TURN THE LIGHTS OFF, ASSHOLE OR YOU'LL PAY FOR THE ELECTRICITY !!
Posted on 05/11/2016 11:06:45 AM PDT by dennisw
Sprawling dormitory complex outside Shanghai housed workers who spend 12 hours a day making Apple products Eerie images show austere eight and 12-bed rooms and filthy 'bathrooms' where workers used communal showers Workers operated water taps by pedalling and squatting toilet cubicles positioned over open sewerage drains
Dorms can house 6,000 workers at a time but were abandoned hurriedly, with mementos left behind Impoverished men and women from countryside work 12-hour shifts for £250 a month and pay £16 to live in dorms
Mold and mildew crawl up the walls of the communal bathrooms and the tiny, austere rooms are crammed full of bare bunkbeds.
The grim dormitory complex
Four blocks, which housed migrant workers employed by Apple contractor Pegatron until they were hurriedly abandoned eight weeks ago.
Six thousand employees lived in the dormitories at the peak of iPhone 6 production but many of the roughly 1,000 left were told not to come back while others were transferred to dorms in the main factory complex.
A rare and fascinating insight into the austere living conditions for staff at Taiwanese electronics giant Pegatron who work exhausting 12-hour shifts and are reckoned to make up to one half of the world's iPhone 6s.
Apple and Pegatron recently allowed cameras into the iPhone factory in Shanghai in response to years of accusations that their staff were having to work gruelling hours on low pay. Paid basic salaries of just under £250 a month for gruelling six-day weeks which they can increase by about £200 by working daily overtime.
MailOnline visited the huge Kangqiao Road East dormitories on the outskirts of Shanghai where Pegatron workers lived, and which were in use until February. Four blocks, named Huei Yang, have been mothballed while a separate dormitory is still in use.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
TURN THE LIGHTS OFF, ASSHOLE OR YOU'LL PAY FOR THE ELECTRICITY !!
I worked in Indonesia on a project in the early 90’s.
I would give my local field helpers a Snickers bar at lunch, and one on the drive home. One time they were lazy and I didn’t give them the one on the way home.
Their local boss told me they were very upset about it. He explained that they got paid 50 cents an hour - so that candy was worth much more to them.
I commented to the one worker that could speak English - “You get paid 50 cents an hour!?”
“Oh YES! Best in all of Indonesia (was a Canadian run mine). PLUS free room and board! In six years I will have enough money to build my family our own home!”
His lodging was in a dorm that looked about like the photos. Other workers lived in converted shipping containers!
Better than I had at Camp Fuji, long after basic training. And cert better than out in the field.
This piece is aimed at the precious snowflakes in the Hamptons.
Indeed.
The barracks where I resided at Fort McClellan held about 50 people to a room.
“No, you pay people, you know like Henry Ford did, a decent wage...”
What Henry Ford did was his own private choice, not under coercion by the government. That was a free market decision.
What is being proposed now is that we should subsidize factory jobs by imposing tariffs, which is essentially taxing all consumers to give welfare to factory workers. It’s still socialistic redistribution of wealth, but the government is using a less obvious means to impose it.
“Sure, factory work and welfare are really the same, except for the fact that the factory worker, you know, works.”
They are the same in that their wages are not supported by the market, but propped up artificially by a government wealth redistribution scheme.
“Most of the additional pay would come from Apple, not consumers: Apple’s margins are around 40%.”
If you think Apple will sacrifice its margins in order to pay its workers more, I have a bridge to sell you. Also, most companies that would be affected by these proposals are not Apple and don’t have those kinds of margins.
Were these photos taken on an iPhone 6 or 6s? You know like their ads show.
“No, you pay people, you know like Henry Ford did, a decent wage...”
______________________________
Yes, like Henry Ford did ... After the unionize workers forced it upon him...of course, in China, you would simply be executed for standing up to the “bosses”
Apple, the extreme left wing liberal company that BRAGS about billions of dollars in profits, and hundreds of billions in cash, claims they cannot afford to use American workers to manufacture the products they sell to Americans, while using cheap Chinese labor instead.
That isn’t trade, that is a ripoff.
Boogieman wrote: “Much as I love to bash Apple, I have to say this is sensationalism. For example: “Workers operated water taps by pedalling and squatting toilet cubicles positioned over open sewerage drains...”
“This is par for the course in China. They don’t use toilets, they squat.”
In Korea too. You put in a real toilet and they stand on the rim and squat. Be very careful when you sit down.
bump
There was a European who went to the Chinese factories for China and said it was the second most depressing thing he saw - Chinese agriculture being the first.
That said, many of these women choose to work in the factories because they earn more money in the factory than they would in the farm, have a chance to learn English or technical skills and move up the career ladder, and work in better conditions (air conditioning, bug free, not out in the rain) than if they were on the farm.
It is bad by Western standards, but many Chinese homes still lack indoor plumbing.
Agreed. There was an article on a Chinese business man making porcelain toilets. For Chinese, they are literally “moving up” by switching from squatting over a hole in the ground or board over the pig sty to an indoor toilet.
I like it.
I was flipping through the radio yesterday and came across C-Span radio. The House was debating an all-important bill to allocate funds to present the families of fallen Police officers with a flag flown over the Capitol.
While I like the sentiment and it’s a great gesture toward heroic Americans, I was listening and hoping one of these bastions would say, “Congress, my friends on both sides of the aisles, last year there were 128 line of duty deaths. A flag costs $50. Let’s honor these officers by reaching deep in our own pockets and if we each donate $50 from our annual income of $174,000, we will have enough to send a flag to fallen officers for the next several years, at which point, we will repeat the process.” Of course, I must have been dreaming.
While attending UC Santa Cruz university in California, my youngest daughter had a paying job refurbishing dorm buildings on campus. After a semester ended, she would go in and do repairs. She said the dorms were disgusting. After basic cleanup, she would do sheetrock repair, plastering and caulking. Then repeat the next semester. Students can do a lot of wear and tear on buildings.
What this hit piece does not mention is that those were good working conditions and money compared to their alternatives.
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