We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

http://www.nlcnet.org/reports?id=0034

by samd • 16 years ago

293 195 16 years ago

nlcnet.org

dean• 16 years ago

"China does not have unions ..."

Oh the irony. A communist country that exploits its workers like a true capitalist.

akgerber• 16 years ago

China, of course, only being nominally communist.

eru12• 16 years ago

And capitalists only exploiting workers when it pays.

josefresco• 16 years ago

One could argue that China is either the worst of both worlds (capitalism/communism) or the best of both worlds.

eru12• 16 years ago

Or something more nuanced.

jhancock7• 16 years ago

China is in no way a communist country. What is was before can be left to the opinions of those that experienced it. What it is now is most certainly not communist by any definition I know.

China is very uneven in its protections. Wal-Mart attempted to preclude unions when it opened in China, much like it has managed to fight them in the U.S. Somewhere between citizens and government, it was decided Wal-Mart could not do this; Wal-Mart was clearly told that unionizing was protected by the China constitution. Of course, this is a grand exception to the standard that the boss controls the game more than government rules do and government regulation is highly uneven.

latch• 16 years ago

"Everyone tries to keep an eye on the time, constantly looking at their watches. Time crawls by very slowly."

In fairness, time always moves slowly when you stare at the clock...

gluu• 16 years ago

I thought this was going to be about grad student life

SamAtt• 16 years ago

"China does not have unions ..."

China might not have unions but they do have child labor laws and if those aren't doing the trick I don't know how a union would. It's a market with a poor, easily exploitable labor pool desperate for work (they have double digit unemployment in the rural areas and the nation's average salary is under $6,000 a year).

So I can't see how a union would help unskilled workers when the factory could easily fire the whole factory and have it full again within a week

jhancock7• 16 years ago

Its my understanding China's constitution does protect unions. China is a nation of many provinces, each differing in their respect to national rules. Even within wealthy, better regulated provinces like Shanghai, behavior is highly uneven. I have seen cases where unions and other labor laws (maternity rights is a huge one) were heavily weighed in favor of the laborer. Its still not enough.

mburney• 16 years ago

I thought this was going to be about working in an American corporate office

kwyjibo• 16 years ago

I thought it was about running a startup in the early days ;)

watmough2• 16 years ago

So, hypothetically, wage parity might be achieved by Chinese workers making 5 - 7x more than they do now, whilst American worker would make 5 - 7x less.

Obviously prices in the US for healthcare, food and housing need to come down somewhat.

lsc3• 16 years ago

I think what we see is a (hopefully temporary) situation where there are people so poor that they are willing to work cheaper than machines. Because Americans are not going to go back to doing that work, it's not really a situation where Chinese labour is competing against American labour. the Chinese labour is competing against American /machines/

watmough2• 16 years ago

Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines.

There was a story on feats of Chinese manufacturing on YC not long ago, showing a guy sewing Chumby covers in 4 seconds flat. No machine could do that.

If you go look at HobbyCity, there are 30 gram brushless motors that are efficient, and can suck down 9 amps. Great for powering foamies, and most likely built and wound by hand. Cost $9 and up.

It's hard to conceive of an America that could perform such feats. It's been and gone.

I don't know if wage pressures will push wages up in China, but I do know there are a lot of qualified people unemployed, and plenty of unemployed unqualified people, and a government that needs to steer away from a housing and stocks bubble.

I'm not expecting this to be temporary, much as I wish life for the Chinese workers could improve.

Disclaimer: Typed on an iMac (Made in China), Mitsumi/Apple Bluetooth Keyboard (Made in China), MS Mouse (Made in China).

weezer2• 16 years ago

I don't condone conditions like this, but everyone should be able to put this in the context of the general standard of living in China. I've been to dorms in Chinese Universities and they don't look much different from the dorms these workers live in.

The average income per person is $6,600, but still 10% of China's population, mostly rural people, live on less than $1 a day. (There are some very rich people in the cities bringing the mean up) The people working in these factories are mostly rural youth, not well educated, doing the best to provide for their families and earn more than what they can doing small scale farming.

I'm not convinced that how our western eyes view things is the same as how locals view this. Even taking home $.50 an hour like the article says means $2000 a year. If you used to be making a dollar a day, this factory job is much better than a dead end job as a farmer. Just keep that in mind.

huherto3• 16 years ago

Very good comment. They are better off with these jobs than without them. Still, they should have some basic working conditions. Such as max 45hrs a week. 2 week vacation a year, etc.

weezer2• 16 years ago

The Chinese government has three (approximately) week long holiday periods around the lunar new year, labor day, and national day. For factories like the one described in the article, they can expect up to about 30% of their workers to leave on vacation and not come back.

ibsulon2• 16 years ago

Factory workers here would revolt if you limited them to 45 hours. Many regularly work 60.

roel_v5• 16 years ago

Right, because working more than 45 hours a week is a crime against humanity and here in the civilized West nobody ever works more than that rollseyes

I have a cushy office job but the friends from my adolescent years are now mostly blue collar.workers. Those who have their own businesses (one-man shops: plumbing, construction contractors, painters, those type of jobs) work 50 to 60 hours a week, plus client meetings and paperwork in the evenings and on Sundays. Those who work in factories work regular weeks of 40 hours and they put "Yay! I'm getting overtime!" statuses on their facebook pages when they get to work another 10 or so hours, either during the week (evenings) or on Saturdays. Of course sometimes they complain too when their boss asks them to work on the day after a big soccer game or whatever and when they had rather slept in, but in general the overtime is what makes the pay quite good - so it is mostly considered a perk to get to work overtime.

That is in Belgium, if that matters.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

I'm sure I've read that the 40 hour week was created because someone did some measurements and realized that if you worked people for longer than that on a regular basis, then they got tired and started messing up. That is, the limit is for the benefit of the business, not the employee.

BoppreH3• 16 years ago

Exactly. People on first world countries (especially Americans, for some reason, but I won't go into that) seem to forget that the same dollar buys different things around the world.

For example, the workers in that factory pay ~$1.50 a day for factory food. I don't think you can get food for a day with that amount in a place that accepts dollar as the main currency.

krschultz7• 16 years ago

No, but I can certainly get equal food for less than $10 a day in NYC where I live now. Hell I basically buy whatever food I want when I go through the grocery store without looking at price tags (it's food, why skimp on the basics?) and Mint.com is telling me my average food in a month - including liquor and restaurants, is about $450 or $15 a day. (I cook at home almost every day, so for me eating out/liquor is about $150 and groceries about 300).

In contrast - minimum wage is $7.50. So making the absolute bare minimum I could pay for food in 2 hours in the US, and roughly 3 in China. In exchange I eat chicken, fish, steak, or ground beef for every single dinner with some vegatebles and something else. I have eggs a lot of days for breakfast, and a real lunch every day. I have dessert, fresh fruit, coffee, juice, milk.

That's everything I could possibly want. And you can pay for it in 2 hours a day in the US. What would it cost these kids to pay for that kind of food? More than their whole day's salary.

binarymax• 16 years ago

The comment that kept jumping out at me was using a bucket as a shower. I was living in Thailand for about 1.5 years and apart from my lavish westernized apartment in Bangkok, about half the places I stayed in had buckets for showers. The first time I used one I kind of complained, but I got used to it quickly.

Then, when I moved back to England, my girlfriend at the time lived in a council flat. There was a bathtub but not enough water pressure for a shower. Luckily by that time I was an expert with the bucket.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

Even fairly rich Indian families often use bucket baths rather than showers.

I know of a a wealthy stock broker in India, and his estate is unusual in that it has a shower. He never bothered to hook it up to the hot water since no one uses it.

SanPedroGrouch• 16 years ago

As an American I need to ask what is a council flat? Is that like what we might call "public housing"? (Cheap, often low-quality)

And how did you like life in Bangkok?

ErrantX4• 16 years ago

Yes you got it: cheap public housing. Councils are the local area authorities (either county or town level).

Quarrelsome2• 16 years ago

Yep. It used to be the case that council housing was given as part of social care and/or at subsidised rents. It still is, to a degree but nowhere near the amount it used to. Originally it was part of resettling the displaced population after WW2 and the bombing of the UK.

The Tories back in the 80's decided that "home owners" were Tory voters so introduced a "right to buy" scheme that enabled tenants to purchase their properties at discounted costs. This means that a lot of council property in the UK is now actually private property. A lot of people made a lot of money with these purchases due to the recent housing booms. However it is a case of location, location, location as some lost money as in some locations properties can be practically worthless (Hull or Burnley being examples).

rubyrescue2• 16 years ago

How do people who are appalled by this not contribute to it without exiting the world of technology altogether? I can't imagine the factories for Apple or Dell are any better...

Is there a "no-sweatshop" watchdog organization for tech that says what equipment is manufactured in better conditions?

lsc3• 16 years ago

how effective do you think such an organization could be?

For example, the first job I worked at the age of 14-15 was below 'minimum wage' in my area and thus could be called an 'illegal sweatshop' but realistically, considering my background and options (I had no immediate financial need to work; this was my 'foot in the door') it was just some kid getting some experience.

The thing is, I didn't go to school. (I mean, I went to highschool, but that's little more than babysitting. I didn't go to college) If you want to get a job that requires a degree without having that degree, you need to do that job for a smaller company that is paying you way below market rates before you can do that job at market rates. It's the way it works, and it worked out fine for me. I ended up making more than anyone I grew up with.

I'm not saying that my situation compares with that of the Chineese teens; I'm just saying, you need to be careful to define sweatshop in a way that would protect those who need protecting, without getting in the way of those who don't. My stepmother made me quit my first job after she found out that not only were they paying me under the table, they didn't have workman's comp. I was being "exploited." I mean, I was being exploited. But it was a hugely positive experience with me. The shady computer repair place sold me discounted used computer parts for years to come, and I was able to get a (legal, minimum wage, with school credit) job at one of the local county offices that was a customer of the shady computer repair place the next summer, so it all worked out okay in the end, but without getting that foot in the door, who knows how long it would have taken my career to take off?

I'm not saying yours isn't a worthy goal, just... you need to be careful with it.

rubyrescue2• 16 years ago

I appreciate your anecdotes and I had similar experiences, but I don't think those examples are comparable to the life of a factory worker in China.

I agree there's no simple way to define the standard, but there should be a higher bar than this.

hugh3• 16 years ago

So forget Apple and Dell and stick to "Made in Japan" stuff.

I think most Japanese companies still build at least their high-end stuff in Japan since the Japanese market can be picky about this kind of thing.

cosmicray• 16 years ago

With respect to Apple, they annually publish a supplier responsibility report. You can get access to it here ... http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if Apple's professed claims make it better than what is depicted in the OP's story.

adrianwaj• 16 years ago

I'd pay more for equipment that was stamped with some Humane Threshold level, like food passes an organic or biodynamic level.

It should be easier as PDAs and mobile devices obtain barcode or QR scanners: scan an item at a shop, then see if it is approved. You don't need manufacturer cooperation, who would only participate if there was a mass boycott of their goods, which won't happen so long as prices are so low. But once consumers start checking on their own, they might opt-in.

Bottom-up change.

rajdevar• 16 years ago

i am feeling lucky to work in U.S.A (best country to work) after reading this..i think i shouldn't brag about a few extra hours i work.

Quarrelsome2• 16 years ago

"best country to work" have you heard of France? I think they have a maximum 30 hour work week. :O Although I guess this depends on your definition of "best" ;)

middus• 16 years ago

I think you have been misinformed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek

krschultz7• 16 years ago

What are the other differences? I'll take 5 extra hours a week for keeping a much larger part of my pay after taxes and avoiding the unemployment they have.

And I'm not a conservative at all, I'm one pushing for higher taxes when necessary, but even I think that hours at work is a terrible way to measure happiness at work. I had a 40 hour a week job and I hated it, now I have a 50 hour a week job and love it.

potatolicious7• 16 years ago

This article, IMHO, is written by someone who has no idea how things work just about anywhere that's not the industrialized West, and is shocked and appalled that things aren't as awesome as they are in the US of A.

It's a also a reminder for those of us who live in such ridiculous comfort and freedom that it can get much, much worse.

That being said, I think this article is sensationalist tripe:

> "The idea that ‘without sweatshops workers would starve to death' is a lie that corporate bosses use to cover their guilt."

Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this. It's a straw man; her family was extremely poor, but not in danger of starvation. Without sweatshop labor she wouldn't have starved to death, but she also wouldn't have been able to go to school, get educated, get employed in a white collar job, and eventually move abroad.

Anecdotes do not data make, but knee-jerk emotional reactions and weasel words don't help anyone.

> "To "shower," workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket to take a sponge bath."

I hope the author realizes this is common in Asia. Hell, that's how I grew up - showers were somewhat foreign and scary when I first encountered them. Surely there are more convincing indictments about the evils of this workplace.

> "We (who?) would respect us? We are ordered around and told what to do and what not to do. No one in management has ever asked us about anything. There is no discussion. You feel no respect."

This is why I can't take this article seriously - this is also how factories work in the West, where labor laws are followed and abuses minimal. Do we seriously expect factories to be a creative, communal endeavor where management talks everything over with line workers? This isn't office work.

Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11.

Looking at the pictures in the article, this place looks no different than a million other factories in any other developing country. In fact, the conditions look downright sanitary, which isn't always the case. To me this isn't much more than another comfortable Westerner shocked and appalled that conditions are so much worse everywhere else in the world. Hi, welcome to reality.

> "While working, the young people cannot talk, use their cell phones or listen to music."

... and this is different than other factories how? Even in the West this is basically the case. What, do you think a production line is happy happy fun times where workers chat on a bluetooth headset with their friends while assembling electronics?

> "Workers need permission to use the bathroom or drink water."

It's an assembly line! How privileged do you have to be to consider walking away to the bathroom randomly at work to be anything but a luxury? Hell, it's a luxury that even in this country many people do not have.

> "Security guards search workers' bags and pockets as they leave the factory."

Same in the USA, especially in warehousing/supply chain jobs.

The only thing really convincingly bad about this particular workplace that the author has exposed are the long hours, but this is also typical of the country it operates in. Workers are paid for their overtime, and many in fact prefer it - many are doing this only as a means to something else - education, rescuing family from poverty, etc, and overtime means they get there more quickly. I really don't see anything egregiously or especially bad this place compared to any other factory one might come across - and it reads like a hit piece against Microsoft.

ShabbyDoo2• 16 years ago

I recall reading one Brit's assessment of a Nike "sweatshop" in Vietnam. One of the main concerns of the employees was that overtime opportunities be provided.

I'm now considering an out-of-town consulting engagement, and I'd much prefer to work 10+ hours four days a week and have a long weekend with my family. Perhaps these workers are taking this to the extreme -- six months on and six months off?

ibsulon2• 16 years ago

These workers are taking it to the extreme: 12 months on, their kids have a shot at going to college rather than working in a factory.

krschultz7• 16 years ago

Or the other extreme - 65 years on, infinite sleep off.

edw519• 16 years ago

Nice comment.

I also started reading this, expecting something Upton Sinclairesque, until I read

While working, the young people cannot talk, use their cell phones or listen to music.

Duh. I know quite a few places here in the U.S. that would double their output with a rule like that.

Legion• 16 years ago

I hear you on the cell phones and even talking part.

But music, man... nothing makes it easier to slog through repetitive tasks like being able to toss on the headphones and block out everything outside my little bubble.

Luckily my work life has progressed past that stage, but in crappy college jobs, yeah...

abentspoon2• 16 years ago

Yes. The article was full of this.

> All workers must trim their fingernails so as not to impede production.

> Workers are strictly prohibited from entering any work area other than their own.

> Workers describe factory food as awful.

Teenagers complaining about cafeteria food? Really? I'm sure conditions are bad, but the article is trying too hard.

As bad as things are, the boy interviewed comes back each night for four hours of voluntary overtime.

randrews• 16 years ago

According to the rules:

> When the manager arranges overtime, employees are not allowed secretly or openly to avoid overtime if they do not have permission.

Not exactly "voluntary" overtime.

lutorm2• 16 years ago

"Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11."

Your comment made me think: Privileged white collar shows complete disregard for those that have it worse. News at 11.

wdewind8• 16 years ago

Did you even read his entire comment?

potatolicious7• 16 years ago

Despite what you might think, I'm no Ayn Rand-quoting objectivist ;)

What I do think is that this article makes much ado about nothing - sweatshop labor permitted my parents' generation to pull themselves out of poverty, get educated, and get white collar jobs - in fact my mother and all of her siblings eventually all got white collar, comfortable desk jobs.

What we're looking at is a country in a natural evolutionary state towards wealth - much like the US's tendency to impose democracy on nations with no foundation necessary for its success, it would IMHO be disastrous to attempt to enforce Western standards of work (or hell, enforcing white collar definitions of what is reasonable and fair).

Taiwan has evolved from a cheap-labor, sweatshop labor model to an educated, R&D-centric model. The island has gone from an agrarian backwater to one of the urban jewels of the Pacific. I am glad that this has happened - and yet I'm not convinced it would have gone down that well if well-meaning Western labor activists had their way.

I do think that fundamental worker safety must be ensured - companies certainly have proven that they can't be trusted to do that on their own, but enforcing someone's "right" to use a cell phone while working? Really?

DrJokepu3• 16 years ago

When I was studying for my first degree (in mechanical engineering) I had to do a one month long internship as a factory worker after my first year (in an EU country). It was truly an eye opener experience, both in terms of understanding how industrial production looks like from below, experiencing the life of a blue collar worker and as a motivation to take my studies seriously (to avoid having to have a job like that) as well.

I think short "slave work" internships for first year students should be more common.

rapind• 16 years ago

Exactly, but more like News at never. Our ratings votes dictate we rarely see a piece on slave labour and sweatshops.

I did find the article pretty sensationalist. The sexual harassment issues are believable though and weren't picked up on in these comments.

jhancock7• 16 years ago

Your comments are pretty fair and your feelings on what your family went through in '60s Taiwan I take as genuine.

However, it was not only hard work that bootstrapped Taiwan out of poverty. Some part of Taiwan's current comfort is due to moving its most extreme labor and environmental problems to other Asian countries, namely China. So now China and a few others are at the bottom of the supply chain...who do they pass the buck to to lift themselves out of these conditions?

jdminhbg2• 16 years ago

"So now China and a few others are at the bottom of the supply chain...who do they pass the buck to to lift themselves out of these conditions?"

Probably Vietnam, and then robots.

tokenadult3• 16 years ago

who do they pass the buck to to lift themselves out of these conditions?

To whoever has the best comparative advantage, as economics has always worked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

r0s4• 16 years ago

many are doing this only as a means to something else - education, rescuing family from poverty, etc

Well this is the crux right here, we can't put something like this is context without good data. Do these workers actually make a living wage? What is the cost of living in this part of the world, and most importantly, do any workers actually escape poverty over time? Things like these can be measured, and we should demand more from any news source.

I happen to disagree with your point of view, but it's meaningless if all we have is conjecture based on personal experience.

Edit: If your personal experience is actually from that level of poverty in that particular part of the world, then please, by all means, tell us what it's like.

cryptnoob2• 16 years ago

     all we have is conjecture based on personal experience

I like it! Can I use it? I can refute anything with that. What a tremendously useful sentence.

"No baby, you can't know that this will hurt. All you have is conjecture based on personal experience. Now come over here."

pyre• 16 years ago

  >> "Security guards search workers' bags and pockets
  >> as they leave the factory."
  >
  > Same in the USA, especially in warehousing/supply
  > chain jobs.

You're also forgetting casino workers. The people in casinos that handle money are all required for to have whatever purses/bags they bring to work be transparent (usually plastic). I've seen the same thing for workers at airports too. [ I was sitting at Newark in the middle of the night once and a ton of workers came into the terminal from an employees-only door and all of them had clear plastic purses and backpacks. ]

{edit} I was sitting at the airport waiting to talk to an airline rep about getting on the next plane out. I was caught up in this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6... and missed my connecting flight (since it was cancelled due to the terminal being locked down).

dougp• 16 years ago

I used to work at an amusement park that did that as well.

warfangle• 16 years ago

Gamestop stores have a policy of making their employees turn out their pockets and show their socks to a supervisor every time they leave the store.

What shocked me more about this was the worker who was fined for losing his finger.

illumin8• 16 years ago

My mother-in-law worked in a factory in Taiwan in the 1960s. They didn't believe in providing ear protection to their workers and the loud machinery caused her permanent hearing loss in both ears that she still suffers from to this day. She can only hear out of one ear with a hearing aid, and her family has to shout at her just to barely communicate.

Apparently you have no idea how bad it really is there. Here in the US we went through the industrial revolution in the 1800s, when they used to have child labor in factories, letting thousands of children get harmed or injured by unsafe machinery, sending children on suicide missions into mine shafts, chimneys, etc.

We learned over a hundred years ago that those labor practices are barbaric and unnecessary to provide a healthy economic condition for our country.

Why shouldn't we expect the countries we purchase products from to treat their workers with a modicum of respect and humanity?

potatolicious7• 16 years ago

> " They didn't believe in providing ear protection to their workers and the loud machinery caused her permanent hearing loss in both ears that she still suffers from to this day."

My mother lost a segment of her right middle finger, and my grandfather eventually died of hazardous substances breathed in during his work. My father survived a chlorine tank breach by a hair - a low wall was the only thing between him and certain death.

None have regretted working there despite this. This isn't an argument against workplace safety - this is an argument against enforcing non-safety-related labor policies in developing countries where that is their chief advantage, and removal of it will harm economic development. Industrial jobs, shitty and brutal as they may be by our living and working standards, is a crucial part of the economic development of these countries.

Note that the author of the article's chief points are all based on how "bad" life is for these workers, and only one point is even remotely related to safety hazards in the workplace. His complaints range for anything from not being allowed cell phones in the factory to terrible food to hot-bunking in the employee dormitories. These are not at all safety issues, and thus IMHO something we must allow economic development and time to fix.

If the author has some real meat about flagrant safety violations in a factory, I would like to hear it, otherwise I stand by my assessment that this is nothing more than sensationalist reporting.

khafra• 16 years ago

> We learned over a hundred years ago that those labor practices are barbaric and unnecessary to provide a healthy economic condition for our country.

I really don't think that's the way it worked. I think that a sufficient amount of hard work and suffering in unendurably harsh conditions built up productive capital much faster than humane treatment and safe working conditions could have. Then, this massive advantage we'd built allowed us to expend more resources making work more tolerable, and export the less pleasant parts of building modern civilization abroad.

exit• 16 years ago

> Privileged white collars shocked and dismayed that blue collar work can really, really suck. News at 11.

I know you have the entire article in mind when you say this, but your associated excerpt is a direct quotation from one of the factory workers.

> "We (who?) would respect us? We are ordered around and told what to do and what not to do. No one in management has ever asked us about anything. There is no discussion. You feel no respect."

So unless you question the authenticity of that quotation, i think you're being extremely dismissivie of not just the white-collar western observers who wrote and read this article.

Factory work may have given you a life beyond poverty. It may even have worked out for your mother, in the end. That says nothing of how much she suffered while working in those conditions.

potatolicious7• 16 years ago

> "So unless you question the authenticity of that quotation"

I do not, and I sympathize with the frustration. That being said, this article is alleging some kind of gross, inhuman, deplorable condition in the plant, and attempting to pin this on Microsoft in the process. This quote does nothing to justify this conclusion, and the fact that someone can perceive this kind of dissatisfaction as some sort of harsh indictment on the working conditions shows a complete disconnect between them and the realities of production line work.

Note that I mentioned that blue collar industries in our country are the same - if the author himself had any notion of how factory work goes, he would know that his quote from a frustrated Chinese factory worker proves exactly nothing. If he wants to allege unacceptable conditions by virtue of the fact that managements acts without consultation with line workers, he should rightly level this claim at just about every factory in existence, everywhere.

JanezStupar• 16 years ago

My mother (1941 born), went to work 15 years old to sustain her mother and two siblings. She worked 16 hour workdays, 10 hour factory job and the rest working on a farm for shelter and food. She worked hard up to her 60's, never complaining about anything being too hard. She raised three kids and still accomplished a lot.

Her generation had it even harder than these kids (many of their peers do!), while enduring hunger and scarcity.

Looking on today's spoiled western civilization - I really can't help but to feel that we have it too well. I mean - leisure really ain't something humanity has been built for.

I predict that this Chinese generation will, ultimately prove as more satisfied and fulfilled than the one in 50 years.

Groxx• 16 years ago

Ah, the requisite "noble savage"-style claim. Life is better when suffered through.

krschultz7• 16 years ago

And 1941 was vastly removed from 1841. People were writing these EXACT same articles in western countries in the mid 19th century. Other people argued against them with exactly the same argument you just made, along with many others just like the ones in these threads. Nobody in countries that have long since passed this part of their history would say we would have been better off if not for those damn sweatshop busting muckrackers.

foldr2• 16 years ago

>I mean - leisure really ain't something humanity has been built for.

Actually, it's thought that pre-agricultural humans had quite a bit of leisure time. It was agriculture and civilization that forced people to work longer hours.

EliRivers2• 16 years ago

"This article, IMHO, is written by someone who has no idea how things work just about anywhere that's not the industrialized West"

Seems to have a pretty good idea how things work in a factory in China.

BoppreH3• 16 years ago

One factory in China. It's quite a difference. I bet the article would be a lot quieter if the author visited more factories there.

codexon6• 16 years ago

I have relatives in Taiwan and you are grossly exaggerating the situation to support your argument.

> Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this.

Much of Taiwan was poor because of Japanese occupation. Some were rich because of it. That divide is the sole reason Taiwan seemed poor to you.

My relatives prior to that, had enough land to farm and have a comfortable living. They were able to hire people to help. And from what I heard, that was the middle-class at the time. It is annoying that people look at the poorest farmers who probably had barely-arable land and tilled by hand as proof that all farmers are better off being in a sweat-shop.

When WWII came around, the Japanese began to militarize. They seized some of the best land, and they demanded ALL the rice and other staple crops from every farmer. One of my relatives hid some rice to eat, and was beaten to death when the Japanese found out.

Meanwhile, the Japanese were trying to assimilate Taiwan quickly, so they artificially consolidated economic power into the Taiwanese who hated China: the rich and nobles who fled from the Communist uprising. This redistribution of wealth impacted my relatives for generations, even today.

The outcome? The new upper-class were able to own the natural resources, the capital, and the businesses, while my relatives and many others were left with less land and a decade of lost wealth. Those people lived the life of luxury throughout the 1960's. Tales rebounded of bosses that sat around playing mahjong, harassing female workers, or flying all over the world, while exploited workers worked for their enrichment from 6AM-10PM. However, even this did not last very long.

Many companies already started to relocate their sweatshops to China by the late 60's.

Taiwan did not need sweatshop labor to pull itself out of poverty. That is highly insulting. It was not because of laziness or stupidity that much of Taiwan was so poor. Like you, my parents' brothers and sisters all graduated from college with graduate degrees. They were forced to to waste 4+ years of their life and money, just so they could be of service to the ruling-class.

Meanwhile even today, my college graduated uncle with 15 years of experience is being outranked at a bank by one of the privileged who is fresh from high school. Because businesses pay out workers far less the owners, the gap created by Japan will never be closed.

This is why I am not a gung-ho free-capitalist, but I realize that if I were in their shoes, I would definitely be one.

potatolicious7• 16 years ago

> "Tales rebounded of bosses that sat around playing mahjong, harassing female workers, or flying all over the world, while exploited workers worked for their enrichment from 6AM-10PM."

It sounds like your beef is with the KMT, not the Japanese - it is true that the Japanese occupation enriched (justly or otherwise) a lot of Taiwanese families, but the ones doing the "sitting around" after the occupation ended were primarily KMT bureaucrats.

As a matter of fact, this is something the older generation complains about endlessly. Despite being second-class citizens under Japanese rule, the government ran like clockwork; contrast with post-KMT-takeover Taiwan where the government became unfathomably inept and corrupt. This trend did not even begin to reverse itself until legitimate, sizable political opposition began to form against the KMT.

Side note: Said opposition (the DPP) turned out to be just as corrupt, if not moreso, than the ones they formed to replace. Thankfully years of pressure from a significant opposition party, and several more of even-more-inept DPP rule has created some saner political choices in Taiwan.

> "Taiwan did not need sweatshop labor to pull itself out of poverty."

Then what did it need? Imaginary capital investments in our many fine local delicacies? Become a tourism-driven banana republic? Grow fruit for American mega-conglomerate fruit companies? The industrialization of Taiwan generated the necessary economic lift that, to be fair to the KMT, under sound governmental oversight, resulted in the country we see today.

I think it's incredibly disingenuous to pin the blame for everything on the Japanese - the KMT fucked up just as much as they got right. If you want to talk about government corruption, nepotism, and downright incompetence, the KMT is a far better example than the Japanese.

> "That is highly insulting. It was not because of laziness or stupidity that much of Taiwan was so poor."

I'm not sure what I've said that insinuates this... but that's certainly not what I meant. I'm also not sure how this point relates at all to the necessity of industrial economies for developing nations.

format997• 16 years ago

I'm actually rather disconcerted by this comment. The arguments presented use relativistic reasoning to justify the conditions in factories in China, i.e., "regardless of the dehumanizing conditions in the factory now, ultimately we are redeeming the lives of these people who would otherwise be trapped in poverty-stricken lives as farmers."

This argument fails on a number of grounds, the least of which is that we may or may not be improving there lives by hiring them to work 85 hour work weeks factories that lack any air conditioning. Perhaps some of these people were starving as farmers, perhaps many of them weren't. Do you have sources that point to the extent of the improvement that factory life is bringing?

Furthermore, do you know that this really is the road to improvement for this generation? You talk as if these factories really are gifts from generous westerners, as if these companies should feel justified, if not proud, that they are transforming and saving the lives of these workers. I recently heard a podcast on Radio West titled, "The Cost of a Two Dollar T-shirt." In it, the author took a non-sensationalist approach that the t-shirt factories in Cambodia really were humane, they were even air conditioned. However, he mentioned that these people still lived in shanty towns and barely made enough money after 60 hours of week to afford food. He also mentioned that their 33 cents an hour wages were lagging behind inflation, and, in fact, these workers were becoming, relatively speaking, poorer and poorer as the years went on. So, no, I disagree with your claim that any factory job + time = helping raise another country out of poverty.

(Link to the podcast I mentioned: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain/article...

Also, link to the original article by the guest on the podcast: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/0082784)

Lastly, you provide no justification for why the conditions need to be so bad. You seem to be saying that, since these workers were previously living in worse conditions and since we're improving that life, it's justified to either treat them inhumanely or exploit them. Their lives have been improved ergo they either have no right to complain or we have no responsibility or motive to do any better. There is no high road in your argument, only defensive argumentation and justification of labor practices that are well below what they should humanly be.

In the article I linked above, the author mentioned that the labor costs of making a t-shirt for a major corporation (Gap, Nike, Walmart, etc.) only made up 4% of the total cost of the product. If that's the case or even close to the case with the Microsoft factory mentioned in the original article, then going even so far as doubling the worker's wages would have a minimal impact on the bottom line of the product. At the very least, fat could be trimmed from the other 96-ish% of the cost of making the product to make room to improve the factory conditions.

Not only could most corporations afford to improve the wages of these workers, but what is lost by improving the conditions? Wouldn't workers who are sweating for an entire 16 hour shift be happier and more productive if the management spent more money on air conditioning? Even if find proof that happier workers aren't always more productive and perhaps sweatshop conditions really induce more productivity, there needs to be a line, a line of basic worker's rights, that prevents the downward price pressures from a competitive market from creating deplorable working conditions for anyone.

Your arguments seem to suggest that everyone goes through these deplorable factory conditions before they move onto a better life. Not only do they not NEED to go through these conditions, as ultimately someone has the power to change and improve the conditions of the factory, but these workers are not necessarily guaranteed that life will improve afterwards. Perhaps these working conditions become de facto and the workers don't make enough money to earn an education or gain the economic mobility to choose better working conditions. The system could just as easily become entrenched, leaving a class of workers trapped in poor working conditions for generations.

At the base of your arguments, I think it's frightening to ever use relativistic arguments to justify inhumane treatment. Take slavery in early American history: "Well, slaves used to live in malaria-ridden Africa in mud dwellings, and now at least they get a stable source of food and, most of the time, a wood shelter over their head." Deplorable conditions always need to be addressed and justified in present and absolute terms. Inhumane treatment is inhumane treatment, and active steps should always be taken to improve such conditions. The improvements should not be left up to the "benevolent" forces of time or ignored because the conditions are a (slight) improvement over previous conditions. If you're going to offer a poor farmer a job, you don't have the right to offer him a job with any such conditions that you choose.

Sure, I'll grant you that the article was sensationalist (maybe the photographs were taken without needing to be "smuggled out", etc), and I don't think any cause can be constructively advanced when such arguments are used. However, the majority of your arguments are morally objectionable and logically unsound.

wdewind8• 16 years ago

1) If the farmers were so happy and not starving, why did they CHOOSE to work in the factories?

2) As a nation, actually, I think the argument that everyone must go through those conditions is quite right. Children worked in sweatshops in downtown Manhattan < 100 years ago (actually still do if you look hard enough). I don't think he's justifying the conditions, I think he's simply saying "the trend is up not down," and that's really important.

Tichy• 16 years ago

"Lastly, you provide no justification for why the conditions need to be so bad."

I suppose that is the interesting question. I don't have an answer, and I don't want to defend the bad conditions. Just some thoughts for the sake of discussion:

- Maybe if money was invested in better work conditions, other factories with worse work conditions would be cheaper and get all the business. If that is the case, it might actually work to go for "green labels" on clothes, so that only factories with good working conditions get business (not sure if such labels exist yet or how feasible they would be).

- Still I think it has to be considered why people still work in these bad conditions. I don't think it is simply lack of unions. I am not in a union, yet working conditions for software developers seem fair. I assume that is because software developers are still in high demand. If workers were rare, I don't think companies could get away with treating them badly (unless they could enslave them, which the state should prevent).

mattmanser• 16 years ago

How the fuck did this comment get 145 upvotes?

light3• 16 years ago

>Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this. It's a straw man; her family was extremely poor, but not in danger of starvation. Without sweatshop labor she wouldn't have starved to death, but she also wouldn't have been able to go to school, get educated, get employed in a white collar job, and eventually move abroad. Anecdotes do not data make, but knee-jerk emotional reactions and weasel words don't help anyone.

Well thats leaps and bounds from what the article is portraying, in China university costs are around 15000 RMB / year minimum, a person working in such a factory would have to work for a whole year and save everything just to be able to afford one year in university. Furthermore, you would have to pass the national university entrance exam, which is very competitive. Finding jobs a white collar job as a university grad is now hard, as grads are a dime a dozen. And to go abroad you will have to be a top notch student, or have substantial capital - an even more preposterous proposition.

wdewind8• 16 years ago

The point we keep coming back to is:

This sounds a lot like America: NYU is $40k w/o dorming + the cost of living in NYC. When you graduate you'll be lucky to make over $36k.

elai• 16 years ago

It's not that much different from many high schools it sounds. Or a minimum wager job. No talking, cellphones or listening to music while in class unless your on your break. Many schools confiscate cell phones on sight. Bag searches, body searches, locker searches, drug tests and metal detectors are typical in many schools. And you got to follow teachers orders or your marks (wages) are docked. They'll tolerate you being a bit of an ass if your productive though. Hell when I was a gas station attendant & hot dog cart worker working alone, I had to avoid washroom breaks altogether/as much as possible, and make them quick!

Also, you live in shared rooms / dorms at boarding schools too.

drinian• 16 years ago

Recently, I read an article about how soccer balls, most of which are made in a certain town in Pakistan, were no longer sewn by children, thanks to pressure from Adidas and other international firms. The children now work making bricks. There was a quote in the article from a local decrying this as a mistake, saying that the children were learning a trade to support them for life, by making soccer balls.

But, last I checked, China, Pakistan, et. al. have a massive unemployment problem. Now, there's two ways to solve this -- the first is to make more jobs, the approach we see here. The other would be to reduce the size of the labor pool through enforcement of child labor laws, limitations on number of hours worked per week, mandatory and free schooling through age 18, social security programs to encourage the elderly to retire, etc.

These reforms happened in the US and Europe a century ago, when most people were objectively poorer than the people in these articles -- no television, electricity, cell phones, etc. Depressingly, I have to speculate that there is a fundamental break in expectations in the national zeitgeist of these countries that allows things to get this bad.

eru12• 16 years ago

> The other would be to reduce the size of the labor pool through enforcement of child labor laws, limitations on number of hours worked per week, mandatory and free schooling through age 18, social security programs to encourage the elderly to retire, etc.

Lump of labour fallacy? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)

jpcx01• 16 years ago

That about sums it up for me too. Well maybe not the prisoner part, my situation is purely of free choice.

zackattack• 16 years ago

What sucks is that when human workers are interchangeably minimally skilled commodities, management has no incentive to create a more humanized work environment: it causes no variation in output.

cryptnoob2• 16 years ago

This is BS.

     Over the past three years, unprecedented photographs of 
     exhausted teenaged workers, toiling and slumping asleep 
     on their assembly line during break time, have been 
     smuggled out of the KYE factory.

That's what they do there. Even the office workers do this. They turn off the lights, and for 20 minutes, they all put their heads down on their desk and try to nap. You may be put off that such behavior is "mandated". What if you don't feel like napping? But it's not "exhausted workers" passing out from lack of sleep. What crap this is.

"photographs ... smuggled out"? Really? I've taken these photos myself, with factory management standing next to me. To western eyes, seeing a room full of workers sitting in silence with their heads down, in the middle of a work day, is interesting, and I wanted to show my wife. No "smuggling" was necessary.

norswap• 16 years ago

The strong focus on Microsoft made this article sound suspicious to me from the start, but it got worse as I read.

peterwwillis2• 16 years ago

14 and 15 year olds should not be working in sweatshops. what the hell is wrong with the people defending this? this isn't the pampered western worker vs the average 3rd world worker, this is kids being forced to go without sleep and effectively without a life for pennies. fuck that. i know most people will argue something like "they are probably lucky to get it." it's still bad for them, and trying to justify the bad conditions with arguments like 'its expected of them' really exposes a true lack of empathy for one's fellow man and some pretty selfish reasoning.

sketerpot• 16 years ago

If you have a better alternative, do feel free to post your ideas.

chc• 16 years ago

I have empathy toward them and their harsh circumstances, but the thing I recognize is that the alternatives are mostly WORSE. In opinion writing, one of the key rules is that it's useless to simply complain about something — we have to offer a workable alternative. Failure to do this is one of the reasons why Bush's Iraq War was considered such a failure: He had a hugely successful plan to topple Saddam, but he didn't know where to go from there and lots of people suffered for it.

So I feel for people in bad conditions, but it's also important to have perspective about how bad "bad" can be.

ErrantX4• 16 years ago

I can understand your sentiment (Im sure I once shared it too). However please bear in mind this is a huge culture clash problem. Extended visits to the region will throw things in a new light (like it did for myself).

Now, clearly, conditions definitely are a problem in many places. However the general theory of working at 14/15 is more of a cultural thing and not an issue.

I don't think it's correct to dictate society rules such as "thou must not work under 16" just because we happened to stop that practice several years back. I find it a bit sadistic that we wish to dictate that sentiment to others...

Of course us then exploiting that work environment is a whole other problem.

Additionally; what's the solution? Stop all these kids working? What are they going to do? Really, seriously? Increased wages would be good - that is certainly something we should encourage.

Sandman3• 16 years ago

Additionally; what's the solution? Stop all these kids working? What are they going to do? Really, seriously?

Umm... I don't know, maybe go to school and get an education like the kids in Europe and the US do, so they can get a better job than this?

dantheman• 16 years ago

No people like you are bad for these people. People take the best job they can get, because you know what -- it makes their life better. Yeah working hard sucks, but you know what being in poverty sucks more. China is poor, to reach the standard of living found in the west (generated over decades if not centuries) they have to make up a lot of that effort. Technology/Productivity improvements significantly reduce the level of effort required, but eventually work needs to be done.

They can build cities, cars, etc -- but they need natural resource imports, so they must trade with the rest of the world. For some things it makes sense to purchase from the outside market, cheaper to purchase than make themselves, so once again they need to make something that the outside values. It's the most efficient use of their time.

As for possible inhumane treatment in the form of employer abuse, etc that of course is wrong and a different matter than just working hard.

eru12• 16 years ago

In Germany you used to start your apprenticeship at age 14.

peterwwillis2• 16 years ago

Do the apprentices work 15 hour shifts 6-7 days a week? If so, I believe that is unhealthy, both mentally and physically, for anyone but especially a person whose body is growing and needs more rest than an older person.

gxs• 16 years ago

I think the conditions in this factory are actually quite above what you can normally expect to find, and for that kudos to Microsoft.

My mom used to work for a guy that imports ceramic tiles from China- now those workers had conditions that were just plain awful.

While I definitely don't condone these actions, I think the author perhaps should have aimed his venom at a more deserving target.

cloudkj• 16 years ago

I feel that some of the pictures are taken out of context and portray an inaccurate image. In Asia, it's common for schools and workplaces to allow students and workers to put their heads down for naps in the middle of the day. The article uses an image of workers seemingly "collapsed" on the work bench as the first picture to depict harsh working conditions, which is misleading.

dkimball3• 16 years ago

The defensiveness of some of these comments is unsettling. Inhumane conditions are inhumane no matter where they are, and no matter what the situation is in the society; it is never right to do to one's workers what this article is describing, not even if there's a lot of competition for their jobs.

This is the kind of thing that explains why the United States is not lassiez-faire capitalist anymore; and it emphasizes that we should forswear our addiction to shopping cheap, in favor of buying what is produced in a morally licit fashion, and genuinely punishing corporate leaders over whom the US has jurisdiction and who knowingly go along with this kind of thing. I don't mean sanctions directed at the corporation: I mean punishing the individuals who sign off on or turn a blind eye to this, and I think that a crucial part of any such punishment, in addition to a long prison sentence, is the confiscation of the individual's personal fortune -- since this kind of person (well, almost always "this kind of man") sees money as score, and his objective is to die with a score high enough to leave his initials on the game's attract screen.

I want to emphasize here that this is not partisan United States issue, either. I am a serious Catholic; I vote Republican and like the Tea Party movement; and I know that this kind of thing is wrong, and that you don't have to be a Green, "pro-choice," or a gun-control advocate to recognize it as such.

roel_v5• 16 years ago

Pray tell, what is it exactly about the conditions described in the article that is "inhumane"? I don't see anywhere that people are being forced to work more than 8 hours, on the contrary it clearly states that overtime is optional. Most of the points that are made in the article are standard practice in factories here in Western Europe, like timed bathroom breaks, can't use phones while working etc.

The photos are misleading too, at least the ones with the people sleeping on the assembly line. While unusual in the West, in my (admittedly limited) experience with Asia (and China in particular) it is much more normal and culturally accepted to take a quick nap during breaks, while waiting for a train/bus, .. anywhere where there are a few spare minutes. This article makes it seem like these people are whipped to work until they literally fall asleep on the assembly line.

I'm not saying that there are no cases of abuse of factory workers; I'm pretty sure there are, and I in no way want to defend those. I live in an area where there were documented instances of people being whipped if they didn't cut coal fast enough, as little as 150 years ago, and that is a black spot in our history. However if this article describes the worst factory they could find, and if the situation that is described is the worst possible description of reality, it seems to me that capitalism has given these people something that they could only have wished for 50 years ago.

dkimball3• 16 years ago

Overtime here is not mandatory, but employers have an obligation to pay a wage suitable to their employees' dignity as fellow human beings -- not necessarily their country's minimum wage; and from the article, it does not sound like 770 RMB/month -- nor even 1500 RMB/month -- are at this level. (Also note the manipulative use of fines and wage witholdings, which no one has commented on as yet on HN.)

These problems, plus 30-40 hours of overtime per week, a frantic pace of work, and no concern for workplace injuries or avoiding sexual harassment (an overused concept in the West, but the idea of keeping managers from exploiting female subordinates is sound), do not add up to acceptable working conditions.

I'm ignoring the article's pro-union orientation (unions are no cure-all, especially since union bosses are easily corrupted); and I'm aware of the cultural habit of taking naps during breaks. I'm also not going to talk about air conditioning, since it was only invented 60-odd years ago; nor will I comment on bucket sponge baths; and I'm sticking to RMB here, since expressing RMB as USD (especially USD at the nominal rate of exchange) is misleading at best.

Is some of this standard practice in the United States? Yes. (I'm not familiar with practices in Western Europe.) Do wrong actions become right because citizens of one's own country are doing them too? No.

weilawei• 16 years ago

Your comment about taking a quick nap is really insightful. I have a little experience with this. From my parents, I acquired the habit of taking small naps. Riding as passenger in a car puts me instantly to sleep (luckily, the same does not apply to driving). I also do this as a general thing--my sleep is more polyphasic and irregular than most people I know. I may be awake at virtually any point in the 24-hour cycle, but not necessarily at the same points each day. Overall, I find that I get about the same amount of sleep, but the odd hours allow me more concentration on work.

yic2• 16 years ago

First of all, this news article has no facts but full of crap opinions. It is very romantic to have the freedom to say what is right and what is wrong, except you don't personally "live" in the situation and it is not your right to decide what is right for others.

<<<no matter what the situation is in the society; it is never right to do to one's workers what this article is describing, not even if there's a lot of competition for their jobs.>>>

Are you saying people are better off being hungry than working hard for food?

dkimball3• 16 years ago

No, I'm saying that you should never pay your workers less than they need to live on or drive them to exhaustion, even if the market will bear it.

confusedcitizen• 16 years ago

If an individual decides to be highly competitive by working crazy hours, is that considered bad? Will her colleagues complain to the labor department? A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit, complaining about labor practices, is the biggest oxymoron. Surely, the Chinese industries tactics are understandable?

In order for the Chinese manufacturing industry to be competitive, they indulge in such practices. If you want to remain competitive, one way is to cut costs or increase production, the way they do or by way of technological innovation. Or create high quality products, that consumers would want to buy, instead of the cheap {quality, cost} ones made in China.

The opponents of outsourcing are surely barking up the wrong tree. The Chinese workers surely have a choice of not working there. Agreed, that if they choose to work, life is pretty much miserable. But what if they choose not to work there. Do they go back to their non-existent farms, or to the streets? If such labor laws are enforced, the obvious impact is that oursourcing would move elsewhere. There will always be some country willing to take it up, and not to mention the people who would welcome a respite from their poverty.

The Chinese industry has decided to stay competitive. The people are probably between the devil or the deep sea, and it's all about choosing the better path, which in this case, simply is working 15 hours a day.

jerf2• 16 years ago

"A capitalist country's inhabitants, who belong to a system driven only by output and profit,"

You seem to be confused about "capitalism". In a capitalist system, workers are in a market as well and negotiate wages with the employers. Aggregate market behavior emerges from the individual behavior of who works for what. Individual employers may make "take it or leave it" offers, but they are embedded in a larger market and if enough people don't "take it", they have to raise their offer. Complaining about labor practices isn't weird, it's a bargaining chip.

It's the totalitarian systems where complaining about labor practices makes no "sense". They work under a de facto oligarchy or even flat-out monopoly in terms of where they can work, and when you have that, you no longer have capitalism. Hint: If you don't see a market, you're not talking about capitalism.

dgallagher• 16 years ago

Industrial Revolution repeating itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Social_ef...

Is a phase like this required for developing nations to pass through? Specifically, large developing nations? Or could it be skipped, or at least have its negative human effects mitigated?

huherto3• 16 years ago

good point. Some nations were able to pass through in peace, but in other places it generated an unimaginable blood shed. I totally believe in market economies, but you have to make sure human beings are not abused.

whyme• 16 years ago

NEWS BULLETIN - North Americans benefit from trade practices that reap the rewards in taking advantage of other countries less protected workers. YUP.

For those of you that are complaining about how the article is merely story spinning to target Microsoft, I think you're de-sensitized.

Comparing the worst places to work in North America to the average place to work in China may make yourself feel better, but it's just dishonest thinking. If an American wanted to buy a Computer Mouse would you not think it easier and cheaper to buy one locally? Of course not, because there's too many other countries with unprotected workers to take advantage of that make it cheaper for US..... doesn't this basic concept lend any understanding that there's something wrong here? It does to me. If the treatment norm were that same as you're own country then the product cost would go up.

The playing field isn't level and that's ok, but that doesn't mean we should feel good about taking advantage of them. I know, I know - we're helping them right? Give me a break. There are ways to help them while not taking advantage of them.

Don't buy from countries that don't meet the treatment norms your own country has. It raises the bar for them, and they will to get our business. Meanwhile it's not like Americans couldn't use the work. Yes product costs go up, but so do local jobs increase and quite frankly maybe inflation is the cost of being ethical, maybe North Americans should be a little less wealthy and little more honest.

r0s4• 16 years ago

We are rich because they are poor. The horror of the problem is only ever counterbalanced for me when other people recognize the macro-feudal nature of our economy.

roel_v5• 16 years ago

This is plain false. They become richer because we are rich and let them work. When the tide goes up. all boats rise.

fexl• 16 years ago

Although I'm comfortably ensconced in the USA working in my own business, I've done my share of physical work, starting at the age of 14. It could be tiring and nasty but I went home with pride and money. I'm not doing that kind of work now but my point is it was a good start.

I'll tell you precisely what provokes outrage in me: the use of physical violence or the threat of physical violence. Example: "When I tried to quit this disgusting, dangerous, demeaning, and exhausting job, the manager struck me in the face and locked me in a room until I apologized." Example: "When I mentioned that I might quit this horrible job, the manager said that there was nowhere to hide, and his people would find me and make me sorry."

Now that is the kind of thing that really outrages me. But consider this: "I was raised on a farm and came to work at this factory and I hate every minute of it, but I'm still working here because I'd rather do that than go back to the farm or wander the streets homeless."

That does not outrage me. It saddens me, yes. I'm very sorry that this individual at this time in her life only has such poor and few choices. However, I must allow her that choice. The worst thing I could do is use the threat of violence in the other direction, as in: "If you try to work in a factory for 80 cents an hour, I will physically restrain both you and the factory manager." The only thing I would accomplish by that, apart from violating my own code of conduct, is to limit the options of this individual, consigning her back to the farm or streets.

The very best thing I could do is compete in the labor market, creating new opportunities and offering higher wages and better conditions. Although I am not a factory manager, that is always my aim. For many years in my business it was just my partner and I doing all the work. But I'm proud to say that in recent years we have been contracting with others to do some of that work, and it is feeding families.

In conclusion I would say that the armchair outragers should first do no harm, and then ideally do more good.

yic2• 16 years ago

Whenever I see a sensational news like this about China I wonder if the journalist is sincerely stupid or purposely evil. The picture for showing "exhausted workers" is a joke: there is a tradition to have a nap after lunch in China so in many businesses the hour after lunch is basically off hours. The place my parents worked for have 2-3 hours of lunch break so everybody can go home and have a nap. In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap: on the desk, or "under" the desk, and all conference rooms are closed for the same purpose as well. Heck I am still keeping that habit and have a small futon by my desk now (glad I have my own office).

The "sweatshop" is also a joke for westerners. In more developed cities in China, workers are free to change their employers just like in the west, and it has been in that way for a couple of decades. Those factories don't offer what we called "hu kou", so the employer has no power to slave the workers except higher pay.

The photo of the worker's dorm room is funny as well. I went to a good university in China (about 14 years ago) and that's how my university dorm looks like. It is difficult for westerners to live in that situation but using that photo as a proof that workers are slaved is misleading.

wallflower4• 16 years ago

> In bigger cities where people can't go home, people find convenient places for the nap

I often wonder why napping is not easily permitted in U.S. offices. The benefits of napping last way beyond where it is practiced in Kindergarten.

jlmendez• 16 years ago

Off topic: Interesting that all the stories so far talk about mothers in sweatshops. Not single one here mentions a father. Were they working in the fields while women in the sweatshops?

dnsworks2• 16 years ago

Is this supposed to be surprising? Globalized manufacturing is a zero-sum race to the bottom where only share-holders win. Everybody else becomes slaves when "contracting out to the lowest bidder" means "hiring the cruelest whipmaster".

eru12• 16 years ago

It's is definitely not a zero-sum game. I can demonstrate this by destroying some value, if you'd like. (Demonstrating that the the sum can go up is a bit more difficult, since you need to actually do something worthwhile.)

barmstrong• 16 years ago

They are not prisoners for the simple reason that they can quit at any time.

If they choose to stay at the job it means it's because they want to - by definition they want the money more than they want to leave the job, otherwise they'd leave.

If anyone wants to go there and provide better opportunities to lure these workers away from Microsoft, they are free to do so. There is a market for labor just as with any other product. But until then, Microsoft is offering these people the best job at the best wage available to them, so we have no grounds to criticize.

gridspy• 16 years ago

When they quit they are fined 15 days wages. Because they rarely leave the compound they don't have the chance to foster opportunities outside the factory.

Agile_Cyborg• 16 years ago

They are only low-class minions who should be lucky their carcasses aren't rotting in the hot sun from starvation.

There will be countless others to fill the positions of the broken, lazy, despondent, and worthless who've tottered on to other production facilities.

Since when has this level of human deserved even a cursory notice, much less an in-depth ethical analysis of how they labor?

motters• 16 years ago

Shocking. This is what used to be called "the unacceptable face of capitalism". It is this sort of unregulated industrial production which in western countries led to the labour movements and improvements in working conditions and health and safety standards throughout the 20th century.

The internet provides an excellent means by which to expose malpractice. Hopefully Microsoft will put pressure on their suppliers to ensure that workers aren't being mistreated. Make no mistake about it, if working practices like these were to exist today in a western country like the UK the company would be facing very significant fines and compensation claims.

We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

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