6 ms·

That Apple number does not include the slave wages of Foxconn workers, other outsourced labor or contractors for which Apple avoids paying benefits.

jhpankow 8y ago
Strategies far from unique to Apple.
askafriend 8y ago
Ok, I'll bite. Care to name a hardware company that doesn't use parts from Foxconn?
- int0x80 8y ago
  That doesn't make it less true.
  - askafriend 8y ago
    Why are you assuming OP’s statement is true? It’s demonstrably false especially relative to other employers in the region. Foxconn standards are actually quite high relative to other manufacturers. People there want to work at Foxconn. The “slavery” rhetoric is entirely baseless.
    - int0x80 8y ago
      It may be false by other means, but the fact that other orgs do the same is irrelevant.
      - askafriend 8y ago
        Fair, I concede that. I still maintain that OP's statement contributed nothing of value to the discussion.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Actually, it does, and that's why folks are arguing for comparing profit instead of revenue per employee. As others in this thread have pointed out, if you utilize tons of contractors, your revenue per employee may look huge, but your profit per employee will go down because you still have to pay all those people. Whether you use contractors or employees, it still comes out of your bottom line. Now, I assume what you are really arguing is that loads of Foxconn contractors should increase the denominator in the "per employee" part of the equation. But that's why profit is a better metric, because if you look at profit per employee of Foxconn, you'd see it is much, much lower than Apple.
- darkmighty 8y ago
  Tbf, those are trivially not mathematically equivalent (even taking profit instead of revenue). Suppose each contracted worker cost $1/yr in salaries, and there were 1000 contractors/1000 in-house employees. Then without including contractors, the profit per employee is (X-1000)/1000 ~ X/1000, while including it is (X-1000)/2000 ~ X/2000, much lower. Including or not contractors does have a potentially large difference.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    The trick here is that contractors aren't employees, so they only affect these metrics by reducing profit.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    They are mathematically equivalent in the sense that they are both equally worthless measurements for the same reason. In both cases, contractors contribute the the numerator without contributing to the denominator. Using profit seems slightly better (theoretically, it gauges how effective management is at converting contractor effort into profit). But we all know that you can't compare the term "profits" between industries, whereas, revenue is consistent no matter what your business is.
- tjr225 8y ago
  Why should I believe that the statistic does include foxconn workers? I'm asking this sincerely.
icelancer 8y ago
Ooh, now make the same argument for Valero and all the externalities that come with the petrol market!
fireattack 8y ago
The Foxconn manufacturing factories in China are NOT sweatshops, not even close. My hometown (Zhengzhou) has one of its biggest factory, and for people who have no higher education (like straight out of highschool), it's a super competitive job. People literally bribe to get in. Sure, it's still a soul-draining blue collar job, but they follow laws (for an enterprise in Foxconn's scale, they are strictly supervised by the government and the media. The smaller companies on the other hand, are actually more likely to be sweatshops), they follow schedules, provide food and dorms, and a good enough salary by local's standard of living. What else do you expect for a low-skill entry-level jobs, in a developing country? Calling hard-working people in developing country (my homeland) "slaves" just because they don't get paid the same as Americans is one of the most hypocritical thing I am really tired to hear on Western forums.
- zamalek 8y ago
  McDonald's for McDonald's I was paid better in South Africa than I am in America for the same job in the same company. I earn 3 times more dollar-for-dollar, a competitive rate for the region I'm now in. South Africa is regarded in an honest way as cheap labour (but in this case: highly skilled) but those employees live in the top percentage of upper-middle class for the region. America is extremely expensive to live in, so "westerners" don't really have a grasp of just how far a single USD goes elsewhere in the world.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    America is expensive because the quality of life is higher than in China or USA. Some parts of Europe are higher. There is a very strong correlation between quality of life and cost of living.
- pywh 8y ago
  Spent some time working in Zhengzhou back in 2010/11, Foxconn paid significantly better (3x in some positions) than other factories. Parent comment is spot-on re: Foxconn job competitiveness. A lot of the locals I got to know resented Western, media-driven interference in their jobs, they wanted to work longer hours, make more money, etc. They also resented being presented as helpless indentured servants. A lot of them were (are?) proud of their job. Not applauding the labor practices, just an additional anecdata-point. [Edited for: data -> anecdata]

jhpankow 8y ago

Strategies far from unique to Apple.

askafriend 8y ago

Ok, I'll bite. Care to name a hardware company that doesn't use parts from Foxconn?

int0x80 8y ago
That doesn't make it less true.
- askafriend 8y ago
  Why are you assuming OP’s statement is true? It’s demonstrably false especially relative to other employers in the region. Foxconn standards are actually quite high relative to other manufacturers. People there want to work at Foxconn. The “slavery” rhetoric is entirely baseless.
  - int0x80 8y ago
    It may be false by other means, but the fact that other orgs do the same is irrelevant.
    - askafriend 8y ago
      Fair, I concede that. I still maintain that OP's statement contributed nothing of value to the discussion.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Actually, it does, and that's why folks are arguing for comparing profit instead of revenue per employee. As others in this thread have pointed out, if you utilize tons of contractors, your revenue per employee may look huge, but your profit per employee will go down because you still have to pay all those people. Whether you use contractors or employees, it still comes out of your bottom line. Now, I assume what you are really arguing is that loads of Foxconn contractors should increase the denominator in the "per employee" part of the equation. But that's why profit is a better metric, because if you look at profit per employee of Foxconn, you'd see it is much, much lower than Apple.

darkmighty 8y ago
Tbf, those are trivially not mathematically equivalent (even taking profit instead of revenue). Suppose each contracted worker cost $1/yr in salaries, and there were 1000 contractors/1000 in-house employees. Then without including contractors, the profit per employee is (X-1000)/1000 ~ X/1000, while including it is (X-1000)/2000 ~ X/2000, much lower. Including or not contractors does have a potentially large difference.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  The trick here is that contractors aren't employees, so they only affect these metrics by reducing profit.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  They are mathematically equivalent in the sense that they are both equally worthless measurements for the same reason. In both cases, contractors contribute the the numerator without contributing to the denominator. Using profit seems slightly better (theoretically, it gauges how effective management is at converting contractor effort into profit). But we all know that you can't compare the term "profits" between industries, whereas, revenue is consistent no matter what your business is.
tjr225 8y ago
Why should I believe that the statistic does include foxconn workers? I'm asking this sincerely.

icelancer 8y ago

Ooh, now make the same argument for Valero and all the externalities that come with the petrol market!

fireattack 8y ago

The Foxconn manufacturing factories in China are NOT sweatshops, not even close. My hometown (Zhengzhou) has one of its biggest factory, and for people who have no higher education (like straight out of highschool), it's a super competitive job. People literally bribe to get in. Sure, it's still a soul-draining blue collar job, but they follow laws (for an enterprise in Foxconn's scale, they are strictly supervised by the government and the media. The smaller companies on the other hand, are actually more likely to be sweatshops), they follow schedules, provide food and dorms, and a good enough salary by local's standard of living. What else do you expect for a low-skill entry-level jobs, in a developing country? Calling hard-working people in developing country (my homeland) "slaves" just because they don't get paid the same as Americans is one of the most hypocritical thing I am really tired to hear on Western forums.

zamalek 8y ago
McDonald's for McDonald's I was paid better in South Africa than I am in America for the same job in the same company. I earn 3 times more dollar-for-dollar, a competitive rate for the region I'm now in. South Africa is regarded in an honest way as cheap labour (but in this case: highly skilled) but those employees live in the top percentage of upper-middle class for the region. America is extremely expensive to live in, so "westerners" don't really have a grasp of just how far a single USD goes elsewhere in the world.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  America is expensive because the quality of life is higher than in China or USA. Some parts of Europe are higher. There is a very strong correlation between quality of life and cost of living.
pywh 8y ago
Spent some time working in Zhengzhou back in 2010/11, Foxconn paid significantly better (3x in some positions) than other factories. Parent comment is spot-on re: Foxconn job competitiveness. A lot of the locals I got to know resented Western, media-driven interference in their jobs, they wanted to work longer hours, make more money, etc. They also resented being presented as helpless indentured servants. A lot of them were (are?) proud of their job. Not applauding the labor practices, just an additional anecdata-point. [Edited for: data -> anecdata]