$2 per hour min wage

Ugh, not this stuff again.

Yes, social networking. What better way to pretend you're actually doing something than by "Liking" a page.

Where did you find this information from?

Clicking a mouse is hardly what you'd call fighting but $2/h seems like a reasonable figure to ask for. This could be paid by taxing each iPad sale by about $2.50, assuming the pay rise is given to 100,000 employees. I would have suggested $2.64 to allow them to double their salary or half their working hours or somewhere in between but smaller steps are better.

Are you kidding me!

If $2/hour is good, then $20/hour should be even better!

Why not make the minimum $20/hour ???

I mean, if you're not going to let the market set the rate naturally... if you're going to interfere, you might as well make life really nice for those "workers"!!!

That would cause a severe disruption in their economy and would be higher than the US minimum wage. If the workers can live within their means with salaries around RMB 2,000/month ($317/m) and 60 hour work weeks then it doesn't make sense to increase their wages by so much.

Their current minimum will vary between $0.80-1.20/hour. If Apple sells 15 million iPads per quarter = 60 million iPads this year, in order to double the pay of 100,000 employees it costs $0.80-1.20 x 60 x 52 x 100k = $250-374 million. This is $4.16-6.24 per iPad.

I figured a $5 tax would be enough and end users wouldn't really notice the extra charge as it's what you often pay for shipping.

It's a catalyst for further improvement, not a quick fix.

If they can (are willing) to work for what they are making now, then why MANDATE a higher wage at all??? When the workers are willing to tell Foxconn to "screw off, you're not offering enough $", then Foxconn will HAVE to up the wage to attract workers. It's simple supply and demand.

If you artificially raise the minimum wage, then ALL goods become more expensive to produce (even the necessities that those workers actually buy to live their lives.) So their cost of living rises as well and they end up no better off than they were before.

I sincerely doubt you would last for those many hours these workers put in at this plant.

Now?... certainly not!...
25 years ago?... easily.

Extremely poor people don't have the luxury of refusing to work. China is vastly overpopulated - population density is 200x the US - if you refuse to work, your place is taken within the hour.

The protest at the plant where the workers threatened suicide over pay shows the extent they have to go to. It's not a case of 'pay us more or we leave', it's a case of 'pay us more or we die because there's nothing better to leave for'.

Raising their wages won't increase their costs at all because it's us that pays them the extra money, not the factories. Even in terms of the products sold there, we're talking about 1% on top of the product price equating to a 100% pay rise so I don't see how that would cause a problem and US companies don't have to sell their products in China with that tiny premium.

That is supply and demand... that won't change by raising the minimum wage. They will always earn very low wages because there are more workers willing to work for those low wages than employers needing to hire them.
The only thing that a "minimum wage" law does is drive inflation.


...then you're not talking about a "minimum wage". ... though that's what this thread title implies.

ABC News is having next week a investigation about Foxconn and let us see what they come up with confronting Apple I am curious about this.

 

 

true!

 

 

 

Well to be fair, it also creates unemployment for people who's marginal labor productivity is below the mandated minimum and also makes it illegal for people with this lower level of productivity to work. But we won't let these issues get in the way of American "do-gooders" trying to "help" those people.

 

 

 

Unless, of course, fewer products get sold at the higher prices. Then there might be a problem.

 

One of the fundamental mistakes that people make is that they limit their analysis to the immediate parties and the immediate time frame. Many people also suffer from a situation we could call "static assumption blindness" where every other thing remains static except the variable they change. In this case the assumption is that employment levels, product purchase levels will all remain the same and all that will happen is that everyone's wages will be a little higher. The affects on profits, higher product prices, etc. are virtually ignored are dismissed as being insignificant. This is usually a major error.

 

Henry Hazlitt put it very succinctly in his great book "Economics in One Lesson" this way:

 

 

 

 

Edited by MJ1970 - 4/20/12 at 9:29am

Let's go beyond that. If we're going to choose wages for the entire world based on U.S. standards, why not working conditions?

The US should mandate one year of maternity leave (like Canada). 8 weeks vacation like the Netherlands. 32 hour work week like France. Free college education for everyone like Scandinavian countries. Company housing like China.

Every country has its own standards and expectations. It is not up to Canada to dictate our maternity leave, nor is it up to us to dictate China's wage rates. Considering that the cost of living is vastly different than ours, any comparison is meaningless, anyway.

These are some of the most widely desired jobs in the country. Just stop meddling.

 

Too low. I admire the start but that's only 6RM/hour, 60Baht/hour, 12CNY/hour, etc. It's time to look at the structural, systematic corruption and chaos in developing countries and how developed countries can contribute across the board. Increased money is worthless if the worker has to pay higher medical fees due to lack of government and private health coverage, or if the worker has to bribe more cops on the way to work because of dodgy cops (like Kuala Lumpur, if you are pulled over by the police it's the equivalent of USD $20 or so each time, usually for very minor or no reason... which I refused to do, and they just gave up on me after 5 minutes and focused on the other cars they pulled over).

 

Also, pointless if a worker has USD $100 more per week, opens his own Apple Reseller shop, only to go out of business and not be able to feed his family because of asshole corrupt Chinese officials seizing his legitimately obtained iPads so said official can give them to his children (sound familiar?).

 

Do you see what I'm getting at?

The thing is though, there is no market, especially with all the unemployed people, plus companies greed would result in a barely livable existance. no one would be able to afford housing or food at all, let alone anything nice.

Having this rate is better than being unemployed. What you think? We keep on nagging but you must see the brighter side once in awhile.