Apple needs tech Americans to bring tech jobs home
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Posted on 12/31/2015 8:11:22 AM PST by Lorianne
You got it. Since the beginning of mankind, the cheapest low wage labor has always been sought out.
They're not fooling anyone.
You don’t need any vocational training at all for 80% of the manufacturing jobs. Just show up. That is why the left side of the bell curve exists to fill those jobs.
More vocational education is not a popular opinion here either I am gathering.
Yes, to too many liberals everything is racist.
Well you don’t need a college degree for most jobs either.
So your original point is stupid. Americans can do ANY low level job there is no labor shortage at any level.
FYI: Apple CEO talking a dump an downtrodden work force. What a loser.
There is a lot of mis-information about Apple’s overseas manufacturing.
1. There are no “Apple” factories. Apple uses the same factories that companies like HP, Acer, Dell, etc use.
2. There is no child labor in factories used by Apple. It is part of their contract with manufacturers and there are regular inspections to insure compliance.
3. The suicide rate for these manufacturers is lower than the US suicide rate and even lower than the suicide rate in China in general. When you employee 300,000 people, 14 killing themselves over the course of the year is statistically low. The latest US suicide rate is 12.1 per 100,000.
4. Because of the lack of inexpensive, reliable transportation many of the workers live in the plant dorms. It is not a requirement, but it is convenient and cheaper than living elsewhere. They have swimming pools, internet cafes, fast food restaurants and retailers on the premises.
5. They work 40 hour weeks with overtime capped at 60 hours per month. They earn ~$2.50 an hour which is a bit above average for China.
It isn’t great. I wouldn’t want to work there, but it is hardly slave labor.
I think some posters are defining as "slave labor" anyone who doesn't get US wages and work conditions.
Tim Cook is a homosexual and lies about everything as they all do.
“All highly skilled labor”
???? Conducting rudimentary electronic tests by a fixed schedule and swapping out circuit boards is low-level grunt work and a 10 YO school dropout could do it (and probably do in China).
“12 year old in 5 minutes”
Which means they should be paid minimum wage, at most.
I would say a little more then min because high turn over is a problem in of itself.
I would think there are lot of jobs that would require vocational training or at least an apprenticeship program ... for example welding, plumbing, carpentry, auto mechanic, a/c repair, radiology tech .... just off the top of my head. There are probably thousands of jobs that would require some amount of training ... but not necessarily a college degree.
Many jobs where THEY SAY you need a college degree you really don’t. That says nothing about a labor shortage either way, which is a separate issue. We don’t have a shortage of people who need a full time job, that’s for sure.
You are confusing manufacturing, done in a factory, with the construction trades which require skills. I see the problem now. I assumed you knew the difference...
No, uniform according to the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal agency which controls how products can be labeled, in order to be labeled "Assembled in the USA" the majority of the parts must be made in the USA.
From the Apple description of the Mac Pro:
"With the new Mac Pro, we assemble the entire product and machine several of its high-precision components in the United States. By leveraging the innovative power of industry-leading companies in Texas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, and over a dozen other states across America, we're able to build a product that's impeccably constructed and beautiful in every detail. In other words, exactly as it was envisioned by our designers and engineers in California."
Note that components of the Mac Pro are manufactured in at least seventeen US states, not in Asia, Europe, or somewhere else foreign. In fact, at least 80% of the Mac Pro components HAVE to be made in the USA for it be labeled "Assembled in the USA" under Federal law.
There are strict legal guidelines on what can be used in this designation. Assembled means that major components are made in the country listed. If I recall correctly, that figure is 85% for Assembled.
The FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION States the following legal requirements on their website (you can look them up yourself):
" REQUIREMENT FOR "ASSEMBLED IN USA" CLAIMS
- "A product that includes foreign components may be called 'Assembled in USA' without qualification when its principal assembly takes place in the U.S. and the assembly is substantial. For the 'assembly' claim to be valid, the product's last 'substantial transformation' also should have occurred in the U.S."
Example: A lawn mower, composed of all domestic parts except for the cable sheathing, flywheel, wheel rims and air filter (15 to 20 percent foreign content) is assembled in the U.S. An "Assembled in USA" claim is appropriate.
Example: All the major components of a computer, including the motherboard and hard drive, are imported. The computer's components then are put together in a simple "screwdriver" operation in the U.S., are not substantially transformed under the Customs Standard, and must be marked with a foreign country of origin. An "Assembled in U.S." claim without further qualification is deceptive.
(The MacPro and IMacs assembled in the USA, meet those less than 15-20% imported parts, with everything else made in the USA, and substantial assembly requirements, so they are entitled to be labeled "Assembled in the USA." The last time I had this argument with an Apple basher, I had an entire list of the components of the Apple MacPro and their US states of origin. It blew him out of his toy boat. I'm looking for that list now.
The FTC's higher standard of "Manufacted in the USA" or "Made in the USA" require an almost impossible to reach standard -- Swordmaker)
"REQUIREMENT FOR "MADE IN USA" CLAIMS
That's pure myth, ground_fog.
The worker's at Apple's assembly contract companies are under constant monitoring by employees of Apple to assure that no workers are underage. Any companies doing work for Apple face draconian penalties for hiring underage workers up to losing their entire multi-billion dollar contract. . . which Apple has done, pulling a $2 Billion contract from a company that ignored guidelines and took the work to another company which cost Apple more and actually delayed a product release because Apple had to move their tooling, but the new company did screen its employees better.
No matter how good the screening a company may do, some underage workers will get in by using stolen or borrowed ID cards. When discovered, the company that allowed it to occur, is obligated under the terms of Apple's contracts, to pay for that underage worker's education all the way through graduation from a university, or age 25. That's a very dire penalty.
In 2013, An audit of the 1.5 million workers in Apple's supply chain over seven years, found a total of 79 underage hirees in 13 companies had slipped through the screening. . . Not counting the organized hiring done at the company Apple cancelled the contract for egregious misconduct. Of these, all were offered the full ride scholarships funded by their employers as Apple's contracts specified. However, surprisingly only about 25% accepted, with the rest opting to leave to find other work because of family pressure to keep sending their wages home!
The workers on Apple's assembly lines run from 18 to 32 years old, and they are paid two to three times more than the average factory wages paid to other assembly line workers making other consumer electronics such as Microsoft Xboxes, HP computers, Sony Playstations, and all the other cellular phones. Their pay averages five to seven times the Chinese minimum wage. About 60% of them live in apartments in town. . . not in the company provided dormitories, although they could if they chose. The higher pay on the Apple assembly lines is the reason why there are queues of thousand of job applicants when openings come available to work on Apple lines. They are premium jobs.
Sorry to burst your "slave labor" bubble with the light of facts, but there it is, popped, ground_fog
No, according to the Federal Trade Commission labeling requirements, at least 80% of the components have to be made in the US to have "Assembled in the USA" on the computer. No computer can say "made in the USA" or "Manufactured in the USA" because we don't even mine the raw materials to reach the percentages required to reach that standard and never can. They don't exist here.
The Mac Pros and iMacs both have "Assembled in the USA" etched on them and meet the FTC's standards. Therefore, they both have at least 80% American made components and the computers were substantially assembled in the USA. In the case of the Mac Pro, components are made in at least seventeen states, according to Apple, including Texas, Florida, Illinois, and Kentucky.
Try, $44.40 a day. $3.70 an hour times a twelve hour day. $44.40. That's what the top assembly line workers on Apple's Foxconn line are paid. . . or the equivalent in Yuan. Beginning workers start at about $3.10.
Workers on other makers' lines start at about $1.90 and advance to $2.50. That's why workers want to move to Apple lines and will queue by the thousands for a few openings.
Uh, the suicide rate in the United States for young people in the 18 to 32 age cohort is 11 per 100,000 per year. In the worst year for suicides at FoxConn in all of it 26 plants and 800,000 works aged 18 to 32, the suicides numbered 18 in an 18 month period. Six of those occurred at one plant in the space of about four months in 2010. Calculating the rate gives them a suicide rate of UNDER 1 in 100,000 per year for that 18 month period, far less than the suicide rate among the same age cohort in Ivy League Universities in the USA.
Those FoxConn suicides occurred 150 miles away from the nearest factory assembling any Apple products. The workers who killed themselves had been variously working on lines assembling Microsoft Xboxes, Nokia cell phones, HP computers, and Sony PlayStations. In addition, international investigators brought in from outside China found through interviews with friends the suicides did not kill themselves due to working conditions but for various reasons such as a love triangle, homesickness, mental illness, and to get the death benefits FoxConn was paying the surviving families of between $25,000 and $50,000. When that was learned the CEO announced that he was stopping paying the death benefit to suicides. The suicides stopped.
Since 2011, the suicide rate among the 1.5 million FoxConn workers is less than 1 per 500,000 per year. In 2013, there were ZERO suicides among any of FoxConn's workers.
That is remarkable in a country with an overall national suicide rate of 44 per 100,000. Us is 21 per 100,000 overall.
Working conditions are not what you describe which is what China Labor Watch's propaganda presents, an organization which has been exposed faking interviews, videos, and other "evidence" to push their agenda.
They've used video taken at other companies and claimed it was FoxConn, provided false English translations that turned out the interviewee was saying nothing at all like what the English translation was saying.
Mike Daisey's discredited "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" was facilitated by China Labor watch. It had to be pulled from circulation by NPR when they learned of the fakery.
China Labor Watch is located in New York City, and is a money collecting charity engine, not a labor rights organization, which uses lying propaganda to collect donations, most of which lines their pockets, and only a very small percentage goes to do labor condition improvements in China. CLW knows that by putting "Apple" in their headlines they get more clicks and therefore more money!
Apple has done far more for China's workers than CLW's false propaganda.
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