That tentatively leaves $378.74 per month in profit which is $4,544.88 in savings for a year.
Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.
And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.
They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.
Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).
Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).
Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
Well, on one hand, I know there are fresh out college kids spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds me of the NYU freshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)
I watched the video and it seems that Apple's presence in China has made it better for everyone, not worse. Weir was upfront about their board member and affiliation with Disney.
PS: How much do people in the military make per hour? How many hours a week do they work in boot camp? How many people bunk in the same building? That's about 12 to 16 weeks, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mnb
Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.
And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.
They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.
Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).
Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).
Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.
Is a general multiplier across the board a fair measure? I mean, Americans pay a certain amount for rent plus utilities, but then to get to work the culture commonly demands payment by some form of transportation either public or private. A car has fuel, repair, taxes and insurance, not to mention the initial investment and payments. All that adds into their base living expenses.
Plus I know I people that work a 40 hour week, but it's salaried it's more like 50 or 55, and that doesn't include commute times of an hour in each direction. Now I will they say they all make well above even the US average but that's still a lot of time spent. I've heard on this forum many times over the years how Americans are too obsessed with work and money.
Well, on one hand, I know fresh out college spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds of the NYU refreshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)
What struck me as stressful was the lack of personal space for making your own in the dorms.
Very few spoiled Americans will ever do a repetitive job assembling gadgets by hand all day..even at the standard American minimum wage. That's one of the many reasons why those manufacturing jobs ain't coming back here in the States. Apple can never find the 200,000 or more people needed to assemble their products here in the U.S. Fact is most Americans would rather work at McDonalds flipping burgers than work in a electronics manufacturing plant.
Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.
that's not necessarily true. Many of my high school buddies worked under minimum wage (for their family biz). I think there are lots of young kids fresh out of high school or college willing to work very low wage jobs to learn new skill. It just doesn't make any sense for employers to risk hiring someone so unskilled & inexperienced, especially given the minimum wage and labor laws, etc.
The workers are getting paid just fine, especially with the recent wage increases by Foxconn.
It is partly simple supply & demand, and it seems like there's plenty of people who are looking to get jobs at Foxconn and other places like it. The job is not a very skilled one and I'd say that their wages are in line with the type of job that they are performing combined with the country that they are in. It's a manufacturing job, Foxconn is not looking to hire rocket scientists.
It would be wrong to pay them too much, as it would upset the wage balance that people in other professions in China make. Somebody making $1.78 an hour for a manufacturing job in China is obviously not the same as somebody making $1.78 if they happened to be in the US. The relative purchasing power of somebody in China making $1.78 represents a much larger dollar figure if we are to compare that to the US purchasing power of somebody making $1.78 an hour.
So, in conclusion, everything is just fine and dandy over there in China.
Any ignorant person whining about any Chinese Foxconn workers who actually have jobs and are making the equivalent of $1.78 in their own country's currency should think about the many millions of more people in their own country (the USA of course) who aren't even making $ 0.01 an hour.
I still think that anybody who signed that petition should be banned for life from ever owning any Apple products again, as they were engaged in an ignorant, slanderous and lying, malicious campaign against Apple. Maybe Apple should sue those fools for defamation and not just Proview.
There are a lot of people here who are making calculations to demonstrate that their salary is equivalent to minimum wage workers in the U.S. based on the cost of living in China. People are doing things like equating a $10 US meal to a 70 cent meal in China, or how workers are only spending 10% of their income on their housing compared to an expectation 0f 25% or more in the U.S.
I'm assuming that most of the people who are forming these kinds of calculations have never lived in a developing country, or perhaps if you did, you were still getting a U.S. based salary.
A 70 cent meal in China does not have the nutritional or quality/quantity equivalent of the US $10 meal. A 70 cent meal in China would be equivalent to paying $10 in the U.S. for a meal consisting of ramen noodles and a few cooked vegetables.
Sure, these workers get to pay a "low" 10% on housing compared to you and I paying 25% or more for our housing-- I don't know about you, though, but I don't live with 5 to 7 other people in a single room, sharing bathrooms and other communal areas. For my 25% I'm living in a 3 bedroom house with 2 and a half bathrooms and the entire place is only shared with one other person.
It is not a fair comparison to use only bare minimum basics in determining the equivalency to the cost of living between two countries. Okay, so some will offer that these workers pay 70 cents for their meal, compared with $10 in the U.S. Do you think that televisions, computers, iPads, etc. in China cost 7% of what they retail for in the U.S.?? How about cars, or even bicycles/motorbikes?
There's a reason why you and I aren't anxious to pack our bags and move to China and enjoy 70 cent meals and 10% housing... 1) the QUALITY is not the same, and 2) everything besides the basic minimums costs the same or more than it does in the U.S., therefore a degraded salary can't pay for those sorts of things you and I enjoy.
(I live in a small country in Southern Africa... a "developing" nation. A Windows laptop here with the equivalent of last year's specs costs about twice as much as a NEW 2012 model laptop in the U.S. Same goes for TVs and other electronics. Cars? Try $25,000 to $30,000 for a Ford Focus or similar. The average factory worker here earns the equivalent of $150-$200 a month [coincidentally they tend to be Chinese operated garment factories]). The average minimum wage worker here can't afford a car. The average minimum wage worker in the U.S. can.
This is not about Apple or any single company-- it's about the inequities of the global economic system. The harder you work, usually the less you get paid. :-(
In the other parts of Foxconn there is this guy that beats a big drum that everyone has to row in sync with. Stun guns applied randomly keeps everyone working feverently on the edge of their chairs. The sign above their work area reads, (Google Translation) "Work will make one Free."
I was laughing along for the first two sentences, as your comment appeared very promising. But the last sentence is a step too far. Some things do not belong in a joke. Ever.
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
Even if these devices are made in the US, they will also be made by hands.
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
It would be the same. Try to find methods engineers in the USA, or workers who take their jobs seriously enough to learn to operate a multi-million $ piece of equipment or properly care for it. In the 80's my company was moving complex, highly automated lines out of the USA. Now the USA is not given a thought. The US labor force is a symbol of drug and alcohol issues, difficult unions, inadequate qualifications, personal baggage and minds set on anything other than the job at hand. A difference would be higher failure rates and resulting higher warranty costs.
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
Even if these devices are made in the US, they will also be made by hands.
Not entirely true there - if you have a chance to view some footage of how silicon wafers are cut shaped and formed by Intel, or how BMW or Toyota robots assemble cars, you'd be amazed at the automation robotics can accomplish.
Note - China doesn't use robots like we do, because people at this point are cheaper than robots... And given there are 2-3 times more people in China than the US, you need to keep them employed...
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?
I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.
A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?
I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.
It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?
By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.
The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?
Different countries have different standards. End of story.
The deburring highlighted in the video was not filing, filing is a similar, but different task.
Seeing the video, it doesn't seem so terrible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
I'm sure you could, if you divided your rented space into bunks like that and got room mates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
Heavily automated or with illegal labor, or not at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter236
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
There may be some parts that need human intervention, but I don't know what about flash memory that needs any human intervention other than maintaining the machines that make & package the chips. I doubt each flash chip needs to be handled individually by a human. Batteries are pretty simple, the necessary human intervention in each battery is probably negligible at best.
It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?
By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.
The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?
Different countries have different standards. End of story.
The minute it becomes more cost effective to run operations with automation, all those people will be sent back to their dirt poor villages in the countryside.
Cheap labor is steady work. Expensive labor is outsourced or automated. More Americans need to get that through their noggin.
My TiVo cut this off. When Bill Wier is back in studio and saying that Apple has said they are welcome to go back in the future, is that the end of the report or was there more?
Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.
Seems like there are plenty of people already out here bitching and moaning on behalf of the workers based on nothing more than their imagination of how tough those folks must have it.
Hell, I'd love to take home roughly 82% of my wages after food and rent!!!!
Note - China doesn't use robots like we do, because people at this point are cheaper than robots... And given there are 2-3 times more people in China than the US, you need to keep them employed...
When labor is dirt cheap, you don't use robots. That's why china is great for labor-intensive production. If you want automation, you don't generally go to china.
Comments
That tentatively leaves $378.74 per month in profit which is $4,544.88 in savings for a year.
Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.
And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.
They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.
Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).
Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).
Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
Well, on one hand, I know there are fresh out college kids spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds me of the NYU freshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)
PS: How much do people in the military make per hour? How many hours a week do they work in boot camp? How many people bunk in the same building? That's about 12 to 16 weeks, right?
Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.
And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.
They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.
Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).
Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).
Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.
Is a general multiplier across the board a fair measure? I mean, Americans pay a certain amount for rent plus utilities, but then to get to work the culture commonly demands payment by some form of transportation either public or private. A car has fuel, repair, taxes and insurance, not to mention the initial investment and payments. All that adds into their base living expenses.
Plus I know I people that work a 40 hour week, but it's salaried it's more like 50 or 55, and that doesn't include commute times of an hour in each direction. Now I will they say they all make well above even the US average but that's still a lot of time spent. I've heard on this forum many times over the years how Americans are too obsessed with work and money.
Well, on one hand, I know fresh out college spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds of the NYU refreshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)
What struck me as stressful was the lack of personal space for making your own in the dorms.
Very few spoiled Americans will ever do a repetitive job assembling gadgets by hand all day..even at the standard American minimum wage. That's one of the many reasons why those manufacturing jobs ain't coming back here in the States. Apple can never find the 200,000 or more people needed to assemble their products here in the U.S. Fact is most Americans would rather work at McDonalds flipping burgers than work in a electronics manufacturing plant.
Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.
that's not necessarily true. Many of my high school buddies worked under minimum wage (for their family biz). I think there are lots of young kids fresh out of high school or college willing to work very low wage jobs to learn new skill. It just doesn't make any sense for employers to risk hiring someone so unskilled & inexperienced, especially given the minimum wage and labor laws, etc.
It is partly simple supply & demand, and it seems like there's plenty of people who are looking to get jobs at Foxconn and other places like it. The job is not a very skilled one and I'd say that their wages are in line with the type of job that they are performing combined with the country that they are in. It's a manufacturing job, Foxconn is not looking to hire rocket scientists.
It would be wrong to pay them too much, as it would upset the wage balance that people in other professions in China make. Somebody making $1.78 an hour for a manufacturing job in China is obviously not the same as somebody making $1.78 if they happened to be in the US. The relative purchasing power of somebody in China making $1.78 represents a much larger dollar figure if we are to compare that to the US purchasing power of somebody making $1.78 an hour.
So, in conclusion, everything is just fine and dandy over there in China.
Any ignorant person whining about any Chinese Foxconn workers who actually have jobs and are making the equivalent of $1.78 in their own country's currency should think about the many millions of more people in their own country (the USA of course) who aren't even making $ 0.01 an hour.
I still think that anybody who signed that petition should be banned for life from ever owning any Apple products again, as they were engaged in an ignorant, slanderous and lying, malicious campaign against Apple. Maybe Apple should sue those fools for defamation and not just Proview.
I'm assuming that most of the people who are forming these kinds of calculations have never lived in a developing country, or perhaps if you did, you were still getting a U.S. based salary.
A 70 cent meal in China does not have the nutritional or quality/quantity equivalent of the US $10 meal. A 70 cent meal in China would be equivalent to paying $10 in the U.S. for a meal consisting of ramen noodles and a few cooked vegetables.
Sure, these workers get to pay a "low" 10% on housing compared to you and I paying 25% or more for our housing-- I don't know about you, though, but I don't live with 5 to 7 other people in a single room, sharing bathrooms and other communal areas. For my 25% I'm living in a 3 bedroom house with 2 and a half bathrooms and the entire place is only shared with one other person.
It is not a fair comparison to use only bare minimum basics in determining the equivalency to the cost of living between two countries. Okay, so some will offer that these workers pay 70 cents for their meal, compared with $10 in the U.S. Do you think that televisions, computers, iPads, etc. in China cost 7% of what they retail for in the U.S.?? How about cars, or even bicycles/motorbikes?
There's a reason why you and I aren't anxious to pack our bags and move to China and enjoy 70 cent meals and 10% housing... 1) the QUALITY is not the same, and 2) everything besides the basic minimums costs the same or more than it does in the U.S., therefore a degraded salary can't pay for those sorts of things you and I enjoy.
(I live in a small country in Southern Africa... a "developing" nation. A Windows laptop here with the equivalent of last year's specs costs about twice as much as a NEW 2012 model laptop in the U.S. Same goes for TVs and other electronics. Cars? Try $25,000 to $30,000 for a Ford Focus or similar. The average factory worker here earns the equivalent of $150-$200 a month [coincidentally they tend to be Chinese operated garment factories]). The average minimum wage worker here can't afford a car. The average minimum wage worker in the U.S. can.
This is not about Apple or any single company-- it's about the inequities of the global economic system. The harder you work, usually the less you get paid. :-(
In the other parts of Foxconn there is this guy that beats a big drum that everyone has to row in sync with. Stun guns applied randomly keeps everyone working feverently on the edge of their chairs. The sign above their work area reads, (Google Translation) "Work will make one Free."
I was laughing along for the first two sentences, as your comment appeared very promising. But the last sentence is a step too far. Some things do not belong in a joke. Ever.
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
Even if these devices are made in the US, they will also be made by hands.
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
It would be the same. Try to find methods engineers in the USA, or workers who take their jobs seriously enough to learn to operate a multi-million $ piece of equipment or properly care for it. In the 80's my company was moving complex, highly automated lines out of the USA. Now the USA is not given a thought. The US labor force is a symbol of drug and alcohol issues, difficult unions, inadequate qualifications, personal baggage and minds set on anything other than the job at hand. A difference would be higher failure rates and resulting higher warranty costs.
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
Even if these devices are made in the US, they will also be made by hands.
Not entirely true there - if you have a chance to view some footage of how silicon wafers are cut shaped and formed by Intel, or how BMW or Toyota robots assemble cars, you'd be amazed at the automation robotics can accomplish.
Note - China doesn't use robots like we do, because people at this point are cheaper than robots... And given there are 2-3 times more people in China than the US, you need to keep them employed...
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?
I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.
A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?
I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.
It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?
By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.
The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?
Different countries have different standards. End of story.
Seeing the video, it doesn't seem so terrible.
I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.
I'm sure you could, if you divided your rented space into bunks like that and got room mates.
Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.
Heavily automated or with illegal labor, or not at all.
These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.
These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.
There may be some parts that need human intervention, but I don't know what about flash memory that needs any human intervention other than maintaining the machines that make & package the chips. I doubt each flash chip needs to be handled individually by a human. Batteries are pretty simple, the necessary human intervention in each battery is probably negligible at best.
It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?
By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.
The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?
Different countries have different standards. End of story.
The minute it becomes more cost effective to run operations with automation, all those people will be sent back to their dirt poor villages in the countryside.
Cheap labor is steady work. Expensive labor is outsourced or automated. More Americans need to get that through their noggin.
Prime example: Detroit.
Sounds good, but you'd have to share your room with 7 other men all speaking Chinese.
If you happen to be a Chinese person, that second condition isn't exactly a deal-breaker. Sharing a room with 7 other guys . . .
Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.
Seems like there are plenty of people already out here bitching and moaning on behalf of the workers based on nothing more than their imagination of how tough those folks must have it.
Hell, I'd love to take home roughly 82% of my wages after food and rent!!!!
Who the hell made US the police of the world?
/shortrant
Note - China doesn't use robots like we do, because people at this point are cheaper than robots... And given there are 2-3 times more people in China than the US, you need to keep them employed...
When labor is dirt cheap, you don't use robots. That's why china is great for labor-intensive production. If you want automation, you don't generally go to china.