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President-elect Trump considers potential Apple manufacturing in US a 'real achievement'
jasenj1 said:I don't see how the USA can compete with cultures where workers are housed in dorms, eat in company cafeterias, don't own cars, etc. Where many of the employees' other choices include subsistence farming in huts. And I don't know what the health care is like in China, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc. but I'm going to guess it is cheaper for companies than whatever we have in the USA. And then there's environmental regulations, workplace safety, and many other regulatory burdens.
I'm not saying it can't be profitable to manufacture in the USA, but I think it will always be MORE profitable to manufacture in third/second-world countries. Unless we impose large enough tariffs - but that leads to cries of "protectionism", "trade war", etc.
I found a staggering lack of any worker based safety policy and a total disregard for worker health issues in the factory. They were quite open about it. I witnessed child labour being used to de-coke castings because they could get into smaller spaces. Severe burns were commonplace, many had lost fingers, eyes, teeth and had open sores. They had ridiculously low wages, no protection and no breaks in a 12 hour day. If they missed one day through illness, they were sacked and owed wages not payed. Environmentally, it was like a modern day Dickensian nightmare with filth, zero sanitation, choking pollution - even in their offices and bullying at every management level.
As far as I could tell, it was modern day slavery - but the product was cheap.
I reported my strongly held belief that there was no justification for using this company other than bottom line economics.
They moved production to Malaysia.
The one thing chump Trump would have to do, would be to remove all worker rights and protection ie. sweeping deregulation to the point of insanity, and rewrite hard-won environmental protection, to even begin to produce a level playing field.
Ain't going to happen. -
Manhattan DA's office says it has 423 uncracked Apple devices in evidence room