
I was offered a job at Foxconn to assemble iPhones for $1.7 per hour - kasbah
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2188288/iphones-costs-us800-i-was-offered-job-foxconn-assemble-them
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11thEarlOfMar
The only surprise here is that this unflattering portrayal was published in
SCMP. They are accused of becoming another mouthpiece for the CCP, but this
indicates there may still be some editorial latitude.

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guardiangod
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company.

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vidoc
would you mind elaborating a bit por favor?

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lgregg
China and Taiwan don't have a great relationship. China claims Taiwan but
Taiwan claims to be independent. There is a shadow affirmation by most world
powers about Taiwan's independence. (i.e. the US hasn't affirmed their state
but sells them guns)

~~~
vidoc
i see, so here we would basically have the communist party let that kind of
reporting, uncensored, because of the grand chessboard game with Taiwan. It is
an entertaining theory but I'm afraid the very existence of the factory, to
begin with, discredits it entirely.

~~~
mrmonkeyman
Like China could do anything about it.

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abalone
_> A poster in an agency describes job qualification for Foxconn workers: age
between 16 and 40, ninth-grade diploma, no Tibetan and Uygur ethnicities._

Many damning things in the report but this straight up racism demands a firm
response from Apple.

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erentz
Hang on. It’s not just racist hiring policies. We have companies here that are
doing business in a country that is putting millions of people of a certain
ethnicity in concentration camps. That really is not being talked about
enough.

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VonGuard
This.

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wswkb
Without knowing what the median salary per hour is in that part of China, this
is just rage-bait.

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azhenley
> Foxconn is known for its high staff turnover, largely because of the low
> monthly salary of 2,100 yuan per month (US$313) in Zhengzhou. By comparison,
> the average salary in the city of Zhengzhou in 2018 was 6,929 yuan
> (US$1,035) per month.

~~~
wswkb
Then either they won't fill the positions or the average salary is too high.
(And I asked for median, not average)

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m0zg
That's what I don't get about Apple. You're selling a premium product that in
some cases costs over $1K. How much labor does it take to put one together,
amortized per millions of them? An hour? Would paying $35 to a US worker for
that hour be out of line? I mean, this is the company that chooses to virtue
signal on a ton of different first-world issues. How about not having your
main, highest margin product made by 16 year old children in a sweat shop,
earning starvation wages?

~~~
wutbrodo
> made by 16 year old children in a sweat shop, earning starvation wages?

Are they in fact starvation wages? I'm the last person to defend Apple, and
I'm all for emotional appeals about ethical issues, but they're useless
without an understanding of the facts, and none of the complainants on this
thread seem interested in understanding whether what they're saying is
accurate, presumably on the off chance that they'd lose the opportunity to pay
themselves on the back for their outrage.

~~~
m0zg
Elsewhere in the comments someone dug up the stats: they earn one third the
mean wage in that region. That's how what I'd expect given that they're making
something that costs over three times their monthly salary and has a 30%+
margin.

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wutbrodo
I see the mean wage statistics, but interpreting means is very sensitive to
the distribution and the income distribution in developing countries can be
_very_ unintuitive. Something like a median (or lower percentile) is a much
better indicator of a claim like "starvation wages".

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m0zg
I go by the stats I have. If you have the median, sure, bring it out. But are
you going to seriously argue that $10/day is adequate pay when a single iPhone
has more _margin_ baked in it than a worker makes in a month? I mean,
seriously, how the fuck is this defensible at all?

~~~
wutbrodo
This is what I mean when I say that people are forgoing critical thinking in
favor of smelling the farts of their moral outrage,whether it's tied to
reality or not.

Saying that Foxconn workers are being paid "starvation wages" is an infinitely
different question from whether they're getting paid "adequately" (a squishy
term that contains several orders of magnitude within it) relative to Apple's
margins. It's very difficult for me to believe that people who are as
uninterested in understanding the facts of the situation as your comment
implies actually care about the situation or these people at all.

Understanding the factual landscape of the situation is separate from having
an emotional response to it, but it is a prerequisite. The road to hell is
paved with good intentions, and economically illiterate (or willfully
ignorant) emotional appeals like the one you're making have done immense
damage to humanity.

I'm not even just talking about the standard examples of Communist
dictatorships: there are a million less dramatic examples, like the
straightforward Indian child labor law that did almost nothing but damage to
the people it was supposed to protect: metrics across the board worsened for
the families in question, including years of education, calories consumed, and
most damningly, _hours of child labor_ (which increased).

By the way, I'm not insensitive to the notion that the balance between capital
and labor's share of income could use some improvement. My point is about the
damage that disinterest in understanding the distinction causes.

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benologist
Apple's rumored to profit several hundred dollars per iPhone sold, between the
$1.70/hr not-employees, massive tax evasion, and dishonesty with hardware
issues there's not much left to respect them for. Privacy, with the caveat
that you're not the product except for Google paying $9 billion to make you
their product.

~~~
askafriend
Do you know the market rate for this kind of labor in the area? Is Foxconn
competitive with other manufacturers? Feel free to cite any numbers if you've
got em.

From what I've heard, Foxconn is a highly desirable place to work with top of
market pay and benefits. A lot of people move just to work for Foxconn.

So clearly there's a dynamic going on here that'll take more nuance to
understand than can be painted with a broad brush stroke from a Western
perspective.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
If the broad brush stroke had a social democratic Western labour perspective,
the labour would be unionised and pay and benefits would be negotiated
collectively.

That doesn't seem to be the case. Of course the "market rate" will always
depress wages as much as possible, because that's what markets are supposed to
do - and also to excuse.

But there are human externalities, and it takes a rather strange view of the
value of human life to ignore them.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-
life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-
device-extract)

~~~
askafriend
My argument isn't to excuse Foxconn. It's to point out that we're having this
discussion at the wrong zoom level.

There are complex geopolitical, social, and economic factors involved. In the
system that exists, Foxconn is actually one of the better if not best actors.

But of course HN wants to boil it down to Apple cutting a check to Foxconn
employees because iPhone.

Yes let's severely gimp a domestic company that generates over 5% of America's
GDP (and 1% of the world's) in favor of paying Chinese manufacturers much more
- when China incessantly steals American IP without care and prevents foreign
companies from competing in their domestic markets. Great idea.

~~~
benologist
I don't really see how this is about Foxconn. Foxconn only hires those people
for Apple and Apple only have Foxconn do it because they'd have to pay more to
do it themselves. How much they're paid is dictated by Apple.

I think there's some parallel with Uber's contractor-vs-employee situation but
it's much more apparent when you consider these people are exclusively working
on Apple devices, within Apple's supply chain, subject to Apple's rules and
rulings, even some of the components and the software come from Apple
employees.

Their $1.70 an hour should be compared to the US federal minimum wage or
something because that's the number Apple decided to skip out on, even as they
hoarded a quarter trillion dollars.

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askafriend
"If not to buy Apple, what’s the substitute – Samsung? Don’t you know that
Samsung’s products are from its OEM factory in Tianjin? Samsung workers’
income and benefits are even worse than those at Foxconn. If not to buy iPad –
(do you think) I will buy Android Pad? Have you ever been to the OEM factories
for Lenovo and ASUS? Quanta, Compaq … factories of other companies are all
worse than those for Apple. Not to buy iPod – (do you think) I will buy Aigo,
Meizu? Do you know that Aigo’s Shenzhen factory will not pay their workers
until the 19th of the second month? If you were to quit, fine, I’m sorry, your
salary will be withdrawn. Foxconn never dares to do such things. First, their
profit margin is higher than peers as they manufacture for Apple. Second, at
least those foreign devils will regularly audit factories. Domestic brands
will never care if workers live or die. I am not speaking for Foxconn. I am
just speaking as an insider of this industry, and telling you some disturbing
truth"

\- Anonymous Chinese Worker

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/many-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/many-
chinese-workers-want-those-jobs-foxconn/332419/)

Again, I don't point this out because I think the conditions are OK. I simply
point this out to provide context and relativity to the situation. Do you
really think Apple is responsible for fixing China's problems? I don't think
so. But they DO take responsibility and have made strides in improving
conditions for workers that work on their products. And that, I can
appreciate.

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z3t4
These workers are basically human robots, but they are not only faster and
more accurate then robots, they are much cheaper!

~~~
jhayward
> they are not only faster and more accurate then robots, they are much
> cheaper!

That's why they still hire humans. If the above statement wasn't true, they
would be replaced with a robotic system.

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csense
We should tariff those iPhones to take out of Apple's pocket all the money
they save by not paying their people decent wages.

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linyu0219
谢谢富士康和苹果，他们提供了很多工作机会，解决了基本的生存问题。

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jftuga
Why is 40 the max age?

Just curious.

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acct1771
Constant manual labor, and very long hours, with not enough break in between.

