
Riot breaks out at Foxconn's Taiyuan plant - llambda
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/23/foxconn-taiyuan-riot/
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hmottestad
The whole Foxconn world reminds me of history lessons at primary school where
we learned about the industrial revolution in the UK. Back then whole families
lived and worked at a factory, the children too, before the onset of child
labor laws.

Then one after the other factories became more machine centric and less labor
intensive before they started moving east and the west became richer and less
dependent on creating physical products.

Now we have become acclimatized to cheap production in the east at a time of
great segregation between the rich and the poor. And protests and riots will
have to continue until we realize that our luxury lives are still dependent on
10, 100, maybe 1000 other people who have to live in poverty.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well the circumstances have remarkable similarities. Much of China's economic
growth has been attributed to underpaid agricultural labor becoming better
paid factory labor. (still underpaid but less so perhaps). That raises the
amount of disposable income people have which raises their standard of living.

The next chapter in this book are unions (well that was the chapter that
followed urban migration in many other countries) where the workers, demanding
a fair wage for their work strike and stop production. This chapter can't
start until there aren't enough underpaid agri-workers to fill the positions,
but once there are, look out.

How all of that plays out in a totalitarian regime is not well understood at
all. In the US and elsewhere the folks to took union organizers out behind a
shed and shot them were eventually brought to justice and punished, enough so
that the practice became too risky for the factories. It has been suggested
that in highly corrupt or complicit governments that correcting force (justice
for organizers against being shot) may prevent the formation of effective
unions. And how _that_ plays out on the world scene is even less well known
since Europe and the US went through the union chapter when there wasn't
instantaneous communication around the world.

Interesting times indeed.

~~~
shimon_e
How are they underpaid? Are you suggesting they would be making more money
fulfilling a local economic need with similar skills and risks? China's
economic growth is due to an oversupply of unskilled labour that are able to
be trained at a cheaper cost than western automation.

Read up how BYD started up. It is very enlightening. The west had modern
battery factories yet couldn't compete with BYD on the price of it's hand made
batteries.

~~~
scarmig
Well, underpaid by what metric? If each Chinese laborer produces $100/day in
profit but only gets paid $10/day, morally they're being underpaid. And the
fact that so many companies are still moving operations to China is itself
evidence that on average more profit is allocated to capital holders when they
use Chinese labor over, say, Californian.

But even if you take liberal/market ideology at face value, they're still
being underpaid. To have a free market you've got to have free people. If you
agitate for more workplace protections or (god forbid) try to start an
independent labor union, getting shot or sent to a prison camp in the far
western provinces of China isn't out of the question. This decreases labor's
bargaining power relative to what it would be in a free market, which
decreases wages.

~~~
shimon_e
Ok, I accept your second point. Regarding the first... If there was an
unskilled labour that, by itself could produce $100/day profit for a majority
of people, then you wouldn't have any $10/day labourers. This $100/day profit
is only possible with the value added by the skilled labour. It is like this
everywhere. For example, the artist who made the facebook logo only got paid
in the hundreds of dollars yet the facebook logo produces much more than 10x
that in profit. Yet, without the value that the facebook product adds to the
logo, it would have been worthless. You wouldn't argue that the artist is
underpaid.

~~~
__alexs
No i'd argue that your are attributing too much value to the logo _and_ that
the artist was underpaid.

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scarmig
This is a very relevant and timely essay:

<http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/china-in-revolt/>

Extremely interesting, especially if you enjoy reading left perspectives on
global labor issues. The tldr of it is that Chinese workers aren't simply
exploited, culturally-destined to obedience, and at the mercies of Western
oligarchs and do-gooders: they're actively molding and negotiating their own
rights and fates, though they still face their own unique challenges.

~~~
keithpeter
"Minimum wages are going up by double digits in cities around the country and
many workers are receiving social insurance payments for the first time." -
from linked article

The article linked to by parent is interesting, although the vocabulary is
leftist.

You know how Western economies generate around 70 to 80% of gdp from activity
_within_ their borders (exceptions being Canada and NZ because of extraction
industries). When China gets near that percentage, will they need this cheap
assembly and fabrication work?

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shimon_e
Chinese riots are like Chinese night clubs. Boring and dull.

Example: Anti-Japan riots. 1000s of Chinese. One Lexus. Barely any damage even
using hammers.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKnuILXFVZI&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKnuILXFVZI&feature=related)

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jdietrich
As always, it is necessary to point out that Foxconn has 1.2 million
employees, most of whom live in company-owned accommodation. Foxconn's HR
issues are in many ways better understood by regarding them as a small country
rather than a company. With a population of 1.2 million, all sorts of very
unusual things become statistical inevitabilities. By any reasonable measure,
Foxconn is in fact exceptionally safe and peaceful.

On the topic of whether Foxconn workers are underpaid, they are clearly not -
they perform work of exceptionally low value, most of which is performed by
hand for no reason other than that Chinese peasants are cheaper than machines.
Foxconn operates on very low margins and earns only a tiny fraction of the
retail price of the devices they manufacture. The value in consumer
electronics is primarily R&D; Without the investment of hundreds of billions
of dollars in microelectronics research, these workers would still be peasants
and their American and European counterparts would be working 10-hour shifts
manufacturing vacuum tubes and phonograph needles.

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FredericJ
Will the iPhone 5 production be affected ? Probably I guess

~~~
shimon_e
No. If any affect was caused it would be made up with overtime in the next
shift. If they need to they would pay bonuses. The few dollars extra verses a
loss in sales due to no stock in stores...

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shimon_e
According to the latest reports surfacing it started with a fight in between
10 workers from different production lines involving a guard somehow. It is
already mid day in China and no one know what the exact story is.

Maybe more accurate to call this a group fight with a few thousand spectators.
Like I said earlier comments earlier most people seemed to be pretty calm.

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Flam
How easy it would be to fly in, secretly meet with dozens of these employees,
tell them to spread the word that if they riot they will each get a sum of
money, and watch the bad publicity grow.

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geori
Steve would never have let this happen.

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samstave
Meaning he would never let this news hit the media?

