, one way is to cut costs or increase production, the way they do or by way of technological innovation. Or create high quality products, that consumers would want to buy, instead of the cheap {quality, cost} ones made in China. The opponents of outsourcing are surely barking up the wrong tree. The Chinese workers surely have a choice of not working there. Agreed, that if they choose to work, life is pretty much miserable. But what if they choose not to work there. Do they go back to their non-existent farms, or to the streets? If such labor laws are enforced, the obvious impact is that oursourcing would move elsewhere. There will always be some country willing to take it up, and not to mention the people who would welcome a respite from their poverty. The Chinese industry has decided to stay competitive. The people are probably between the devil or the deep sea, and it's all about choosing the better path, which in this case, simply is working 15 hours a day.
- jerf 16y ago
  "A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit," You seem to be confused about "capitalism". In a capitalist system, workers are in a market as well and negotiate wages with the employers. Aggregate market behavior emerges from the individual behavior of who works for what. Individual employers may make "take it or leave it" offers, but they are embedded in a larger market and if enough people don't "take it", they have to raise their offer. Complaining about labor practices isn't weird, it's a bargaining chip. It's the totalitarian systems where complaining about labor practices makes no "sense". They work under a de facto oligarchy or even flat-out monopoly in terms of where they can work, and when you have that, you no longer have capitalism. Hint: If you don't see a market, you're not talking about capitalism.
deleted 16y ago
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dgallagher 16y ago
Industrial Revolution repeating itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Social_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Social_ef... Is a phase like this required for developing nations to pass through? Specifically, large developing nations? Or could it be skipped, or at least have its negative human effects mitigated?
- huherto 16y ago
  good point. Some nations were able to pass through in peace, but in other places it generated an unimaginable blood shed. I totally believe in market economies, but you have to make sure human beings are not abused.
whyme 16y ago
NEWS BULLETIN - North Americans benefit from trade practices that reap the rewards in taking advantage of other countries less protected workers. YUP. For those of you that are complaining about how the article is merely story spinning to target Microsoft, I think you're de-sensitized. Comparing the worst places to work in North America to the average place to work in China may make yourself feel better, but it's just dishonest thinking. If an American wanted to buy a Computer Mouse would you not think it easier and cheaper to buy one locally? Of course not, because there's too many other countries with unprotected workers to take advantage of that make it cheaper for US..... doesn't this basic concept lend any understanding that there's something wrong here? It does to me. If the treatment norm were that same as you're own country then the product cost would go up. The playing field isn't level and that's ok, but that doesn't mean we should feel good about taking advantage of them. I know, I know - we're helping them right? Give me a break. There are ways to help them while not taking advantage of them. Don't buy from countries that don't meet the treatment norms your own country has. It raises the bar for them, and they will to get our business. Meanwhile it's not like Americans couldn't use the work. Yes product costs go up, but so do local jobs increase and quite frankly maybe inflation is the cost of being ethical, maybe North Americans should be a little less wealthy and little more honest.
- r0s 16y ago
  We are rich because they are poor. The horror of the problem is only ever counterbalanced for me when other people recognize the macro-feudal nature of our economy.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    This is plain false. They become richer because we are rich and let them work. When the tide goes up. all boats rise.
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fexl 16y ago
Although I'm comfortably ensconced in the USA working in my own business, I've done my share of physical work, starting at the age of 14. It could be tiring and nasty but I went home with pride and money. I'm not doing that kind of work now but my point is it was a good start. I'll tell you precisely what provokes outrage in me: the use of physical violence or the threat of physical violence. Example: "When I tried to quit this disgusting, dangerous, demeaning, and exhausting job, the manager struck me in the face and locked me in a room until I apologized." Example: "When I mentioned that I might quit this horrible job, the manager said that there was nowhere to hide, and his people would find me and make me sorry." Now that is the kind of thing that really outrages me. But consider this: "I was raised on a farm and came to work at this factory and I hate every minute of it, but I'm still working here because I'd rather do that than go back to the farm or wander the streets homeless." That does not outrage me. It saddens me, yes. I'm very sorry that this individual at this time in her life only has such poor and few choices. However, I must allow her that choice. The worst thing I could do is use the threat of violence in the other direction, as in: "If you try to work in a factory for 80 cents an hour, I will physically restrain both you and the factory manager." The only thing I would accomplish by that, apart from violating my own code of conduct, is to limit the options of this individual, consigning her back to the farm or streets. The very best thing I could do is compete in the labor market, creating new opportunities and offering higher wages and better conditions. Although I am not a factory manager, that is always my aim. For many years in my business it was just my partner and I doing all the work. But I'm proud to say that in recent years we have been contracting with others to do some of that work, and it is feeding families. In conclusion I would say that the armchair outragers should first do no harm, and then ideally do more good.
yic 16y ago
Whenever I see a sensational news like this about China I wonder if the journalist is sincerely stupid or purposely evil. The picture for showing "exhausted workers" is a joke: there is a tradition to have a nap after lunch in China so in many businesses the hour after lunch is basically off hours. The place my parents worked for have 2-3 hours of lunch break so everybody can go home and have a nap. In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap: on the desk, or "under" the desk, and all conference rooms are closed for the same purpose as well. Heck I am still keeping that habit and have a small futon by my desk now (glad I have my own office). The "sweatshop" is also a joke for westerners. In more developed cities in China, workers are free to change their employers just like in the west, and it has been in that way for a couple of decades. Those factories don't offer what we called "hu kou", so the employer has no power to slave the workers except higher pay. The photo of the worker's dorm room is funny as well. I went to a good university in China (about 14 years ago) and that's how my university dorm looks like. It is difficult for westerners to live in that situation but using that photo as a proof that workers are slaved is misleading.
- wallflower 16y ago
  > In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap I often wonder why napping is not easily permitted in U.S. offices. The benefits of napping last way beyond where it is practiced in Kindergarten.
jlmendez 16y ago
Off topic: Interesting that all the stories so far talk about mothers in sweatshops. Not single one here mentions a father. Were they working in the fields while women in the sweatshops?
dnsworks 16y ago
Is this supposed to be surprising? Globalized manufacturing is a zero-sum race to the bottom where only share-holders win. Everybody else becomes slaves when "contracting out to the lowest bidder" means "hiring the cruelest whipmaster".
- eru 16y ago
  It's is definitely not a zero-sum game. I can demonstrate this by destroying some value, if you'd like. (Demonstrating that the the sum can go up is a bit more difficult, since you need to actually do something worthwhile.)
barmstrong 16y ago
They are not prisoners for the simple reason that they can quit at any time. If they choose to stay at the job it means it's because they want to - by definition they want the money more than they want to leave the job, otherwise they'd leave. If anyone wants to go there and provide better opportunities to lure these workers away from Microsoft, they are free to do so. There is a market for labor just as with any other product. But until then, Microsoft is offering these people the best job at the best wage available to them, so we have no grounds to criticize.
- gridspy 16y ago
  When they quit they are fined 15 days wages. Because they rarely leave the compound they don't have the chance to foster opportunities outside the factory.
Agile_Cyborg 16y ago
They are only low-class minions who should be lucky their carcasses aren't rotting in the hot sun from starvation. There will be countless others to fill the positions of the broken, lazy, despondent, and worthless who've tottered on to other production facilities. Since when has this level of human deserved even a cursory notice, much less an in-depth ethical analysis of how they labor?
motters 16y ago
Shocking. This is what used to be called "the unacceptable face of capitalism". It is this sort of unregulated industrial production which in western countries led to the labour movements and improvements in working conditions and health and safety standards throughout the 20th century. The internet provides an excellent means by which to expose malpractice. Hopefully Microsoft will put pressure on their suppliers to ensure that workers aren't being mistreated. Make no mistake about it, if working practices like these were to exist today in a western country like the UK the company would be facing very significant fines and compensation claims.

293 points by samd 16y ago

dean 16y ago

"China does not have unions ..." Oh the irony. A communist country that exploits its workers like a true capitalist.

akgerber 16y ago
China, of course, only being nominally communist.
- eru 16y ago
  And capitalists only exploiting workers when it pays.
josefresco 16y ago
One could argue that China is either the worst of both worlds (capitalism/communism) or the best of both worlds.
- eru 16y ago
  Or something more nuanced.
jhancock 16y ago
China is in no way a communist country. What is was before can be left to the opinions of those that experienced it. What it is now is most certainly not communist by any definition I know. China is very uneven in its protections. Wal-Mart attempted to preclude unions when it opened in China, much like it has managed to fight them in the U.S. Somewhere between citizens and government, it was decided Wal-Mart could not do this; Wal-Mart was clearly told that unionizing was protected by the China constitution. Of course, this is a grand exception to the standard that the boss controls the game more than government rules do and government regulation is highly uneven.

latch 16y ago

"Everyone tries to keep an eye on the time, constantly looking at their watches. Time crawls by very slowly." In fairness, time always moves slowly when you stare at the clock...

gluu 16y ago

I thought this was going to be about grad student life

SamAtt 16y ago

"China does not have unions ..." China might not have unions but they do have child labor laws and if those aren't doing the trick I don't know how a union would. It's a market with a poor, easily exploitable labor pool desperate for work (they have double digit unemployment in the rural areas and the nation's average salary is under $6,000 a year). So I can't see how a union would help unskilled workers when the factory could easily fire the whole factory and have it full again within a week

jhancock 16y ago
Its my understanding China's constitution does protect unions. China is a nation of many provinces, each differing in their respect to national rules. Even within wealthy, better regulated provinces like Shanghai, behavior is highly uneven. I have seen cases where unions and other labor laws (maternity rights is a huge one) were heavily weighed in favor of the laborer. Its still not enough.

mburney 16y ago

I thought this was going to be about working in an American corporate office

kwyjibo 16y ago
I thought it was about running a startup in the early days ;)

watmough 16y ago

So, hypothetically, wage parity might be achieved by Chinese workers making 5 - 7x more than they do now, whilst American worker would make 5 - 7x less. Obviously prices in the US for healthcare, food and housing need to come down somewhat.

lsc 16y ago
I think what we see is a (hopefully temporary) situation where there are people so poor that they are willing to work cheaper than machines. Because Americans are not going to go back to doing that work, it's not really a situation where Chinese labour is competing against American labour. the Chinese labour is competing against American /machines/
- watmough 16y ago
  Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines. There was a story on feats of Chinese manufacturing on YC not long ago, showing a guy sewing Chumby covers in 4 seconds flat. No machine could do that. If you go look at HobbyCity, there are 30 gram brushless motors that are efficient, and can suck down 9 amps. Great for powering foamies, and most likely built and wound by hand. Cost $9 and up. It's hard to conceive of an America that could perform such feats. It's been and gone. I don't know if wage pressures will push wages up in China, but I do know there are a lot of qualified people unemployed, and plenty of unemployed unqualified people, and a government that needs to steer away from a housing and stocks bubble. I'm not expecting this to be temporary, much as I wish life for the Chinese workers could improve. Disclaimer: Typed on an iMac (Made in China), Mitsumi/Apple Bluetooth Keyboard (Made in China), MS Mouse (Made in China).
  - lsc 16y ago
    "Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines." Sure, on the things that humans do better than robots, like sewing chumbies. My understanding is that china imports a whole lot of manufactured parts (computer chips, etc..) does the final assembly step (the one where humans can compete with machines) and exports the result. Some people say that much of our trade imbalance with china should be re-assigned to other countries that sell the chips to china, where they are assembled into a final product and sold to the US. For example, I'm typing this on a Lenovo brand thinkpad; It was Assembled in China by a Chinese company. But, the CPU is made by intel (and nearly all Intel fabs are in the first world, many of them in the US.) and the ram and SSD is made in Korea. The LCD was also made in Korea. I haven't taken apart the battery assembly (which was assembled in china) but it would not surprise me at all if the Lithium Ion cells and the controller chips were made in Japan. It seems to me, then, that most of what I paid for my Lenovo was not actually being paid to China; China was just the cheapest place to aggregate and assemble all the components. As time goes on, there will be more and more things a machine can do better than a human can; that is why I don't think it's a problem for the US that china has dramatically lower prices for rote labour. You can't get a high school student to hand-craft a microchip, no matter how hard you work them. The other thing about China is that there is a huge gap between unskilled work and skilled work. Much larger than here. I mean, here, there is maybe a 10x-20x (give or take) difference between the hourly rates of our lowest-skilled workers and our highest skilled workers (I mean, if you discount managers.) In China, this difference is much greater; The very skilled workers are paid at almost 1/3-1/2 global parity. I'm helping a Chinese friend set up a hosting company in China, and he tells me that he's going to need to pay close to the equivalent of USD$40K a year for a good software engineer. (I mean, someone with a masters or better.) I mean, that's a lot less than US rates, but it's not pennies. Hell, It's slightly more than I paid myself last year.

weezer 16y ago

I don't condone conditions like this, but everyone should be able to put this in the context of the general standard of living in China. I've been to dorms in Chinese Universities and they don't look much different from the dorms these workers live in. The average income per person is $6,600, but still 10% of China's population, mostly rural people, live on less than $1 a day. (There are some very rich people in the cities bringing the mean up) The people working in these factories are mostly rural youth, not well educated, doing the best to provide for their families and earn more than what they can doing small scale farming. I'm not convinced that how our western eyes view things is the same as how locals view this. Even taking home $.50 an hour like the article says means $2000 a year. If you used to be making a dollar a day, this factory job is much better than a dead end job as a farmer. Just keep that in mind.

huherto 16y ago
Very good comment. They are better off with these jobs than without them. Still, they should have some basic working conditions. Such as max 45hrs a week. 2 week vacation a year, etc.
- weezer 16y ago
  The Chinese government has three (approximately) week long holiday periods around the lunar new year, labor day, and national day. For factories like the one described in the article, they can expect up to about 30% of their workers to leave on vacation and not come back.
- ibsulon 16y ago
  Factory workers here would revolt if you limited them to 45 hours. Many regularly work 60.
- roel_v 16y ago
  Right, because working more than 45 hours a week is a crime against humanity and here in the civilized West nobody ever works more than that rollseyes I have a cushy office job but the friends from my adolescent years are now mostly blue collar.workers. Those who have their own businesses (one-man shops: plumbing, construction contractors, painters, those type of jobs) work 50 to 60 hours a week, plus client meetings and paperwork in the evenings and on Sundays. Those who work in factories work regular weeks of 40 hours and they put "Yay! I'm getting overtime!" statuses on their facebook pages when they get to work another 10 or so hours, either during the week (evenings) or on Saturdays. Of course sometimes they complain too when their boss asks them to work on the day after a big soccer game or whatever and when they had rather slept in, but in general the overtime is what makes the pay quite good - so it is mostly considered a perk to get to work overtime. That is in Belgium, if that matters.

binarymax 16y ago

The comment that kept jumping out at me was using a bucket as a shower. I was living in Thailand for about 1.5 years and apart from my lavish westernized apartment in Bangkok, about half the places I stayed in had buckets for showers. The first time I used one I kind of complained, but I got used to it quickly. Then, when I moved back to England, my girlfriend at the time lived in a council flat. There was a bathtub but not enough water pressure for a shower. Luckily by that time I was an expert with the bucket.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Even fairly rich Indian families often use bucket baths rather than showers. I know of a a wealthy stock broker in India, and his estate is unusual in that it has a shower. He never bothered to hook it up to the hot water since no one uses it.
SanPedroGrouch 16y ago
As an American I need to ask what is a council flat? Is that like what we might call "public housing"? (Cheap, often low-quality) And how did you like life in Bangkok?
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Yes you got it: cheap public housing. Councils are the local area authorities (either county or town level).
- Quarrelsome 16y ago
  Yep. It used to be the case that council housing was given as part of social care and/or at subsidised rents. It still is, to a degree but nowhere near the amount it used to. Originally it was part of resettling the displaced population after WW2 and the bombing of the UK. The Tories back in the 80's decided that "home owners" were Tory voters so introduced a "right to buy" scheme that enabled tenants to purchase their properties at discounted costs. This means that a lot of council property in the UK is now actually private property. A lot of people made a lot of money with these purchases due to the recent housing booms. However it is a case of location, location, location as some lost money as in some locations properties can be practically worthless (Hull or Burnley being examples).

rubyrescue 16y ago

How do people who are appalled by this not contribute to it without exiting the world of technology altogether? I can't imagine the factories for Apple or Dell are any better... Is there a "no-sweatshop" watchdog organization for tech that says what equipment is manufactured in better conditions?

lsc 16y ago
how effective do you think such an organization could be? For example, the first job I worked at the age of 14-15 was below 'minimum wage' in my area and thus could be called an 'illegal sweatshop' but realistically, considering my background and options (I had no immediate financial need to work; this was my 'foot in the door') it was just some kid getting some experience. The thing is, I didn't go to school. (I mean, I went to highschool, but that's little more than babysitting. I didn't go to college) If you want to get a job that requires a degree without having that degree, you need to do that job for a smaller company that is paying you way below market rates before you can do that job at market rates. It's the way it works, and it worked out fine for me. I ended up making more than anyone I grew up with. I'm not saying that my situation compares with that of the Chineese teens; I'm just saying, you need to be careful to define sweatshop in a way that would protect those who need protecting, without getting in the way of those who don't. My stepmother made me quit my first job after she found out that not only were they paying me under the table, they didn't have workman's comp. I was being "exploited." I mean, I was being exploited. But it was a hugely positive experience with me. The shady computer repair place sold me discounted used computer parts for years to come, and I was able to get a (legal, minimum wage, with school credit) job at one of the local county offices that was a customer of the shady computer repair place the next summer, so it all worked out okay in the end, but without getting that foot in the door, who knows how long it would have taken my career to take off? I'm not saying yours isn't a worthy goal, just... you need to be careful with it.
- rubyrescue 16y ago
  I appreciate your anecdotes and I had similar experiences, but I don't think those examples are comparable to the life of a factory worker in China. I agree there's no simple way to define the standard, but there should be a higher bar than this.

rajdevar 16y ago

i am feeling lucky to work in U.S.A (best country to work) after reading this..i think i shouldn't brag about a few extra hours i work.

Quarrelsome 16y ago
"best country to work" have you heard of France? I think they have a maximum 30 hour work week. :O Although I guess this depends on your definition of "best" ;)
- middus 16y ago
  I think you have been misinformed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek
- krschultz 16y ago
  What are the other differences? I'll take 5 extra hours a week for keeping a much larger part of my pay after taxes and avoiding the unemployment they have. And I'm not a conservative at all, I'm one pushing for higher taxes when necessary, but even I think that hours at work is a terrible way to measure happiness at work. I had a 40 hour a week job and I hated it, now I have a 50 hour a week job and love it.
  - korch 16y ago
    I'm sick of seeing the right-wing's tired old, sacred myth that "American's pay less taxes." It's total BS. While this isn't targeted directly at the poster, since you seem pretty open to figuring out the truth, but the hint of this myth is there. Why is it that everyone who trots out this myth feels like they can ignore the "non-tax" taxes of FICA(social security & medicare)? If you add in what you pay to FICA(social security & medicaid), and also add in the out of pocket expenses you bear for your own health care, now the average American's tax burden is not only almost identical to most of Europe, but is probably a tiny bit higher. Around ~50% or so. The US federal gov't sure as hell benefits by having half the voting population(Republicans) believe this myth. It's just deceptive accounting semantics—make everyone pay something, but don't call it a "tax", voila, now you can claim to have far lower taxes than any other G8 nations! But it's a lie. I think most Americans are plain fools when it comes to taxes. No wonder the gov't is able to spend $0.53 of every tax dollar on war and killing poor, non-white human beings, and NOT have riots in the streets, or their greatest existential fear: a mass scale tax "protest" movement. And don't even get me started on how stupid everyone is for the annual tax season "refund" rigmarole. What kind of idiots(other than our insolvent banks) give the Federal gov't an interest free micro-loan over a year?

potatolicious 16y ago

This article, IMHO, is written by someone who has no idea how things work just about anywhere that's not the industrialized West, and is shocked and appalled that things aren't as awesome as they are in the US of A. It's a also a reminder for those of us who live in such ridiculous comfort and freedom that it can get much, much worse. That being said, I think this article is sensationalist tripe: > "The idea that ‘without sweatshops workers would starve to death' is a lie that corporate bosses use to cover their guilt." Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this. It's a straw man; her family was extremely poor, but not in danger of starvation. Without sweatshop labor she wouldn't have starved to death, but she also wouldn't have been able to go to school, get educated, get employed in a white collar job, and eventually move abroad. Anecdotes do not data make, but knee-jerk emotional reactions and weasel words don't help anyone. > "To "shower," workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket to take a sponge bath." I hope the author realizes this is common in Asia. Hell, that's how I grew up - showers were somewhat foreign and scary when I first encountered them. Surely there are more convincing indictments about the evils of this workplace. > "We (who?) would respect us? We are ordered around and told what to do and what not to do. No one in management has ever asked us about anything. There is no discussion. You feel no respect." This is why I can't take this article seriously - this is also how factories work in the West, where labor laws are followed and abuses minimal. Do we seriously expect factories to be a creative, communal endeavor where management talks everything over with line workers? This isn't office work. Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11. Looking at the pictures in the article, this place looks no different than a million other factories in any other developing country. In fact, the conditions look downright sanitary, which isn't always the case. To me this isn't much more than another comfortable Westerner shocked and appalled that conditions are so much worse everywhere else in the world. Hi, welcome to reality. > "While working, the young people cannot talk, use their cell phones or listen to music." ... and this is different than other factories how? Even in the West this is basically the case. What, do you think a production line is happy happy fun times where workers chat on a bluetooth headset with their friends while assembling electronics? > "Workers need permission to use the bathroom or drink water." It's an assembly line! How privileged do you have to be to consider walking away to the bathroom randomly at work to be anything but a luxury? Hell, it's a luxury that even in this country many people do not have. > "Security guards search workers' bags and pockets as they leave the factory." Same in the USA, especially in warehousing/supply chain jobs. The only thing really convincingly bad about this particular workplace that the author has exposed are the long hours, but this is also typical of the country it operates in. Workers are paid for their overtime, and many in fact prefer it - many are doing this only as a means to something else - education, rescuing family from poverty, etc, and overtime means they get there more quickly. I really don't see anything egregiously or especially bad this place compared to any other factory one might come across - and it reads like a hit piece against Microsoft.

jpcx01 16y ago

That about sums it up for me too. Well maybe not the prisoner part, my situation is purely of free choice.

zackattack 16y ago

What sucks is that when human workers are interchangeably minimally skilled commodities, management has no incentive to create a more humanized work environment: it causes no variation in output.

cryptnoob 16y ago

This is BS. Over the past three years, unprecedented photographs of exhausted teenaged workers, toiling and slumping asleep on their assembly line during break time, have been smuggled out of the KYE factory. That's what they do there. Even the office workers do this. They turn off the lights, and for 20 minutes, they all put their heads down on their desk and try to nap. You may be put off that such behavior is "mandated". What if you don't feel like napping? But it's not "exhausted workers" passing out from lack of sleep. What crap this is. "photographs ... smuggled out"? Really? I've taken these photos myself, with factory management standing next to me. To western eyes, seeing a room full of workers sitting in silence with their heads down, in the middle of a work day, is interesting, and I wanted to show my wife. No "smuggling" was necessary.

norswap 16y ago

The strong focus on Microsoft made this article sound suspicious to me from the start, but it got worse as I read.

peterwwillis 16y ago

14 and 15 year olds should not be working in sweatshops. what the hell is wrong with the people defending this? this isn't the pampered western worker vs the average 3rd world worker, this is kids being forced to go without sleep and effectively without a life for pennies. fuck that. i know most people will argue something like "they are probably lucky to get it." it's still bad for them, and trying to justify the bad conditions with arguments like 'its expected of them' really exposes a true lack of empathy for one's fellow man and some pretty selfish reasoning.

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sketerpot 16y ago
If you have a better alternative, do feel free to post your ideas.
chc 16y ago
I have empathy toward them and their harsh circumstances, but the thing I recognize is that the alternatives are mostly WORSE. In opinion writing, one of the key rules is that it's useless to simply complain about something — we have to offer a workable alternative. Failure to do this is one of the reasons why Bush's Iraq War was considered such a failure: He had a hugely successful plan to topple Saddam, but he didn't know where to go from there and lots of people suffered for it. So I feel for people in bad conditions, but it's also important to have perspective about how bad "bad" can be.
ErrantX 16y ago
I can understand your sentiment (Im sure I once shared it too). However please bear in mind this is a huge culture clash problem. Extended visits to the region will throw things in a new light (like it did for myself). Now, clearly, conditions definitely are a problem in many places. However the general theory of working at 14/15 is more of a cultural thing and not an issue. I don't think it's correct to dictate society rules such as "thou must not work under 16" just because we happened to stop that practice several years back. I find it a bit sadistic that we wish to dictate that sentiment to others... Of course us then exploiting that work environment is a whole other problem. Additionally; what's the solution? Stop all these kids working? What are they going to do? Really, seriously? Increased wages would be good - that is certainly something we should encourage.

gxs 16y ago

I think the conditions in this factory are actually quite above what you can normally expect to find, and for that kudos to Microsoft. My mom used to work for a guy that imports ceramic tiles from China- now those workers had conditions that were just plain awful. While I definitely don't condone these actions, I think the author perhaps should have aimed his venom at a more deserving target.

cloudkj 16y ago

I feel that some of the pictures are taken out of context and portray an inaccurate image. In Asia, it's common for schools and workplaces to allow students and workers to put their heads down for naps in the middle of the day. The article uses an image of workers seemingly "collapsed" on the work bench as the first picture to depict harsh working conditions, which is misleading.

dkimball 16y ago

The defensiveness of some of these comments is unsettling. Inhumane conditions are inhumane no matter where they are, and no matter what the situation is in the society; it is never right to do to one's workers what this article is describing, not even if there's a lot of competition for their jobs. This is the kind of thing that explains why the United States is not lassiez-faire capitalist anymore; and it emphasizes that we should forswear our addiction to shopping cheap, in favor of buying what is produced in a morally licit fashion, and genuinely punishing corporate leaders over whom the US has jurisdiction and who knowingly go along with this kind of thing. I don't mean sanctions directed at the corporation: I mean punishing the individuals who sign off on or turn a blind eye to this, and I think that a crucial part of any such punishment, in addition to a long prison sentence, is the confiscation of the individual's personal fortune -- since this kind of person (well, almost always "this kind of man") sees money as score, and his objective is to die with a score high enough to leave his initials on the game's attract screen. I want to emphasize here that this is not partisan United States issue, either. I am a serious Catholic; I vote Republican and like the Tea Party movement; and I know that this kind of thing is wrong, and that you don't have to be a Green, "pro-choice," or a gun-control advocate to recognize it as such.

roel_v 16y ago
Pray tell, what is it exactly about the conditions described in the article that is "inhumane"? I don't see anywhere that people are being forced to work more than 8 hours, on the contrary it clearly states that overtime is optional. Most of the points that are made in the article are standard practice in factories here in Western Europe, like timed bathroom breaks, can't use phones while working etc. The photos are misleading too, at least the ones with the people sleeping on the assembly line. While unusual in the West, in my (admittedly limited) experience with Asia (and China in particular) it is much more normal and culturally accepted to take a quick nap during breaks, while waiting for a train/bus, .. anywhere where there are a few spare minutes. This article makes it seem like these people are whipped to work until they literally fall asleep on the assembly line. I'm not saying that there are no cases of abuse of factory workers; I'm pretty sure there are, and I in no way want to defend those. I live in an area where there were documented instances of people being whipped if they didn't cut coal fast enough, as little as 150 years ago, and that is a black spot in our history. However if this article describes the worst factory they could find, and if the situation that is described is the worst possible description of reality, it seems to me that capitalism has given these people something that they could only have wished for 50 years ago.

confusedcitizen 16y ago

If an individual decides to be highly competitive by working crazy hours, is that considered bad? Will her colleagues complain to the labor department? A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit, complaining about labor practices, is the biggest oxymoron. Surely, the Chinese industries tactics are understandable? In order for the Chinese manufacturing industry to be competitive, they indulge in such practices. If you want to remain competitive, one way is to cut costs or increase production, the way they do or by way of technological innovation. Or create high quality products, that consumers would want to buy, instead of the cheap {quality, cost} ones made in China. The opponents of outsourcing are surely barking up the wrong tree. The Chinese workers surely have a choice of not working there. Agreed, that if they choose to work, life is pretty much miserable. But what if they choose not to work there. Do they go back to their non-existent farms, or to the streets? If such labor laws are enforced, the obvious impact is that oursourcing would move elsewhere. There will always be some country willing to take it up, and not to mention the people who would welcome a respite from their poverty. The Chinese industry has decided to stay competitive. The people are probably between the devil or the deep sea, and it's all about choosing the better path, which in this case, simply is working 15 hours a day.

jerf 16y ago
"A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit," You seem to be confused about "capitalism". In a capitalist system, workers are in a market as well and negotiate wages with the employers. Aggregate market behavior emerges from the individual behavior of who works for what. Individual employers may make "take it or leave it" offers, but they are embedded in a larger market and if enough people don't "take it", they have to raise their offer. Complaining about labor practices isn't weird, it's a bargaining chip. It's the totalitarian systems where complaining about labor practices makes no "sense". They work under a de facto oligarchy or even flat-out monopoly in terms of where they can work, and when you have that, you no longer have capitalism. Hint: If you don't see a market, you're not talking about capitalism.

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dgallagher 16y ago

Industrial Revolution repeating itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Social_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Social_ef... Is a phase like this required for developing nations to pass through? Specifically, large developing nations? Or could it be skipped, or at least have its negative human effects mitigated?

huherto 16y ago
good point. Some nations were able to pass through in peace, but in other places it generated an unimaginable blood shed. I totally believe in market economies, but you have to make sure human beings are not abused.

whyme 16y ago

NEWS BULLETIN - North Americans benefit from trade practices that reap the rewards in taking advantage of other countries less protected workers. YUP. For those of you that are complaining about how the article is merely story spinning to target Microsoft, I think you're de-sensitized. Comparing the worst places to work in North America to the average place to work in China may make yourself feel better, but it's just dishonest thinking. If an American wanted to buy a Computer Mouse would you not think it easier and cheaper to buy one locally? Of course not, because there's too many other countries with unprotected workers to take advantage of that make it cheaper for US..... doesn't this basic concept lend any understanding that there's something wrong here? It does to me. If the treatment norm were that same as you're own country then the product cost would go up. The playing field isn't level and that's ok, but that doesn't mean we should feel good about taking advantage of them. I know, I know - we're helping them right? Give me a break. There are ways to help them while not taking advantage of them. Don't buy from countries that don't meet the treatment norms your own country has. It raises the bar for them, and they will to get our business. Meanwhile it's not like Americans couldn't use the work. Yes product costs go up, but so do local jobs increase and quite frankly maybe inflation is the cost of being ethical, maybe North Americans should be a little less wealthy and little more honest.

r0s 16y ago
We are rich because they are poor. The horror of the problem is only ever counterbalanced for me when other people recognize the macro-feudal nature of our economy.
- roel_v 16y ago
  This is plain false. They become richer because we are rich and let them work. When the tide goes up. all boats rise.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

fexl 16y ago

Although I'm comfortably ensconced in the USA working in my own business, I've done my share of physical work, starting at the age of 14. It could be tiring and nasty but I went home with pride and money. I'm not doing that kind of work now but my point is it was a good start. I'll tell you precisely what provokes outrage in me: the use of physical violence or the threat of physical violence. Example: "When I tried to quit this disgusting, dangerous, demeaning, and exhausting job, the manager struck me in the face and locked me in a room until I apologized." Example: "When I mentioned that I might quit this horrible job, the manager said that there was nowhere to hide, and his people would find me and make me sorry." Now that is the kind of thing that really outrages me. But consider this: "I was raised on a farm and came to work at this factory and I hate every minute of it, but I'm still working here because I'd rather do that than go back to the farm or wander the streets homeless." That does not outrage me. It saddens me, yes. I'm very sorry that this individual at this time in her life only has such poor and few choices. However, I must allow her that choice. The worst thing I could do is use the threat of violence in the other direction, as in: "If you try to work in a factory for 80 cents an hour, I will physically restrain both you and the factory manager." The only thing I would accomplish by that, apart from violating my own code of conduct, is to limit the options of this individual, consigning her back to the farm or streets. The very best thing I could do is compete in the labor market, creating new opportunities and offering higher wages and better conditions. Although I am not a factory manager, that is always my aim. For many years in my business it was just my partner and I doing all the work. But I'm proud to say that in recent years we have been contracting with others to do some of that work, and it is feeding families. In conclusion I would say that the armchair outragers should first do no harm, and then ideally do more good.

yic 16y ago

Whenever I see a sensational news like this about China I wonder if the journalist is sincerely stupid or purposely evil. The picture for showing "exhausted workers" is a joke: there is a tradition to have a nap after lunch in China so in many businesses the hour after lunch is basically off hours. The place my parents worked for have 2-3 hours of lunch break so everybody can go home and have a nap. In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap: on the desk, or "under" the desk, and all conference rooms are closed for the same purpose as well. Heck I am still keeping that habit and have a small futon by my desk now (glad I have my own office). The "sweatshop" is also a joke for westerners. In more developed cities in China, workers are free to change their employers just like in the west, and it has been in that way for a couple of decades. Those factories don't offer what we called "hu kou", so the employer has no power to slave the workers except higher pay. The photo of the worker's dorm room is funny as well. I went to a good university in China (about 14 years ago) and that's how my university dorm looks like. It is difficult for westerners to live in that situation but using that photo as a proof that workers are slaved is misleading.

wallflower 16y ago
> In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap I often wonder why napping is not easily permitted in U.S. offices. The benefits of napping last way beyond where it is practiced in Kindergarten.

jlmendez 16y ago

Off topic: Interesting that all the stories so far talk about mothers in sweatshops. Not single one here mentions a father. Were they working in the fields while women in the sweatshops?

dnsworks 16y ago

Is this supposed to be surprising? Globalized manufacturing is a zero-sum race to the bottom where only share-holders win. Everybody else becomes slaves when "contracting out to the lowest bidder" means "hiring the cruelest whipmaster".

eru 16y ago
It's is definitely not a zero-sum game. I can demonstrate this by destroying some value, if you'd like. (Demonstrating that the the sum can go up is a bit more difficult, since you need to actually do something worthwhile.)

barmstrong 16y ago

They are not prisoners for the simple reason that they can quit at any time. If they choose to stay at the job it means it's because they want to - by definition they want the money more than they want to leave the job, otherwise they'd leave. If anyone wants to go there and provide better opportunities to lure these workers away from Microsoft, they are free to do so. There is a market for labor just as with any other product. But until then, Microsoft is offering these people the best job at the best wage available to them, so we have no grounds to criticize.

gridspy 16y ago
When they quit they are fined 15 days wages. Because they rarely leave the compound they don't have the chance to foster opportunities outside the factory.

Agile_Cyborg 16y ago

They are only low-class minions who should be lucky their carcasses aren't rotting in the hot sun from starvation. There will be countless others to fill the positions of the broken, lazy, despondent, and worthless who've tottered on to other production facilities. Since when has this level of human deserved even a cursory notice, much less an in-depth ethical analysis of how they labor?

motters 16y ago

Shocking. This is what used to be called "the unacceptable face of capitalism". It is this sort of unregulated industrial production which in western countries led to the labour movements and improvements in working conditions and health and safety standards throughout the 20th century. The internet provides an excellent means by which to expose malpractice. Hopefully Microsoft will put pressure on their suppliers to ensure that workers aren't being mistreated. Make no mistake about it, if working practices like these were to exist today in a western country like the UK the company would be facing very significant fines and compensation claims.