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"Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11." Your comment made me think: Privileged white collar

by lutorm 17y ago

"Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11." Your comment made me think: Privileged white collar shows complete disregard for those that have it worse. News at 11.

wdewind 17y ago
Did you even read his entire comment?
- lutorm 17y ago
  Yes. Some other parts did not give this impression, that's true, but the flippant, sarcastic expression that I quoted didn't help him appear "fair and balanced" in the same sense that someone saying "people get murdered all the time, what's the big deal" wouldn't.
  - wdewind 17y ago
    God it seems like all we do is debate analogies on HN, but hey I'll bite! Actually, his comment is more analogous to "people get killed in war all the time, what's the big deal."
potatolicious 17y ago
Despite what you might think, I'm no Ayn Rand-quoting objectivist ;) What I do think is that this article makes much ado about nothing - sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs - in fact my mother and all of her siblings eventually all got white collar, comfortable desk jobs. What we're looking at is a country in a natural evolutionary state towards wealth - much like the US's tendency to impose democracy on nations with no foundation necessary for its success, it would IMHO be disastrous to attempt to enforce Western standards of work (or hell, enforcing white collar definitions of what is reasonable and fair). Taiwan has evolved from a cheap-labor, sweatshop labor model to an educated, R&D-centric model. The island has gone from an agrarian backwater to one of the urban jewels of the Pacific. I am glad that this has happened - and yet I'm not convinced it would have gone down that well if well-meaning Western labor activists had their way. I do think that fundamental worker safety must be ensured - companies certainly have proven that they can't be trusted to do that on their own, but enforcing someone's "right" to use a cell phone while working? Really?
- Zarkonnen 17y ago
  I think the big question is if sweatshop labour still does do this. AFAIK most of this work is now done via sub-sub-subcontractors and goes on in special economic zones. Workers are usually employed for the short term and the work may randomly migrate to a SEZ in a different country to take advantage of "tax holidays", periods of no tax for when a company first sets up in a SEZ. There are no permanent factories or permanent jobs. Wages don't rise because it's easy to just go to some other place where people are desperate for work, literally shipping the workshop to the new location. So what ends up happening is that the workers never work at the same thing for long enough to acquire skills or wage rises and that they don't make enough money for a proper education. And the assembly lines are so ephemeral and set apart from normal society that no infrastructure or know-how ever accumulates in the country. So this ain't your parents' kind of sweatshop. Literally. (Note that I'm talking about the kind of sweatshops that assemble consumer goods in general here, not specifically the one in the article. I have no specific insight about that one, but this is the general trend - this is where the west gets its clothes and gadgets from.)
  - wdewind 17y ago
    At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out. You can be disgruntled with Apple because Chinese workers got hurt making ipods, but the honest truth is that as long as there are people selling cheap labor there will be people buying.
    - Zarkonnen 17y ago
      > At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out. Yes, but this in no way absolves us. You don't have to buy just because someone's offering. > Apple should under no circumstances be held accountable for China's inability (or unwillingness) to regulate its economy. In your example, Apple should absolutely be held accountable. If I buy goods I know are stolen, I'm committing a crime. So why shouldn't a company be accountable for buying goods that it knows were made through exploitation?
DrJokepu 17y ago
When I was studying for my first degree (in mechanical engineering) I had to do a one month long internship as a factory worker after my first year (in an EU country). It was truly an eye opener experience, both in terms of understanding how industrial production looks like from below, experiencing the life of a blue collar worker and as a motivation to take my studies seriously (to avoid having to have a job like that) as well. I think short "slave work" internships for first year students should be more common.
rapind 17y ago
Exactly, but more like News at never. Our ratings votes dictate we rarely see a piece on slave labour and sweatshops. I did find the article pretty sensationalist. The sexual harassment issues are believable though and weren't picked up on in these comments.

by lutorm 17y ago

wdewind 17y ago

Did you even read his entire comment?

lutorm 17y ago
Yes. Some other parts did not give this impression, that's true, but the flippant, sarcastic expression that I quoted didn't help him appear "fair and balanced" in the same sense that someone saying "people get murdered all the time, what's the big deal" wouldn't.
- wdewind 17y ago
  God it seems like all we do is debate analogies on HN, but hey I'll bite! Actually, his comment is more analogous to "people get killed in war all the time, what's the big deal."

potatolicious 17y ago

Despite what you might think, I'm no Ayn Rand-quoting objectivist ;) What I do think is that this article makes much ado about nothing - sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs - in fact my mother and all of her siblings eventually all got white collar, comfortable desk jobs. What we're looking at is a country in a natural evolutionary state towards wealth - much like the US's tendency to impose democracy on nations with no foundation necessary for its success, it would IMHO be disastrous to attempt to enforce Western standards of work (or hell, enforcing white collar definitions of what is reasonable and fair). Taiwan has evolved from a cheap-labor, sweatshop labor model to an educated, R&D-centric model. The island has gone from an agrarian backwater to one of the urban jewels of the Pacific. I am glad that this has happened - and yet I'm not convinced it would have gone down that well if well-meaning Western labor activists had their way. I do think that fundamental worker safety must be ensured - companies certainly have proven that they can't be trusted to do that on their own, but enforcing someone's "right" to use a cell phone while working? Really?

Zarkonnen 17y ago
I think the big question is if sweatshop labour still does do this. AFAIK most of this work is now done via sub-sub-subcontractors and goes on in special economic zones. Workers are usually employed for the short term and the work may randomly migrate to a SEZ in a different country to take advantage of "tax holidays", periods of no tax for when a company first sets up in a SEZ. There are no permanent factories or permanent jobs. Wages don't rise because it's easy to just go to some other place where people are desperate for work, literally shipping the workshop to the new location. So what ends up happening is that the workers never work at the same thing for long enough to acquire skills or wage rises and that they don't make enough money for a proper education. And the assembly lines are so ephemeral and set apart from normal society that no infrastructure or know-how ever accumulates in the country. So this ain't your parents' kind of sweatshop. Literally. (Note that I'm talking about the kind of sweatshops that assemble consumer goods in general here, not specifically the one in the article. I have no specific insight about that one, but this is the general trend - this is where the west gets its clothes and gadgets from.)
- wdewind 17y ago
  At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out. You can be disgruntled with Apple because Chinese workers got hurt making ipods, but the honest truth is that as long as there are people selling cheap labor there will be people buying.
  - Zarkonnen 17y ago
    > At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out. Yes, but this in no way absolves us. You don't have to buy just because someone's offering. > Apple should under no circumstances be held accountable for China's inability (or unwillingness) to regulate its economy. In your example, Apple should absolutely be held accountable. If I buy goods I know are stolen, I'm committing a crime. So why shouldn't a company be accountable for buying goods that it knows were made through exploitation?

DrJokepu 17y ago

When I was studying for my first degree (in mechanical engineering) I had to do a one month long internship as a factory worker after my first year (in an EU country). It was truly an eye opener experience, both in terms of understanding how industrial production looks like from below, experiencing the life of a blue collar worker and as a motivation to take my studies seriously (to avoid having to have a job like that) as well. I think short "slave work" internships for first year students should be more common.

rapind 17y ago

Exactly, but more like News at never. Our ratings votes dictate we rarely see a piece on slave labour and sweatshops. I did find the article pretty sensationalist. The sexual harassment issues are believable though and weren't picked up on in these comments.