'Outraged' Apple CEO Deems N.Y. Times' Exposé 'Offensive'

[slayernine]

I'm quite sure the Foxconn workers are damn happy to have jobs and to have company paid for housing/medical/food.

Why is everyone against factory style labour, in fact what is wrong with 12 year olds making stuff in factories if the environment is relatively safe. It puts food on their plate and makes their life suck less.

 

[Malfeas]

once you're vested $100 million, you'll say and do anything

I sure would, I'd slobber that Apple cock so hard and tell people how good it tastes, and all with a smile.

 

[GoPackGo]

I'm quite sure the Foxconn workers are damn happy to have jobs and to have company paid for housing/medical/food.

Why is everyone against factory style labour, in fact what is wrong with 12 year olds making stuff in factories if the environment is relatively safe. It puts food on their plate and makes their life suck less.

So you are pro-slavery. The slaves in the south had master paid for housing/medical/food...so they should have just been happy with that.

So the Chinese were born to serve you and your ilk?

 

[soundforbjt]

I'm quite sure the Foxconn workers are damn happy to have jobs and to have company paid for housing/medical/food.

Why is everyone against factory style labour, in fact what is wrong with 12 year olds making stuff in factories if the environment is relatively safe. It puts food on their plate and makes their life suck less.

You have no clue whatsoever do you?

 

[airdata]

Originally Posted by slayernine
I'm quite sure the Foxconn workers are damn happy to have jobs and to have company paid for housing/medical/food.

Why is everyone against factory style labour, in fact what is wrong with 12 year olds making stuff in factories if the environment is relatively safe. It puts food on their plate and makes their life suck less.

They work horrendous hours for tiny amount of pay. Then each device they make is sold for probably as much as they will make in a year.

 

[Throckmorton]

I'm never convinced about this.

Those big Chinese production lines are just assembling pre made parts. I've torn down and re built quite a few smart phones and they take very little labour/time to put together.

I'd imagine that the actual chip/PCB parts are pretty automated.

So given that they are very expensive gadgets that arent very hard to assemble I dont see why they couldnt do that in the west.

In that case it wouldn't create many American jobs.

Let them be built in China, but pay the workers decently and don't make them work 16 hour (in some cases over 30 hour) shifts. The price difference would be miniscule. We could pay the exact same if Apple just took the pay increases out of their huge margins.

 

[Jaskalas]

We couldn't afford electronics made entirely in America.

What needs to happen is these companies need to FORCE the Chinese suppliers to improve conditions.

If they did that then we couldn't afford electronics made entirely in China either. Which case we might as well make them here.

 

[HomerJS]

Hahahahahahah loliberals

Why does bringing jobs back to USA have to be partisan?

 

[tydas]

Quote:
Originally Posted by slayernine
I'm quite sure the Foxconn workers are damn happy to have jobs and to have company paid for housing/medical/food.

Why is everyone against factory style labour, in fact what is wrong with 12 year olds making stuff in factories if the environment is relatively safe. It puts food on their plate and makes their life suck less.

You have no clue whatsoever do you?

He does have a point you know...its obviously a dangerous and sucky job but what alternative is there? when foxcon announces new jobs they have a line of applicants a mile long...whose to blame? not sure...

 

[Ninjahedge]

Impressive S9.

One flaming post and 3 instant rebuttals.

You are learning the ways of the Flame Baiter Danielson! Soon, you may be Master Spammer!

/Gong

 

[mchammer187]

If Apple is using cheap labor now (when it wasn't before), why does it still command such a premium on its products? The hardware isn't more advanced or powerful than the competition....

Are they only trying to make MORE money?

What premium. On the computer side yes but they command a premium the the bulk of their revenue is from the Iphone / Ipad which are priced near the top end of the scale but they don't charge any more than a top end samsung, HTC, LG phone/ tablet.

Charging the most you can to maximize profit is just smart business. Apple charges what it does because people will buy it. When people stop buying it then maybe the will reconsider their pricing strategy.

 

[JS80]

Why does bringing jobs back to USA have to be partisan?

Because your brain lives in a fantasy world. That's why you're a worker bee loliberal populist. You will never amount to anything in life.

 

[mchammer187]

Foxconn gets $14.00 / 560 dollars of the iphone. $7.00 of that $14 goes to their workers.

I don't really see the real motivation of moving iphone production to the US. It would likely increase labor costs 10x or more

Given the choice I personally would rather buy a $200 Chinese iphone than a $400-800 (after subsidation) american iphone.

Apple already gets 66% (US) money of the sale 31% goes to the component manufactures
3% goes to foxconn.

 

[Ninjahedge]

So increasing the labor costs by 10X would increase the cost of a $560 phone by $63?

We are unwilling to pay an extra 11% for jobs in the US?

 

[mchammer187]

So increasing the labor costs by 10X would increase the cost of a $560 phone by $63?

We are unwilling to pay an extra 11% for jobs in the US?

its way more than 10x even if you only include 10x

$130 a month -> 3500 a month (42K a year) = 26 times in salary alone
add insurance
regulations (ie no 12 hrs shifts, vacations) than I put that figure at 40x in just worker compensation.

Add in the cost of building a plants, permits I am makinga guess of 50-60x the cost in labor


http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Me...eive-pay-raise/story?id=10846341#.TyxEj-QRYrY

says they made $130 a month before an investigations were going on

 

[HamburgerBoy]

So you are pro-slavery. The slaves in the south had master paid for housing/medical/food...so they should have just been happy with that.

So the Chinese were born to serve you and your ilk?

How do you propose that a country with 1.x bazillion people, many (most?) of which are uneducated and/or unskilled, be paid? It's a problem of too many employees, and not enough demand for trivial work which will likely be replaced by robots in the near future.

 

[PingSpike]

Its a well known fact that what makes Apple products great is all the Chinese people that are ground up and mixed into the plastic mixture used in the device case. Officially these are listed as accidents, but we all know that there's a ratio of Chinese corpse matter per cubic inch that must be met to insure product quality. This ratio is a closely guarded trade secret.

 

[rudder]

If Apple is using cheap labor now (when it wasn't before), why does it still command such a premium on its products? The hardware isn't more advanced or powerful than the competition....

Are they only trying to make MORE money?

To make the same amount of money as apple makes from 1 ipad sale.... a company like Asus selling the transformer has to sell at least 2-3X more tablets. Apple charges a premium.... but people are willing to pay it .

 

[Ninjahedge]

rudder, I know.

I have a bone to pick with that too, but not here.

Given they have every right to charge what they want, it still seems slimy that they make more on their product, but yet still demand such price points from their suppliers that, even if doubled in some cases, would do very little to their bottom line even if they kept their MSRP the same.

Say that in one breath!

And combine that with the PR that apple has actively, and passively, been pushing for the past 10+ years. They never SAY that they are all for better treatment for workers, but I guarantee that if you did a blind survey to anybody standing in an Apple store that they will "feel" like Apple is different, and more humane in its business practices.

The "apple" is seen as "crunchy" to some people, proof or not.

 

[Pliablemoose]

I think what many here don't understand is that currently Apple is making 12% of it's revenue from sales in China, and China will eventually be Apple's largest single market.

Apple is acutely aware of how it's percieved in China, and the Chinese love Apple products.

Marching into Bejing and or Foxconn and demanding to do the exact opposite of what businesses do is so unlikely that it's bordering on the asburd to expect Apple or any manufacturer to do it.

"Hi, we know you're a communist political system/largest manufacturer of electronics in the world, and we want you to pay your employees/citizens more and make sure they're more mentally healthy than the rest of your population/employees."

Did any of you-all take Econ in college? Political Science?

Things are changing in China, maybe not fast enough for some, but they are changing.

I tend to date Asian women, and a lot of them are immigrants from China, they're freaked out over how much things change and how fast they're changing. The Chinese gov is trying to manage it, and keep it under control, but the country is exploding by any standard metrics, some of these changes are in direct opposition to longstanding beliefs and practices in China.

Give it some time, we'll need to be fluent in Chinese soon enough folks...

 

[Franz316]

Let's be honest, these assembly lines will be automated whenever the technology/price gets there. Then Apple will be able to produce their phones even and make even more money. They also get to avoid all the human rights issues that way.

Soon after, an interesting irony appears. The people will be unemployed looking for work while the robots that replaced them work for free, are more precise and don't require sleep or food. I don't see how jobs ever return to an area that has been automatized.

 

[Michael]

I currently live in China. As I posted in the other thread on this issue, people need to get over what is normal where they are from and understand that different countries have different standards. The USA (and Canada where I am originally am from) is rich and labour laws and standards have evolved over time. Factory jobs still are terrible, even in the USA. Unless you are in an auto factory or a plane factory, the pay tends to be small as well.

Foxconn pays well over the Chinese minimum wage and working for them is in high demand. Housing is a standard and expected benefit. China has (had) a large population of generally unskilled workers that really only could work in a factory or on a farm or in basic construction.

Obviously the pay is much lower than US standard, but it is the same quality job in China as working for Ford would be in the USA. Are there issues with the way workers are treated? The only air answer is yes. Even that has changed rapidly over the past decade as workers have rapidly gained knowledge and flexed their rights. Do you think that the internet only exists in the USA and the Chinese workers don't talk to each other?

Michael