Foxconn workers question why hours are being cut after FLA review - Page 3

It doesn't work like that. Overtime is considerably cheaper than hiring/training/benefits/etc. for an additional employee.

How do small businesses handle this? Your employee leaves for one year, so you have to hire someone else and pay for their training to replace them. Then a year later the first employee returns, what does the small business do to the temporary worker who has been there for a year? I understand that the Employment Insurance pays for the maternity leave but how is the business owner and the temporary worker compensated?

We all need to grow up and learn that we cannot think for ourselves and that big government and the elitists will take care of us, right?

Have you ever worked in China? Ever visited there? Ever seen how iPhones are assembled?

If Foxconn would give all of its workers a hoodie with an Apple logo on it, then they will quickly get over this stupid idea that working hard will allow them and their families to live a better life.


Thanks so much for setting us all straight.

The complaint raised now is that the workers won't make enough money if their hours are cut so this leads to the following:

Problem 1: workers are overworked because they are underpaid
Solution 1: workers have their working time cut
Problem 2: workers might not make enough money because they are still underpaid
Solution 2: the workers are paid more

As discussed many times, Apple alone could double the salary of each low-level worker by charging a mere $5 on top of the price of just the iPad or Apple could absorb that cost into their margins. Just because Chinese workers accept that they have no rights to demand higher pay doesn't mean that we should accept that too when have more than enough resources of our own to ensure it happens.

Why don't you just say that FreeRange is right, instead of demonstrating it!

Do you have a comprehension problem?

I am simply talking about the wages... get it wages?

Do you think that people working overtime don't use their prorated share of "....capital, investments, technology obsolescence.... " (I think you mean "depreciation", but whatever).

Or hourly. Yes, that works too for what I want saying.

Essentially, I meant "wages" as variable costs (which could be a function of the amount of time worked or the amount produced, although the two are highly correlated).

Lots of things I do not comprehend, but the difference between wages, total cost, and for that matter price is not one of them.

It does work like that for Apple.

Apple only pays Foxconn for the direct labor in the product.

For Foxconn, it may or may not be the case that the $1.75/hour includes some amortization of fixed costs of the type you're mentioning, although I'd bet it does.

In any event, as I said, it is only true if overtime work costs more per hour than regular work.

Then explain how regular wages can involve a "capital charge" but overtime wages would not?

Simply asserting something something because you say you "....comprehend... the difference between wages, total cost..." is not an argument.

...or NOT.

We must be careful to not think that our view of what's fair is not subject to question.

Where we see 'harsh working conditions' others see hope for a better life.
Remember, people line up to work at these factories like we line up to buy the products.



P.S. Are we considering Apple's supply chain working conditions relative to those of Samsung and others? Or are people just trying to gain some fame by riding Apple's coattails.

I think the wages in China issue will fade because of the planned increase of robotic assembly and those remaining high wage labor issues will be diffused thanks to planned use of non-China labor. See... problem solved. When labor became the sticking point, Foxconn will now simply use less labor.

The US has already one of the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1% pay something like 40% of all federal income taxes; the top 10% pay close to 70% while the bottom 50% pay almost nothing - but receive the majority of social welfare benefits (excluding interstate roads). So your class warfare rhetoric has no basis. Sure, the gov't welfare (for the banking, agri, special interests) is a major contributing factor to the wealth inequality; but that's what you get when you have a big gov't.

so can we please let it go? It's not China or Foxconn's (or even Apple's) fault that US is so screwed up.

If the tax revenue goes up, the gov't will spend it just as fast - likewise, the national debt hasn't decreased since 1957.

Overtime salary in my experience is always higher than regular work (and should be), but will reduce the gross hourly rate because most other expenses do not increase or increases less as working hours (from a fixed amount of workers) increase. This would probably to a greater extent be true in China than in US because the Chinese wage level is low, but still Chinese industry has to pay international prices for production equipment.

Interestingly, it's a voter issue, not a political party issue. Both Republicans and Democrats have looted the taxpayers as they have traded power for decades, but the reason is that politicians gain power by making unrealistic promises, then forcing powerless groups of people to pay for the undeserved wants and needs of other people. That's politics. That's government. Both parties are an illusion. The end result is that taxpayers get soaked because of competing interests.

ok, but the moderator's point is that the decision to go after Iraq had backing of both liberals and conservatives. Contrary to popular belief, most liberals aren't even anti-war. Folks like Sanders, Grayson, Paul are fringe figures in their own party.

I think you're still evading my question.

Maybe I was not stating it well. So I'll ask it differently.

Assume that 3 hours of labor and 2 units of initial capital (e.g., time on a machine tool) are required to produce 1 widget. Assume that 'standard' labor costs $5/hour, overtime labor (which, you agree, should generally cost more) costs $6/hour, and one unit of capital costs $10.

Total cost of producing 1 widget if standard labor is used? 3*5 + 2*10 = $35.

Total cost of producing 1 widget if 2 hours of standard labor and one hour overtime is used? 2* 5 + 1*6 + 2*10 = $36.

Explain your argument?

Workers are paid a competitive wage based on market conditions, unless wages are inflated due to regulations or government interference.

The decision to invade Afghanistan was bipartisan, I don't remember the Iraq invasion being completely supported by both "sides".

Yes, it was. And it was done without the Congress ever formally "declaring war" (which, under the US Constitution, they are required to do).

So the answer they should be told is that that the law says they can only work 49 hours a week. Which they probably were told (but that has been left out of the articles)

it sucks for them that they are worried about their families etc but it sucks more that they are being used as hit fodder by websites looking for more ad revenue etc. Then again, conditions at the factories have been used as prime hit fodder for ages so its no really a shock that its continuing.

I'm surprised to see you dive into politics. I reckon if the mods do, it's open season for the trolls.

Because for the overtime the equation goes in the limiting case like this:

2* 5 + 1*6 + 2*0 = $16

in the extreme situation. Overtime does not require more rent for the building, does not increase your interest, hardly increases management costs, and the production equipment will cost less per hour because you increase the utilization, and physical wear is rarely the limiting factor, technological life is, so a high uptime results in a lower average cost.

Hurray ktappe! Apart from Zither and one or two others it seems that this board is overwhelmingly composed of idealistic xenophobes.

That anyone should maintain the slightest concern for all people, without a will to mastery, without designs for slavery, is seemingly beyond the ruffians of the American social experiment. That teenage girls and boys in China should be having prom, meeting friends for froyos, taking minivans to beiber concerts, and all the unlovely diaspora of stupid shit that our own sons and daughters occupy themselves with, that that should even be a hope that we might express, is for some reason an incomprehensible scenario for the new Aryan elite. Elite, I may add, only in the sense that they are possessed of the greatest will to OVERPOWER, not elite in an intellectual sense, or moral sense, or by any measure of the older, and by the approximation of these cattle, superfluous, VALUES of our old champions of Truth and Justice, that is, the Voltaires, the Mandelas, the JFKs, et al. Surely, we've returned to the old imperialist dogmas of social decay and ideological stagnation that is ever the concomitant of thoroughly Christian (read: uneducated) societies. And when we've been outflanked economically, should we have any doubt that we will have a single solution to that problem, that old imperialist's solution, namely, an uneconomic outflanking?

China is no better. In fact, the Chinese government is undoubtedly composed of the selfsame "social elite" (to remind you, elite only in the sense that they are possessed of a refined HATRED for their fellow man; a hatred that permits any number of advantages over a well-composed society that wills the dignity of all of its members, that is, a wholly un-capitalistic society, a wholly un-imperialistic society; a wholly novel society, one might suggest.)

But all that is neither here nor there. The whiners here are upset that the masses have spoken, and rather than the hoarse call for slavery that our whiners had hoped for, they cried clearly for the dignity of their foreign counterpart. Think of it! The fat American slobs, the unemployed, unpowerful masses, would rather pay a little more for an iPad than see young men and women maimed for life! Young men and women that they will never meet; a rather uncharacteristic sentiment, wouldn't you say? It seems all too much like something our old champions would have told us to hope for; the wish, we might dare say, of the voltaires and JFKs.

Maybe then the AppleInsider forums are an unusual cross-section of our seemingly unlovely middle class. I have to say, walking around the streets of Palo Alto today, I don't feel like these people have refined their hatred so thoroughly that a call for human dignity rings in their ears like a call for the castration of our economic model, like you AI "elitists" (that "elitist" that I described to you before) would have us believe.

No, whatever you monsters are, you're at least not the rule. And we should be glad for that, if nothing else.

No, you should be saying Damm Chinese Government. Because they are the ones that set the rules that Foxconn is being forced to follow. If the rules change, Foxconn's practices will change. And if it is in their best interest for those rules to change they will led the cries for it to happen

I give up, since, at this point, your numbers make no sense.

If you'd like to believe that substitution of the same labor input from a checklist named "ABC" to a checklist that is then renamed "XYZ" has any real impact on anything else -- except the cost of said labor -- you're certainly welcome to!

No one is. Not in this matter. They dictated that the factories should follow their local laws. Nothing more or less. And the law is that you can't work more than 36 hours of OT a month. yes it sucks for folks that have nothing to do with the rest of their time, are saying for college or sending the money home. Now they will have to find another solution like a second job, or getting the laws changed.

It's also possible that these people are not the norm or the majority but were picked, rather like Mike Daisey's story of the mangled hand, because they would get attention and page hits.


In the US, most of the time you don't have to allow the first employee back, especially if the position was filled. There are very limited cases where you have to keep a job for someone but often it doesn't have to be the same job or even the same pay etc. It's all in the nature of at will employment.

Perhaps if that is the case the conservatives will finally be able to relate with Chinese factory workers, since, certainly, idle mindedness is a mainstay of the conservative ideology.

The thing I worry about is ignoramus liberal arts majors who oppose profit might actually sacrifice Apple to their god. In their minds, companies that make a profit should be stopped. Only unprofitable companies should be allowed.

Also, they oppose poor people striving and working overtime. Instead, these "labor activists" believe poor people should not be employed at low wages. Instead, they should be given aid and live as prisoners who are forced to worship powerful aid and NGO executives, who are the god-heads of the liberal establishment. And I am a social liberal and humanitarian. I'm just not knee-jerk anti-corporate or anti-low wage worker.

Ask yourself what is feeding 3 billion people in China/India. Clue: It isn't NGOs, Angelina Jolie, Bono or Brad Pitt, NPR or the New York Times. These people are working hard and earning what they get, like real adults. We don't need to assume everyone of a different color or culture is a child.

I have some experience working with US Government auditors on projected cost. They are always interested in the the amount of projected overtime. The very simple reason is that they know overtime will bring the hourly costs down.
With all due respect, I find it hard to believe you know much of running a production business.

Yes, that's obviously what liberals are thinking.

Halfwit.

That just about says it all.

I'll take my knowledge of business over yours any day. Thanks.

There is an extremely simple and obvious solution: Pay them more.

It's embarrassing that the only reason they can make enough is by working tons of overtime. It would decrease Apple's profits slightly and the Foxconn CEO said it's entirely possible to do and he would love to give them pay increases.

I was just being stupid... making fun of the activists that helped bring about this change in overtime hours.

+++ for truth

I found it highly ironic that China (the country that so many American see as nothing but one big forced labor camp) requires by law that their workers work less hours than any American law.

I also find it ironic that Germany, one of those European countries that work less is currently kicking our (the US) butt in manufacturing and economic growth.

Talk about seeing the splinter in someone else eye while ignoring the log in your own. But then again, they wouldn't be crazy liberals or conservative nazis if they weren't telling someone else how to live their life.

Germany is impressive, but Germany also doesn't have a ginormous military to nurse. However Germans do have to pay something like 10% tax off the top for their chosen religious organization--someone else here might be able to correct/clarify this point.

How myopic. There are billions of people suffering in the world (these factory workers are relatively affluent). They make 10 dollars a day or more. Way more than most people in the world do.

We all "deserve" to make more money, but this Apple wage thing is just a random fixation of flinty journalists who are blessedly naive about how resources are allocated in this world, and why. And, why capitalism is better than communism, in purely humanitarian terms.

Im a bit confused about the comments on here, from what I read from another article yesterday it was said that:



So from Im taking out of all this FOXCONN commitment is that workers will work less but they WILL NOT notice any considerable difference in their regular salaries. Please correct me if Im wrong

I was basically talking about production costs, and I clearly understand that you don't have the faintest idea about how variable costs and fixed costs works in.
The start of this discussion was the belief that Foxcon did not understand this, and would be helped by the superior understanding from people on this site to reduce their costs.
I believe that Foxcon understand their own costs pretty well, I also believe that when people in the west try to help them, this may have other motives.
I detest the political regime in China, but I believe companies like Foxcon represent an improvement to the conditions, and I hate to see reactionaries in the west critisise them for not being up to our standard when it is totally out of place.