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How Apple iPads are Manufactured At Foxconn Factory in China [video]
Reporter Rob Schmitz is the Bureau Chief of Marketplace in Shanghai. He is the person who discovered a large portion of Mike Daisey’s accounts about Apple’s Foxconn factories from China.
- lambada 15y agoI think this makes an interesting counter-point to the numerous articles that claim bad working conditions. I think really, this just goes to show how we need to remember the situation within China, rather than comparing Foxconn to a 'Western' factory. Yes the hours are long, and the pay is rather poor - but it is certainly one of the best places to work within China.
- fredley 15y agoI'm still skeptical. What's shown in this video seems ok, but it's impossible to know if this is representative or not. This is a tiny snapshot, and no doubt has been carefully orchestrated by Foxconn. See also: tourists' videos from North Korea.
- eitally 15y agoIt's representative of all the big electronics manufacturers. It is not representative of manufacturing in China as a whole, but it is wrong to conflate the high tech electronics industry with, say, the building supplies, food, or children's toys industries.
- mturmon 15y agoOr, paraphrasing my recollection of Tim Cook's remarks, "we're working to extend our inspections of factory conditions deeper into the supply chain." Probably if you chase down some of the components to the iPad you'd find much worse conditions than shown here. Not to mention the bags of concrete and hunks of rebar I get at Home Depot.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y agoI wish people would compare China today with what the USA was back when it was developing. Let's not forget the pollution, child labor, crushed limbs, dead horses in the streets of cities, raw sewage in the rivers, paving over an entire rivers, environmentally devastating dust bowl, massive pollution, world police attitude of the United States. China has Tibet, we have Native Americans. I've learned this: When you smell dog shit, before you go around blaming others for stepping in it, look under your own foot, because chances are you stepped in it too. I just wish all countries didn't have to go through this route. If only there was a way to skip the dirty development phase. Because after China, India, and the Middle East comes Africa's time to rise. And Africa is the size of China, US, India, and Europe combined. I don't think I want to be alive when dozens of African countries hit the peak of their dirty development.
- Tloewald 15y agoMeanwhile, The US is doing its best to regresss to those times. Frankly, the stories about conditions for workers in order fulfillment warehouses seem on par with the worst stories out of China (the workers are obviously paid more) http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/09/amazon-warehouse-heat-shipping http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/09/amazon-warehouse...
- xenophanes 15y agoThere's much worse going on in China that isn't exposed to Western eyes much, that's why Foxconn jobs are popular and desirable -- they are better than the alternatives.
- hessenwolf 15y agoThe rate of transition from sleeping in mudhuts to striking for maximum hours-per-day and longer holidays has dramatically shrunk for China and India, compared to Europe and the US. (it suddenly occurs to me that maximum hours-per-day and holiday-time hasn't even been reached in the US yet)
- hessenwolf 15y ago
- krschultz 15y agoA quarter million workers is pretty unfathomable to me. I'm an engineer at a company with over 6,000 manufacturing workers in one location and that seems enormous. The video mentioned $14 a day for the workers. In the US it's a lot closer to $20 an hour, or $160 a day. $146 a day difference, * 250,000 = $36.5 million a day difference in direct labor costs. That turns into a couple billion dollars a year. It's staggering.
- coob 15y agoI'm sure if you have to pay more for labour then expensive automation becomes a lot more worthwhile. You'd have fewer workers to pay more to.
- krschultz 15y agoCertainly true, I'm mostly marveling at the scale.
- woohoo 15y agoThey offer free housing and food (plus the tax structure is totally different etc.) so it isn't a direct comparison (but still a big difference).
- mturmon 15y agoEven the most minimal benefit structure in the US has got to outstrip free housing and food at Chinese rates. FICA employer contributions, state disability insurance, etc.
- woohoo 15y agoI'm sure it does. However don't assume housing is worth nothing. Right now housing in Shenzhen is more expensive than Hong Kong.
- rplnt 15y agoThis seems like a propaganda video for Apple (not Foxconn because no one in the west cares what Foxconn does). I'd like to believe it though...
- 83457 15y agoThis is actually done by public radio/media in the US. They have had a lot of coverage of the factories recently--probably because a radio reported negative information a couple months ago that turned out to be falsified.
- akamaka 15y agoThere's so much missing from this video, most obviously the metal polishing steps which saw the deadly explosion last year due to inadequate ventilation.
- huxley 15y agoApparently the milling and polishing process is getting regular external inspections: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223435/Apple_confirms_aluminum_dust_caused_Chinese_factory_explosions http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223435/Apple_confirm...
- semanticist 15y agoThe work and conditions shown in that video (although obviously not the pay) don't seem too different to IBM's factory in Greenock, Scotland in the late '90s/early '00s. The scale was smaller, since it was pre-Lenovo ThinkPads and Netfinity servers, not millions of iPads, but it had a surprisingly similar feel.