We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don’t be confused — what we’re talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to “fix things in China,” well, it’s gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it’s all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives.We can afford this stuff at all because Chinese labour is de-facto property and civil and human rights there are a sick joke. If you can figure out how to respond to that disaster or even just this comment, using a computer that doesn't make you entirely complicit in that disaster, please tell me how.
"5S" was invented in Japan, and stands for five (5) Japanese words that start with the letter 'S': Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke. Table 1 shows what these individual words mean.posted by delmoi at 1:12 PM on April 15, 2010
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Seiri - Tidiness, Seiton - Orderliness, Seiso - Cleanliness, Seiketsu - Standardization, Shitsuke -Discipline
Management instructs the workers to "answer the clients' questions very carefully." They should say they never work more than 12 hours a day and overtime is less than 36 hours a month. Workers are told to respond they are "very satisfied" when asked about working conditions, their dorms and meals. To make this sound even more "authentic," workers are told to "spontaneously" mention other factories where they had worked in the past, where conditions were "awful." They are more "hopeful" now that that they are working at KYE.Though, I'm sure there's willful blindness going on too. But this is throughout the tech industry. You really think Apple or Sony or Lenovo (ha!) is any better? I don't really know what the solution to this problem could be. You can't even get a computer that's not made up of parts made in these kind of deplorable conditions. Maybe if the US and Japan and Europe got tough with regulations on the source of products parts, but we know that's not going to happen.
We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way.You know, frankly I think that's just bullshit. How much would it really add to the price to treat workers well? One thing the Chinese do to save cost is put their workers in dormitories, so their food and living expenses are covered. I realize that might not be fun but it's hardly abuse.
Delmoi, the link you provided states that the manufacturing cost of the iPad is about 9$. The FPP article states that the average worker in an electronics assembly facility makes less than a dollar an hour. But their employer probably saves a great deal more than just that US-China wage disparity on workers because they treat them like machinesWell, there are two issues here. The first is the breakdown of how much of those costs are labor, and how much other other expenses. The fact is, a lot of the assembly is going to be automated. Sticking all the components on the board will be done with robots. The only thing humans would have to do is stick the final macro-pieces like the board, battery, frame, etc. And a lot of that could be done mechanically as well.
Conditions in the Lowell mills were severe by modern American standards. Employees worked from five am until seven pm, for an average 73 hours per week. Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two male overseers managing the operation. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as "something frightful and infernal", and although the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed during the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth.How did those conditions improve? The Labor movement.
The investors or factory owners built hundreds of boarding houses near the mills, where textile workers lived year-round. A curfew of 10 pm was common, and men were generally not allowed inside. About 25 women lived in each boardinghouse, with up to six sharing a bedroom. One worker described her quarters as "a small, comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing some half a dozen occupants". Trips away from the boardinghouse were uncommon; the Lowell girls worked and ate together.
Man. Who's "they"?CEO, executives and large stockholders? Duh. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
I'm sorry I don't have a precise dollar or yuan value to give you for what social justice costs.Do you even have a ballpark figure? The problem is that if you don't have any cost estimate, then you don't don't actually have an argument
I just want to point out that this is a telling example you've picked, and you're being willfully obtuse in several places in this thread; I'm not sure why.Willfully obtuse? Obtuse actually means "stupid", blunt instead of sharp. But people seem to use it like a synonym for "Stubborn." It's rather arrogant to assume I don't agree with you because I don't understand your argument, I don't agree with you because it's not even an argument. You say it would cost "more" but you don't say how much more. Would a netbook cost ten cents more, or $500 more? because it actually makes a difference
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As a result, each company issued responses and an Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) probe was launched, although I've been unable to find any subsequent report they may have issued online.
Apple has also been the subject of a report which says they use a Chinese factory whose workers endure similar conditions.
posted by zarq at 12:04 PM on April 15, 2010