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Violence breaks out at Wistron Corp’s iPhone manufacturing plant near Bengaluru
- tomc1985 6y agoWonder what's cheaper... picking up all the damage from this, or paying your workers what you owe them?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smabie 6y agoEV of shorting employees money = P(employees revolt and break things|wage cuts) * mean cost of damage + money saved thru wage cuts Obviously simplified, but it could have very well been worth it. Especially factoring in insurance and other things.
- dehrmann 6y agoDepends how Apple feels about this. They want a reliable supplier who's not in the news for unpaid wages.
- bigbubba 6y agoThe flipped cars all lined up next to each other on their sides is impressive work!
- herman_toothrot 6y agoWas this in the video? I saw a row of cars with windows smashed, and I saw a golf cart tipped on its side... but no flipped cars.
- bigbubba 6y agoAt about 0:12 https://mobile.twitter.com/TOIBengaluru/status/1337615298761912321 https://mobile.twitter.com/TOIBengaluru/status/1337615298761...
- selimthegrim 6y agor/NewOrleans should take note
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoThis is a quote from the article: > “While an engineering graduate was promised Rs 21,000 per month, his/her salary had reduced to Rs 16,000 and, subsequently, to Rs 12,000 in the recent months. Non-engineering graduates monthly salary had reduced to Rs 8,000. The salary amount being credited to our accounts have been reducing and it was frustrating to see this,” an employee alleged. Not being familiar with Indian pay practices, just wondering what the company thought the outcome would be after trying this? That nobody would notice?? That they'd just think "oh well, that's OK, company must be short this week"?? Because pretty much in any sizable American company employees would just stop working if they didn't get paid.
- smabie 6y agoI'm not sure about the last part. I get you could cut most employee salaries by 10% or more at a big corp and not get that many immediate resignations. Of course there would be long-term ramifications, but that's a far cry from everyone quitting en masse.
- Pfhreak 6y ago21k to 12k is much more than a ten percent drop.
- desdiv 6y agoWhat you are talking about is a salary renegotiation, i.e. the employer offering the employee a new contract at a lower salary for work to be performed in the future. What had alleged happened in the story is salary theft, i.e. the employer stealing part of the employee's remuneration for work already performed in the past. I can't speak to India's legal system, but if this had happened in the US then it would be a federal crime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
- Pfhreak 6y agoI'm really curious if the management/owners also took a fifty percent cut in comp.
- cwwc 6y ago
- bzb6 6y ago“topsy-turvy” sounds funny. I had never heard it.
- CharlesW 6y agoIt's not common in professional writing but it's use goes back quite some time, and it's a fun example of reduplication. https://www.wise-geek.com/what-are-the-origins-of-the-phrase-topsy-turvy.htm https://www.wise-geek.com/what-are-the-origins-of-the-phrase...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- todd8 6y agoIt’s an older term; I’ve always liked it because of the imagery it invokes. It’s use dates back to at least 1528. The word terve used to mean turn upside down in English.
- h0l0cube 6y agoNot long ago HN was gushing over how Apple's moves to India and globalization at large was 'uplifting poorer economies'. You can't have uplift the poor without human rights in tandem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797463
- roenxi 6y agoThe United States, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the history of nations, occasionally has riots and certainly has labour scandals. There are occasional instances of human rights abuse. It can simultaneously be true that globilisation is uplifting poorer economies and also that there is violence breaking out near Bengaluru. Asia has proven to have a repeatable formula for getting wealthy. Working hard & cheaply is a key step.
- h0l0cube 6y agoYeah, but it's not some axiom that globalization uplifts the human rights of poorest of the world. As long as there's a commercial benefit to suppressing human rights, it will be happening somewhere. The only way out of it is global interest of citizens (and hence political motivation, and commercial interest) to uplift human rights.
- lwansbrough 6y agoUnionization is a valid response to oppressive labour policies. Capitalism can coexist with worker rights in a balance. Both employers and unions engage in rent-seeking so it’s a fair trade-off. Globalization doesn’t try to uplift human rights. It only seeks to enrich through free trade. Turns out, enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses. Or at the very least, there’s enough of a correlation that it’s worth repeating.
- h0l0cube 6y ago> enriching people is fairly effective at eliminating human rights abuses By what mechanism does it do that? Everyone who is motivated to make profits has incentive to pay the least possible on payroll and taxation. Human rights empower people to demand higher wages, and any government-sourced provision of quality of life increase taxation. People who's talents align with in-demand skills may have some leverage to increase their wealth and provide a better life for themselves, but without government intervention, that means little for everyone else. Edit: Do agree about unionization - but once again, the right to start or join a union is something that must be enforced by government policy, and voters need to care about human rights for that to occur.
- cinquemb 6y agoCash flow problems showing up all over supply chains around the world…
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cs702 6y agoYikes. The company seems to be at fault here, treating employees very (very!) poorly. Ugly stuff. What worries me about sensationalist media coverage of a story like this one, in the middle of a pandemic-induced global economic slowdown, is that the media coverage itself could motivate other, copycat episodes of employee violence.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> What worries me about sensationalist media coverage of a story like this one, in the middle of a pandemic-induced global economic slowdown, is that the media coverage itself could motivate other, copycat episodes of employee violence. Hopefully it'll scare employers into treating their employees better, or risk labor conflict like this.
- Pfhreak 6y agoYour concern here is, "what worries me here is what if exploited workers stood up for themselves?" Not the slowing global economy. Not the exploitation of thousands of workers. Not the realization that the products we rely on are built with exploitative practices. But, "what if the exploited people fight back?"
- codeisawesome 6y agoThe headline buries the lede.
- person_of_color 6y agoNot a good look for India. Have they heard of unions?
- Pfhreak 6y agoYour statement is ambiguous. I assume you mean the exploitation of these workers (by continuing to reduce their wages) is not a good look?
- person_of_color 6y agoIn a first world country, the first port of call is not violence...
- bigbubba 6y agoWhen people have no faith in the system, they take matters into their own hands. People are morally entitled to justice so if the only justice available is extrajudicial, people have a moral right to pursue that.
- person_of_color 6y agoSo you think it's alright to smash buildings to protest illegal police brutality?
- bigbubba 6y agoIn principle yes; if there is no effective remedy against an abusive government other than violence, then violence against that government is morally justifiable. An uncontroversial example of this might be Polish guerillas assassinating German officers during WWII.
- Pfhreak 6y agoI'm not sure you are describing the situation here. What other things did these workers try? What other avenues were available to them? (Also, destroying corporate property is not violence.)
- Pfhreak 6y agoThere's an interesting parallel to the Luddites here, who smashed looms. The Luddites were not, as is commonly misunderstood, anti technology. They were a well trained workforce who disagreed with the idea that improvements in technology should reduce wages. When the new looms came in, factories could produce the same goods with unskilled labor, and the owners could pocket the difference in wages. The Luddites believed that the factory owners should still split profits with the workers and pay a skilled wage while getting the increased output the new looms could provide.
- steve_b 6y agoWho paid for the new looms?
- Pfhreak 6y agoDepends on your model of capital flow. One reasonable answer would be the factory owners or investors. Another reasonable answer is that the workers did, because their work led enabled the factory to succeed.
- jeffalyanak 6y agoWe've all paid dearly.
- lucian1900 6y agoThe workers whose labour generated the value the looms were paid for with. To some extent, also the workers that put together the looms while only being paid a fraction of the value they created.
- whimsicalism 6y agoWho founded the original 13 colonies? Is Britain still justly entitled to ownership over all that property?
- johnchristopher 6y agoThe ones not getting maimed on the assembly line.
- neltnerb 6y agoProperty Damage is not violence, it is vandalism. Using the wrong word sends a totally different and wrong message, the things being damaged are just stuff. Stuff probably worth less than the amount of salary they are owed. The bias in this story towards equating property damage and physical violence is most terrifying in that the authors seem to legitimately not even notice it.
- crowf 6y agoSo that explains why articles covering BLM protests with burning stores and looting in the background were called "peaceful". BTW, I don't know where you get you definition, but I consider people violently smashing objects as violence.
- sudosysgen 6y agoWell, except from begging the question when saying that violently smashing object is violence, at least the WHO disagrees, for which violence is "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.", where property damage doesn't qualify as violence. Also, in judicial systems where the distinction exists, vandalism is generally considered a non-violent crime.
- seibelj 6y agoIf you burn down a city, even if not one person is hurt, I think a high majority of people would consider it violent - if only because property damage is often a signal of malevolent intent.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThere is an important distinction between malevolent intent, even malevolence, and violence. In the event that a city was destroyed without physically or psychologically hurting anyone even indirectly, which would mean material restitution, and as long as the intent clearly wasn't to threaten human harm, I don't know that it would be considered violent. Take this scenario, for example. Would hacking a factory to damage some sensors be violent? Of course not. If you think that some cases of property damage are indeed violence, you'd have to find a reason to draw the line, and I'm not sure you can without referring to human harm.
- sa111 6y agoThis would of course never happen in China, or if it did you would never hear of it - everything would be censored and protestors will be forcibly reeducated.
- whimsicalism 6y agoThere is actually a history of wildcat labor action in China.
- fallingfrog 6y agoThis is the kind of thing unions were invented for.
- jagannathtech 6y agoNot very surprising. Communist labour unions are very powerful in India. Most of them are backed by the communist parties who have CCP patronage.