4 ms·
Ever heard of company towns?
by FpUser 4y ago
Ever heard of company towns?
- SkyMarshal 4y agoYes, but not ones where you're fenced in with barbed wire and can't leave. I thought the concept of company towns was more financial and economic slavery, eg your company gives you a mortgage to a buy a house from the company, all near work so you can work long hours, and you're essentially an indentured servant. But this is actual slavery, these people are literally locked in and can't leave except by crawling over barbed wire fences.
- xuki 4y agoThey can’t leave because of COVID restrictions not because of Apple.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoWas that barbed wire fence constructed recently just for COVID lockdowns, or has it been there the whole time?
- cjbgkagh 4y agoThe story I heard was that it was to stop people coming in who wanted to work there. From the video I saw the barbed wire was tilted outwards.
- vbezhenar 4y agoI live in a multi-apartment house. When COVID started, one of tenants was found COVID-positive. Our entire house was locked by authorities for two weeks. It was forbidden to leave it, there was car with policeman and barricades. The only way to get food was to order it with online delivery. It was so crazy. In other cities authorities literally welded doors and cut small windows: https://newtimes.kz/storage/news/news/2020/04/05/5e8973f787be4313162591.jpg https://newtimes.kz/storage/news/news/2020/04/05/5e8973f787b... Thankfully this hysteria did not last long.
- expensive_news 4y agoWhere do you live? That sounds absolutely insane.
- derefr 4y agoA closer analogy would be to an oilfield "man camp" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGg57r9wK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGg57r9wK0) — temporary housing for a bunch of people who have signed up to do a few months' stint of work in a job that requires them to be in the middle of nowhere to do that job (because that's inherent to the nature of the job.) They're a lot like military encampments, actually. The real question is why these factories are built in the middle of nowhere. There's no clear need for it; no reason they couldn't just be built in cities. They're not heavy industrial polluters or anything that would make people not want them in city limits.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoPrice of the land might be cheaper? Also more space for expansion.
- foobarian 4y agoOr, makes it easier to convince workers to live on-prem, which leads to them working longer hours. 9-9-6!
- baybal2 4y ago[dead]
- gzer0 4y ago
- dis-sys 4y agoI don't see any problem here as long as workers get freely to choose whether they want to live in factory dorms or in any other arrangements they can afford. Clearly such choice is available to them and there are numerous reports online that young workers are increasing choosing not to live in factory dorms. e.g. the following report talks about young female workers usually choose to move out of the factory dorm when they got boyfriends. https://www.163.com/dy/article/DQQLE6DM0524PO2V.html https://www.163.com/dy/article/DQQLE6DM0524PO2V.html I don't think anyone here has the rights to tell those workers where to live.
- atdrummond 4y agoThey do, actually, due to Hukou. There is not complete freedom of movement within China.
- dis-sys 4y agoOther than the annual university entrance exam and buying properties, Hukou is no longer enforced. The real difference only exists for tier-1 mega cities like Beijing and Shanghai, 97% Chinese don't live there.
- ricardobayes 4y agoSince you can't get married without buying real estate, then it is pretty much enforced.
- throwaway290 4y agoOf course they'd "choose" to move out as soon as they finally can, if they get on with a local who has residence. Otherwise the only alternative is more or less going home to their parents.
- 4y ago
- lmm 4y agoThose things that are generally recognised as a dark part of our history that should not be repeated?
- astrange 4y agoThe bad part of company towns was that they didn’t pay you in normally accepted currency. It’s not the part where they gave you housing. Japanese companies also own worker housing, sometimes even owning the CEO’s house (as a way of making his wages look lower). Some of them are also abusive, doesn’t mean they all are.
- ipaddr 4y agoThe bad parts were nothing was public. The police,the roads,schools or even laws.