5 ms·

$132 a month? Talk about slave labor... Makes me feel a little bit dirty about owning an iPhone.

andrewf 16y ago
Since these workers don't pay for food, clothing, accommodation, or anything else in US dollars, it's not reasonable to look at their wage in US dollars. They're paid in local currency, and the result of multiplying that by the conversion rate to US dollars says a lot about the terms of trade between China and the US, and very little about the buying power this money gives a local worker.
- mahmud 16y ago
  $132RMB ~= 900RMB. It is, indeed, slave wage. The workers are charged for their meals from their salaries, though they buy a lunch card once a month. To put things in perspective: a two course meal in Shenzhen at a cheap Chinese restaurant is $20RMB/person. A McDonald's meal roughly 50RMB. A metro ride is 10RMB. A train ride within Guangzhou ~50RMB, a neighboring province +120RMB. A pirated DVD is 10RMB. One hour of internet at a netcafe is 7RMB. A bottle of Tsingtao is 10RMB. A pack of cigarettes is 10RMB. A 10 minute cab ride is 20RMB. A Chinese teenager can expect to spend 80RMB on a weekend, doing nothing but taking the train to visit friends, having dinner and two pints of beer and a pack of cigarettes. 26% of their weekly income for 2-3 hours of R&R. For comparison, an American teenager with a full time job, making minimum wage at $7.25 earns $7.25x8x5 = $290/wk. Dinner + beer + bus + cigs + movie ~= 10 + 6 + 8 + 4 + 10 = $38. Or only 13% of their weekly income on R&R, half of what a Chinese boy or girl spends, and I threw in a free movie experience at the cinema, something that would break any Chinese teen's budget.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Thanks that was far more enlightening than the usual translated it directly into USD. Still to fully compare the wage, how was it before the teen had the ability to work there? What kind of wage would he then be looking at?
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      So if I start a business somewhere that people are starving to death it's ok to abuse the labor because... well now they're abused but they were going to die?
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        What does "abuse" mean? Does "abuse" mean cheating your workers? Or does it simply mean paying them less money than you would accept to do a job you wouldn't want to do? If the latter, what makes your utility function correct, and the workers utility function incorrect? I.e., what right do you have to tell them you know better than them, and that they can't take a job they prefer to other available options?
        loewenskind 16y ago
        If you find a woman who is starving to death and you offer here one hamburger to perform sexual services for you did you abuse her? But why? She would have starved to death otherwise right? It is abuse because we take advantage of people who have no other options to get them to trade every waking moment of their life away for their survival. There is no moral ambiguity here. Why do you feel the need to justify it? It's not like I'm judging you personally. I'm profiting from exactly the same system and am not doing anything to change that fact.
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        No, your example isn't abuse. It's undesirable - I'd certainly like it if no one were starving to death, but the guy improving her situation is not the problem.
        loewenskind 16y ago
        Wow, a man forcing a woman to prostitute herself for the sake of her survival and that of her family is improving her situation? I'm afraid your Dogmatism is showing...
  - Retric 16y ago
    I agree with what you’re saying, but you still need to compare that to abject poverty which works out to around 1$ / day. 132$ / month = 4.33$ per day which is more than four times what many people live off of. Granted, for that area it's about the subsistence level, but add in overtime and these people do get spending money. In that situation some people will be saving 30-50% of their income which represents a huge amount of leverage. Yes, it sucks on levels that we are not really aware of, but those jobs hand poor people leverage and assuming a functioning society with minimal corruption etc over a few years many of those people will move on to much better places. Overtime: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/the-fate-of-a-generation-of-workers-foxconn-undercover-fully-tr/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/the-fate-of-a-generation-... Leverage: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-raising-wages-by-about-20-percent-as-previously-planned/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-raising-wages-by-...
    - jhancock 16y ago
      So far there's not much to move on to. The only leverage they have is work slowdowns and strikes as their product line skills are of value. Guangzhou isn't a place I would be comfortable leading even a passive employee rebellion. Hopefully, you would simply be carried away by security. If you gained traction and kept coming back for more, well...who knows. The root problem here is equity distribution by the owners of these factories and the buyers have little to no concern about who's pockets their money is going into. The U.S. has terrible equity distribution and we look real good in comparison to China. The bulk of the Chinese are tired of this. They were promised a strong middle class and it hasn't happened yet.
      - Retric 16y ago
        That's not the type of leverage I was talking about. They can leverage skills they learned on the job to get more pay. Either because their current company is willing to pay more or they can move on to another company that knows the value of a trained workforce. They can leverage their income to do all sorts of things. A simple rice cooker can save time, or you save up for 2 years and they can get 6+ months of living expenses and or start their own company. Or use simple compound interest to retire comfortably with minimal risk. PS: While collective negotiation may not amount to much in that part of the world, getting enough capital together from 10+ workers to start a competing company is very possible.
- Maro 16y ago
  Ha! Suppose they want to buy an... iPad in their local Apple store. You can bet your ass it's not going to be cheaper than in the US. In other words, how would you feel if you worked in an Apple factory, producing iPads at a low cost, but to purchase it costs 3x your monthly salary.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    They are not even allowed to buy their own products. I gave a free camera to one of the kids who worked an electronics factory. He recognized me months later, while he was waiting tables at the Railway Hotel Restaurant in Shenzhen. I took out a late model camera that they just produced and told him it was a free sample and he can take it. He told me to keep it with me until the Chinese New Year, or it would be confiscated from him as stolen property :-( That night he went to the mall in Lou Hu and bought me a photo album as a gift. Must have cost him a day's salary, but the Chinese are too proud to take free gifts and usually try to pay it in kind ASAP. I still have the photo album; it has butterflies and unicorns, but I like it.
  - erikstarck 16y ago
    Well, there's always the iPed: http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/06/01/apple-ipad-vs-china-iped-apad-which-one-is-better/ http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/06/01/apple-ipad-vs-chin... I don't think this is much different from working in a luxury car factory building cars you can probably never afford. Wealth is relative. You also have to remember the tremendous growth China has been ging through the last couple of decades. People living there must have got used to each year being a lot better than last year. So maybe that iPad doesn't look too far off after all for a factory worker.
    - alxp 16y ago
      Henry Ford paying his workers enough to buy his own products transformed an entire nation. Foxcon and Apple's profits are big enough that they could actively try and raise the standard of living of their own employees instead of joining the race to the bottom. Shareholders will need to be mollified but maybe Apple could be on the right side of history if something big is going to change in China's worker relations in the coming years.
Andys 16y ago
Its not just iPhones: almost every piece of electronics is now made in Taiwan by this "almost slave labour", including laptops, desktops, and the servers that run your favourite cloud computing provider. And it its not even for the soldering, the machines have done that for some time; its just cheaper to pay humans to screw together the components into case than to build a machine to do that.
- confuzatron 16y ago
  China surely. Taiwan was the 'almost slave labour' go-to place decades ago; now it's developed. That's the evils of globalisation for ya.
metamemetics 16y ago
Would your prefer that they starve in unseen rural poverty instead? Poverty is bad but it comes in different degrees and depressing factory work is not the worst one.
- jhancock 16y ago
  This is very poor rational to support this level of usury. There are two components at hand: equity and wages. Employee equity could be increased (much better distribution) and most likely would have only positive benefits. If wages were to increase, how does this destroy international trade? Certainly, wages could be increased by some amount and the main effect would be less goods sold at a higher price with a net at similar levels as today. There are some arguments to be made for how high the wage level can raise in what period of time. But up it should go.
- RuadhanMc 16y ago
  I would actually just prefer it if they were paid more. Apple isn't exactly strapped for cash...
  - metamemetics 16y ago
    I would rather businesses spent resources raising the starving into poverty than raising those in poverty to western levels.
loewenskind 16y ago
Owning an iPhone? Surely you don't believe Apple is the only company using modern day slave labor? Do a little investigating into pretty much everything you own and everything that made those things possible. Our standard of living would disapear instantly if we lost this slave labor. It certainly seems unambiguously morally wrong (despite apologists suggesting otherwise) but I can't imagine any other way our current global economy could run. Want to pay them a proper wage? Now the western middle class is poor and the poor live in boxes. Raise our salaries then? Oops, back where we started. As bad as what we're doing is, I don't see any alternatives in the current system.
- jhancock 16y ago
  hmmm...so how did the U.S. manage prior to China joining the WTO in 2000? I remember 1999 quite well and don't recall significant suffering of the U.S. middle class.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    I'm not sure what you're saying here. I recall a scandal with Walmart buying Chinese product and putting "Made in America" on it back prior to '97. And China isn't/hasn't been the only place we get/gotten slave labor. Are you seriously trying to suggest that the people who produce all the cheap goods we buy are paid a good wage? EDIT: Initially misunderstood the comment. Still not sure I get it.
- RuadhanMc 16y ago
  You can't see any alternatives to the current system? Really?
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    Not to the current global system. Feel free to suggest one.

Since these workers don't pay for food, clothing, accommodation, or anything else in US dollars, it's not reasonable to look at their wage in US dollars. They're paid in local currency, and the result of multiplying that by the conversion rate to US dollars says a lot about the terms of trade between China and the US, and very little about the buying power this money gives a local worker.

mahmud 16y ago
$132RMB ~= 900RMB. It is, indeed, slave wage. The workers are charged for their meals from their salaries, though they buy a lunch card once a month. To put things in perspective: a two course meal in Shenzhen at a cheap Chinese restaurant is $20RMB/person. A McDonald's meal roughly 50RMB. A metro ride is 10RMB. A train ride within Guangzhou ~50RMB, a neighboring province +120RMB. A pirated DVD is 10RMB. One hour of internet at a netcafe is 7RMB. A bottle of Tsingtao is 10RMB. A pack of cigarettes is 10RMB. A 10 minute cab ride is 20RMB. A Chinese teenager can expect to spend 80RMB on a weekend, doing nothing but taking the train to visit friends, having dinner and two pints of beer and a pack of cigarettes. 26% of their weekly income for 2-3 hours of R&R. For comparison, an American teenager with a full time job, making minimum wage at $7.25 earns $7.25x8x5 = $290/wk. Dinner + beer + bus + cigs + movie ~= 10 + 6 + 8 + 4 + 10 = $38. Or only 13% of their weekly income on R&R, half of what a Chinese boy or girl spends, and I threw in a free movie experience at the cinema, something that would break any Chinese teen's budget.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Thanks that was far more enlightening than the usual translated it directly into USD. Still to fully compare the wage, how was it before the teen had the ability to work there? What kind of wage would he then be looking at?
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    So if I start a business somewhere that people are starving to death it's ok to abuse the labor because... well now they're abused but they were going to die?
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      What does "abuse" mean? Does "abuse" mean cheating your workers? Or does it simply mean paying them less money than you would accept to do a job you wouldn't want to do? If the latter, what makes your utility function correct, and the workers utility function incorrect? I.e., what right do you have to tell them you know better than them, and that they can't take a job they prefer to other available options?
      - loewenskind 16y ago
        If you find a woman who is starving to death and you offer here one hamburger to perform sexual services for you did you abuse her? But why? She would have starved to death otherwise right? It is abuse because we take advantage of people who have no other options to get them to trade every waking moment of their life away for their survival. There is no moral ambiguity here. Why do you feel the need to justify it? It's not like I'm judging you personally. I'm profiting from exactly the same system and am not doing anything to change that fact.
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        No, your example isn't abuse. It's undesirable - I'd certainly like it if no one were starving to death, but the guy improving her situation is not the problem.
        loewenskind 16y ago
        Wow, a man forcing a woman to prostitute herself for the sake of her survival and that of her family is improving her situation? I'm afraid your Dogmatism is showing...
- Retric 16y ago
  I agree with what you’re saying, but you still need to compare that to abject poverty which works out to around 1$ / day. 132$ / month = 4.33$ per day which is more than four times what many people live off of. Granted, for that area it's about the subsistence level, but add in overtime and these people do get spending money. In that situation some people will be saving 30-50% of their income which represents a huge amount of leverage. Yes, it sucks on levels that we are not really aware of, but those jobs hand poor people leverage and assuming a functioning society with minimal corruption etc over a few years many of those people will move on to much better places. Overtime: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/the-fate-of-a-generation-of-workers-foxconn-undercover-fully-tr/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/the-fate-of-a-generation-... Leverage: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-raising-wages-by-about-20-percent-as-previously-planned/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-raising-wages-by-...
  - jhancock 16y ago
    So far there's not much to move on to. The only leverage they have is work slowdowns and strikes as their product line skills are of value. Guangzhou isn't a place I would be comfortable leading even a passive employee rebellion. Hopefully, you would simply be carried away by security. If you gained traction and kept coming back for more, well...who knows. The root problem here is equity distribution by the owners of these factories and the buyers have little to no concern about who's pockets their money is going into. The U.S. has terrible equity distribution and we look real good in comparison to China. The bulk of the Chinese are tired of this. They were promised a strong middle class and it hasn't happened yet.
    - Retric 16y ago
      That's not the type of leverage I was talking about. They can leverage skills they learned on the job to get more pay. Either because their current company is willing to pay more or they can move on to another company that knows the value of a trained workforce. They can leverage their income to do all sorts of things. A simple rice cooker can save time, or you save up for 2 years and they can get 6+ months of living expenses and or start their own company. Or use simple compound interest to retire comfortably with minimal risk. PS: While collective negotiation may not amount to much in that part of the world, getting enough capital together from 10+ workers to start a competing company is very possible.
Maro 16y ago
Ha! Suppose they want to buy an... iPad in their local Apple store. You can bet your ass it's not going to be cheaper than in the US. In other words, how would you feel if you worked in an Apple factory, producing iPads at a low cost, but to purchase it costs 3x your monthly salary.
- mahmud 16y ago
  They are not even allowed to buy their own products. I gave a free camera to one of the kids who worked an electronics factory. He recognized me months later, while he was waiting tables at the Railway Hotel Restaurant in Shenzhen. I took out a late model camera that they just produced and told him it was a free sample and he can take it. He told me to keep it with me until the Chinese New Year, or it would be confiscated from him as stolen property :-( That night he went to the mall in Lou Hu and bought me a photo album as a gift. Must have cost him a day's salary, but the Chinese are too proud to take free gifts and usually try to pay it in kind ASAP. I still have the photo album; it has butterflies and unicorns, but I like it.
- erikstarck 16y ago
  Well, there's always the iPed: http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/06/01/apple-ipad-vs-china-iped-apad-which-one-is-better/ http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/06/01/apple-ipad-vs-chin... I don't think this is much different from working in a luxury car factory building cars you can probably never afford. Wealth is relative. You also have to remember the tremendous growth China has been ging through the last couple of decades. People living there must have got used to each year being a lot better than last year. So maybe that iPad doesn't look too far off after all for a factory worker.
  - alxp 16y ago
    Henry Ford paying his workers enough to buy his own products transformed an entire nation. Foxcon and Apple's profits are big enough that they could actively try and raise the standard of living of their own employees instead of joining the race to the bottom. Shareholders will need to be mollified but maybe Apple could be on the right side of history if something big is going to change in China's worker relations in the coming years.

Andys 16y ago

Its not just iPhones: almost every piece of electronics is now made in Taiwan by this "almost slave labour", including laptops, desktops, and the servers that run your favourite cloud computing provider. And it its not even for the soldering, the machines have done that for some time; its just cheaper to pay humans to screw together the components into case than to build a machine to do that.

confuzatron 16y ago
China surely. Taiwan was the 'almost slave labour' go-to place decades ago; now it's developed. That's the evils of globalisation for ya.

metamemetics 16y ago

Would your prefer that they starve in unseen rural poverty instead? Poverty is bad but it comes in different degrees and depressing factory work is not the worst one.

jhancock 16y ago
This is very poor rational to support this level of usury. There are two components at hand: equity and wages. Employee equity could be increased (much better distribution) and most likely would have only positive benefits. If wages were to increase, how does this destroy international trade? Certainly, wages could be increased by some amount and the main effect would be less goods sold at a higher price with a net at similar levels as today. There are some arguments to be made for how high the wage level can raise in what period of time. But up it should go.
RuadhanMc 16y ago
I would actually just prefer it if they were paid more. Apple isn't exactly strapped for cash...
- metamemetics 16y ago
  I would rather businesses spent resources raising the starving into poverty than raising those in poverty to western levels.

loewenskind 16y ago

Owning an iPhone? Surely you don't believe Apple is the only company using modern day slave labor? Do a little investigating into pretty much everything you own and everything that made those things possible. Our standard of living would disapear instantly if we lost this slave labor. It certainly seems unambiguously morally wrong (despite apologists suggesting otherwise) but I can't imagine any other way our current global economy could run. Want to pay them a proper wage? Now the western middle class is poor and the poor live in boxes. Raise our salaries then? Oops, back where we started. As bad as what we're doing is, I don't see any alternatives in the current system.

jhancock 16y ago
hmmm...so how did the U.S. manage prior to China joining the WTO in 2000? I remember 1999 quite well and don't recall significant suffering of the U.S. middle class.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying here. I recall a scandal with Walmart buying Chinese product and putting "Made in America" on it back prior to '97. And China isn't/hasn't been the only place we get/gotten slave labor. Are you seriously trying to suggest that the people who produce all the cheap goods we buy are paid a good wage? EDIT: Initially misunderstood the comment. Still not sure I get it.
RuadhanMc 16y ago
You can't see any alternatives to the current system? Really?
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Not to the current global system. Feel free to suggest one.