I was offered a job at Foxconn to assemble iPhones for $1.7 per hour

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2188288/iphones-costs-us800-i-was-offered-job-foxconn-assemble-them

by kasbah • 7 years ago

81 67 7 years ago

benologist2• 7 years ago

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.

askafriend3• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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...

criddell• 7 years ago

What about the racism? Is there nuance in that as well?

lixtra• 7 years ago

From what I've heard, Foxconn is a highly desirable place to work with top of market pay and benefits.

The article states differently:

> 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.

abalone6• 7 years ago

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.

atomical• 7 years ago

Why would it? Tim supports Saudi Arabia and their oppressive apps in the app store.

atian• 7 years ago

Nope.

ASalazarMX• 7 years ago

racism demands a firm response from Apple.

Board: Will that make us more profitable?

Tim: We will become less profitable, but in the long term, people will see that we-

Board: No.

protomyth• 7 years ago

Tim Cook is the architect of the Apple supply chain, and that's why he is the CEO instead of a product person. He is not innocent and has to have read the Foxconn job requirements of age between 16 and 40, ninth-grade diploma, no Tibetan and Uygur ethnicities. He knows what he is doing, and blaming just the board is a cop-out.

bdcravens• 7 years ago

Probably does demand a response, but this doesn't seem to be an "official" Foxconn policy:

These conditions on ethnicity do not appear on the Foxconn website, but do adorn the walls of private job agencies hiring directly for the technology giant

VonGuard2• 7 years ago

Wouldn't be such a big deal if the Chinese weren't literally interning and exterminating Uyghurs. Calling this stuff racism is like calling Nazi Germany Alt-Right... Stops WAAAY short of framing the problem.

erentz• 7 years ago

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.

VonGuard2• 7 years ago

This.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

Hey China...hire them, just make them a yellow star, or a red one.

isn't it cute that FoxConn doesn't make that as a policy but subcontractors do?

sct202• 7 years ago

It's surprising that they don't have enough workers and are still racist.

abalone6• 7 years ago

See: all of American history.

claudiawerner2• 7 years ago

If you don't mind me pointing out the irony here: this is the epitome of "woke capital" - the issue isn't the inhumanly low wages, it's that the company policy is discriminatory towards who it will pay those wages...

abalone6• 7 years ago

It would be.. if I hadn’t said there are a lot of other damning things in the report.

throwas19842• 7 years ago

While I as European fully agree with your point of view, I think that projecting our world perspective on other countries is just bs.

Fight with racism is purely white peoples concept. Racism is a term usually doesn't even exist outside of Europe/North America. So we shouldn't try to put our mentality on top of China, as we are not the sole source of truth in this world.

nickpeterson• 7 years ago

I'll bite, if racism is so accepted in other places doesn't that just make them all wrong? Or are you contending that racism has value?

stallmanite• 7 years ago

This is insane. Oppression and killing of one group by another is a problem I don’t care what your culture is.

nikanj• 7 years ago

Why Apple? Foxconn makes _everything_. Yet it’s always ”iPhone maker”, never ”xbox maker” or ”Hamilton Beach toaster maker”

abalone6• 7 years ago

Because the story is about assembling iPhones.

yumraj2• 7 years ago

I don't think that is racism per se, that just proves what everyone already knows, that Tibet and Xinjiang are occupied territories/colonies and not really part of China.

abalone6• 7 years ago

No, it’s racism. Excluding Puerto Ricans from American job sites would be straight up racist.

tootie2• 7 years ago

This is normal in a lot of places. Even much of first-world Asia allows for racial discrimination.

abalone6• 7 years ago

There is a lot of pretty horrible stuff that is “normal in a lot of places.” It doesn’t excuse it. Racism is not something Apple stands for and so it has leverage to stop this practice in its suppliers.

11thEarlOfMar• 7 years ago

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.

guardiangod• 7 years ago

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company.

vidoc3• 7 years ago

would you mind elaborating a bit por favor?

z3t4• 7 years ago

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

jhayward• 7 years ago

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.

wswkb2• 7 years ago

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

azhenley• 7 years ago

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.

wswkb2• 7 years ago

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

claudiawerner2• 7 years ago

Perhaps whatever the median is, it's still too low.

wutbrodo5• 7 years ago

Sure, but then the story becomes "it's sad that poor countries exist" instead of "Apple has an exploitative supply chain".

Not to mention that the numbers are meaningless without a sense of price levels. My cousin is a lawyer in Delhi and lives a life that would be recognizable to your I as very upper-middle class, and yet his equivalent USD salary is roughly one tenth of mine.

m0zg3• 7 years ago

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?

wutbrodo5• 7 years ago

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.

m0zg3• 7 years ago

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.

jftuga• 7 years ago

Why is 40 the max age?

Just curious.

acct17712• 7 years ago

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

linyu0219• 7 years ago

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。

csense• 7 years ago

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

I was offered a job at Foxconn to assemble iPhones for $1.7 per hour

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