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4,000 Foxconn workers on strike over iPhone 5 quality control measures
- xk_id 14y agogood marketing for Apple :)
- meanJim 14y agoits getting pretty old though
- rabidsnail 14y agoWho is China Labor Watch and who are they funded by?
- radicaldreamer 14y agoA quick Google search yields: http://chinalaborwatch.org/upfile/20110706Annual.pdf http://chinalaborwatch.org/upfile/20110706Annual.pdf (list of large donors) + http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/OurPeople.html http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/OurPeople.html Seems like a fairly new, pretty standard 501(c)(3)
- davidandgoliath 14y agoNote: Anonymous donors are also allowed and aren't included on that list. Not saying anything is odd about it all. ;)
- norswap 14y agoFoxconn has multiple plants with more than 200k workers. 4k workers on strike must be a small enough thing for them.
- potatolicious 14y ago2% of your entire workforce being on strike is not insignificant - imagine if 2% of the US population suddenly took to the streets! This, followed by the riots at other Foxconn factories, labor action, and becoming the whipping boy of the Chinese government, local labor, and international rights groups. No, I think this whole labor business is a big friggin' deal for Foxconn right now.
- norswap 14y agoIn Belgium where I live, 10% of prison wardens and 50% of the public transportation sector go on strike at least thrice every year. Here at least it's not a big deal. Sad country, I know. I agree it's probably more significant in China, where they are not used to this kind of behaviour.
- africandawg 14y agoThat is very bad. I was always curious how life is in Europe (being the first world) but didn't think that's how the state of affairs would be. Is it because of unions?
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoIt's not "Europe", it's parts of it. France is particularly bad I hear, supposedly paralysed by unions. In the UK things are much better because unions lost a lot of their power in the 80s under Thatcher.
- blackjack160 14y agoUp to a rumored 450K workers per factory zone... 1.2M employees in total at last count... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786
- MichaelApproved 14y agoConsider that this is an assembly line. So 4k workers going on strike will prevent others in the assembly line from getting the parts they need to continue working. 4k on strike can easily trigger a large work stoppage.
- AlexMuir 14y agoHere's a crazy idea. A hedge fund puts a couple billion dollar short on Apple, and then pays 20,000 Foxconn workers $5,000 each to take the month off from tomorrow and go somewhere else. That's a $100m outlay for a vastly higher profit. It's not a serious suggestion but it's feasible. It's an interesting situation - an extremely highly valued company underpinned by extremely cheap labour.
- jrockway 14y agoHedge funds (and anyone) can make money regardless of the direction the market moves, or even if the market doesn't move. So why would they do something risky, illegal, and difficult that has the potential for unbounded losses?
- rdl 14y agoIt's easier for a third part with only money to cause damage to apple (which will happen in a known time period) than to cause a buff. (an industry player could cause positive effects, like a huge purchase of Apple into a new industry like enterprise/government, or vendor neutrality for public sector purchases, or Microsoft committing to OSX as a tier-1 OS, etc., but a hedge fund can't do that)
- joe_the_user 14y agoTheoretically, the only way to make money on an efficient market is to have information others don't have. Manufacturing it would one (very desperate) way. I agree that this would be too difficult to pull off (one worker spilling the beans would be enough). But "can make money on the market" mean "might make money" not "will make money". Worth keeping in mind that hedge don't just get stream of money from the market just for being hedge funds. You need to get good information somehow.
- zurn 14y agoThat's what they do: Risk is their bread and butter. Difficulty - if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Illegal - arguable but they're probably just good at not getting caught (and managing the risk of it). See eg. recent libor scandal.
- Cieplak 14y agoI don't mean to justify Apple's policies with regards to Foxconn, but Apple delivers its products on time, on a massive scale. Contrast this with Lenovo, who released a Macbook Air copycat in August, the X1 Carbon. I ordered it as soon as it came out, and it still has not shipped.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- hadem 14y agoI had a Lenovo and hated it. It felt like a cheap computer made entirely of plastic. With normal use, the enclosure started to crack. Later pieces of the enclosure actually started falling off. I'll never buy one again.
- kalleboo 14y agoYou mean like virtually every single MacBook ever? A fault Apple only fixed by discontinuing the line? https://www.google.com/search?q=macbook+wrist+rest+cracks&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=macbook+wrist+rest+cracks...
- carlesfe 14y agoDiscontinuing the line and replacing all broken cases for free. I changed mine twice at no charge.
- Cieplak 14y agoI am sure lenovo has produced inferior laptops before, but the X1 Carbon was supposedly stress tested by machines that open and close the lid for days on end to test the hinge, and also machines that press the keys repeatedly, to ensure that the function of these components do not deteriote substantially over time.
- sjwright 14y agoThat's hardly unusual. Not doing that would be more unusual.
- annon 14y agoFoxconn denied the report this morning. This article is referencing a release from yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/business/foxconn-denies-report-of-unrest-at-iphone-factory.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/business/foxconn-denies-re...
- joe_the_user 14y ago“It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers" It seems like a few cracks are showing the ole' Apple's armor.
- sigzero 14y agoI am not sure how you make that deduction.