Posted on 04/25/2016 3:30:18 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
In 2013, China Labor Watch (CLW) began investigating the labor conditions of workers at Pegatron Corporation factories in China making products for Apple...
This year, CLW collected 1,261 pay stubs from Pegatron Shanghai workers, 13 times as many as stubs as last year. The documents were gathered with the assistance of 18 Pegatron workers coming from 12 departments...
1) Workers are paid at a rate of 1.82 USD/hour.
2) On average, overtime pay as a percentage of workers’ gross wages is 42.4%.
3) Workers work more than 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. 83.8% workers’ monthly overtime hours exceed 80 hours.
4) In October 2015, 71.1% of workers’ average weekly working hours exceeded Apple 60-hour maximum limit.
5) Pegatron Shanghai workers must participate in an average of 15 minutes of mandatory pre- and post-shift meetings every day, or 90 minutes per week. If we assume that Pegatron Shanghai workers all have hidden, unpaid overtime, as CLW interviews suggest, then the total unpaid wages amount to US$11.85 million
6) The total value of Tim Cook’s stock growth up to February 2016 is equal to the combined annual base wages of 78,847 Pegatron workers.
7) The combined base wages of 1.6 million workers on Apple’s supply chain only accounts for 2.6% of Apple annual revenues.
My current ‘droid phone was $199
When the Area Codes changed in the DC area in the late 1990s, we ended up with the same number as an old State Department Fax machine. One day we received a “manually” declassified fax from an embassy in Africa. The Fax was a effort by the Ambassador to explain to DOS why they couldn’t pay the local people at the equivalent to the US Minimum Wage. That amount of money was so far above the local labor market level for custodial and clerical work that it would have adversely effected the local economy.
You can pay them slave wages, no problem, but can they use the bathroom corresponding to the gender they feel like on any given day?
Not that I am defending Apple, but shouldn’t the comparison number be purchasing power by market, or something adjusted? $1.82 in China is not the same as $1.82 in Dallas, or other places...
Further, are the employees showing up of their own volition? I’m a software engineer, and gleefully showed up for 72 hour weeks for several years. It was very good pay at the time and place.
It may be that this is good pay at this time and place for these workers.
And yes, I have a 6S+. Love it!
EXACTLY! That is a high wage there - and people line up for those jobs!
So how much would they make if they didn’t work for Apple?
I had no idea wages in another country are any of our business. I do see an issue with bringing jobs back to the U.S. though, will be tough to make that wage difference pencil out.
When a nation’s workers hold up employers for an artificially inflated wage, jobs go elsewhere.
Economics 101.
Damn. That’s a lot of moolah.
Foxcon, Pegatron and the other manufacturers have installed nets to prevent suicide by jumping. 60+ hours a week and 80% of wages for just room and board? Sounds like the monopolists of 1900 America.
I am against free trade because I am against human slavery.
[groan] This meme again?
The wages are significantly higher than prevailing wages in the area/culture.
People normally work such hours around there, if not much more.
Living on site during the workweek is normal.
Napping at your workstation is normal there.
Suicide rates are _lower_ than the local average.
It’s a whole lot better than their alternatives, and things in general around there won’t get much better until businesses grow into better wages & conditions. Were they to impose US standards in that company overnight, the local disruption would be enormous - rendering those not working there into relative abject poverty (from what was otherwise a pretty decent living wage), screw up the economy of relative values (prices skyrocket), and making loss of such a job traumatic.
Worth repeating from the late tjic.com:
Say that we had first contact with some super (economically) advanced aliens.
…and pretty soon they set up factories here.
…and I was offered a job in one of these factories, doing software engineering.
The pay is $400k/year.
The work week is 20 hours long.
The work environment is far better than I’m used to – great internal decoration, well tended plants, a zen-like water garden near my desk, massages every other day.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” started protesting, because I was being forced to work for less than a quarter of the prevailing wage in Alpha Centauri, and my work hours were twice as long as the legal norms in Alpha Centauri, and I didn’t have every mandatory benefits like “other other year off”, and “free AI musical composition mentoring”.
…and then left-wing alien “sentient being rights activists” wanted to make it illegal for my employer and I to contract with each other at mutually beneficial terms.
…then I would be rip shit that some elitist who had never visited me, or knew of my actual alternatives on the ground presumed to decide that I shouldn’t have this opportunity.
Which brings me to my core point: Chinese factory conditions may not be the exact cup of tea for a San Francisco graphic designer or a Connecticut non-profit ecologist grant writer … but they’re, by definition, better than all the other alternatives available to the Chinese workers (or the factories would find it impossible to staff up).
Butt out, clueless activists.
“Sounds like the monopolists of 1900 America.”
Without going thru that stage, they can’t get from 3rd World culture to modern. Seriously. Pay them $5/hr, 40 hr weeks, etc and you’ll destroy the local economy: prices of goods/services would skyrocket out of reach of most non-Foxcon/Pegatron workers, employers wouldn’t retain a viable profit margin, any laid-off employees would be unable to function having adjusted to high wages but no longer have any viable equivalent opportunities, etc. You _must_ let the local economy grow into its rising economic status, otherwise you create a fragile rich strata based on mundane labor existing over an even more abject base of poverty.
The suicide issue is overblown, being _lower_ than the local norms.
You can’t help others rise without allowing them to compete as competition naturally progresses. Denying them incomes doesn’t help, and neither does centralized regulation. Opposing free trade is opposing capitalism in a world market.
Tech companies largely treat employees like crap, and Democrats mostly give them a pass because of the general social liberalism of the tech sector. The usual hypocrisy
If Apple hasn’t been paying pre- and post- shift carryover time, they have a problem. That has been litigated here down to even 5 minutes carryover time. My company was sued and lost for that very problem, and we are a major supplier to Apple.
“My current ‘droid phone was $199
It’s amazing how cheap those iPhone knockoffs sell for. I’ve seen them even cheaper on corners in NYC.
#13 Plus you like having your belly scratched.....
Big Bang ref
“Say that we had first contact with some super (economically) advanced aliens.”
Not that I am defending Apple, but shouldn’t the comparison number be purchasing power by market, or something adjusted? $1.82 in China is not the same as $1.82 in Dallas, or other places...<<<<<<
That’s what I was thinking, also. Cost of living plus quality of shelter, food, clothing, amenities & luxury. If these employees can have a great lifestyle on that kind of wage, then who has the right to complain?
It would be nice if we could do that here.
Good point. Don’t disagree.
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