Posted on 12/31/2015 8:11:22 AM PST by Lorianne
Tim Cook has come out about a real truth of the decline in manufacturing. What he omitted however, is that no one will manufacture in the U.S. unless they absolutely have to due to a 38% corporate tax rate.
On 60 Minutes Sunday, Charlie Rose asked Apple CEO Tim Cook about his company’s manufacturing practices in China. Cook said the decision to use Chinese manufacturing has nothing to do with American workers demanding higher wages. He said it was because the Chinese have more skill.
“Let me be clear,†Cook told Rose, “China put an enormous focus on manufacturing in what you and I would call vocational skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at thechinamoneyreport.com ...
They cited a specific case where Apple needed to come up with a highly specialized glass component for the first generation of the iPhone. Corning submitted a bid on the project, and by all accounts they would have been able to manufacture a glass product at their upstate New York plant that was superior in quality and no more expensive than what a competing Chinese manufacturer could make.
Apple decided to go with the Chinese supplier for several reasons, but the biggest reason was that the Chinese company would be able to get their facility re-tooled to produce the glass in a matter of DAYS -- while Corning would have to go through MONTHS of bureaucratic nonsense to get all the Federal and state permits to modify their existing plant.
Of course he us a liar. Apple is into slave labor.
Just sickening. Wow.
Understood. But when you have to set up diagnostic and repair processes for all kinds of electronic products, it’s a bit more complicated than just swapping out a hard drive. Do you think any knucklehead who can operate a screwdriver would know how to retrieve and transfer files from the old hard drive to the new one?
“They located their plant in the Memphis area where the FedEx hub is located so they could guarantee 1-2 day turnaround times for their repairs. “
I know that place. It’s HP. That’s where they send your broken laptop for repair under warranty and Fedex sends it back to you within the week.
They've built on their original business line of electronics repair, and now they also do product design and testing as well.
What makes it worse is that a product like that is exactly what Americans can still produce better — and often cheaper — than anyone else. But in this case they didn’t get a chance to do it because New York is one of a growing number of jurisdictions where lawyers and environmental bureaucrats have more political influence than a major global manufacturing giant like Corning.
If another CEO says American workers have more skill than any other group for his/her industry then he/she would immediately be vilified as a racist. (yes I know nationality is not race, but libs do not, they equate/assign race to everything). This would be especially true if the CEO was not from a company that is one of the liberal darlings.
The beauty of subcontracting the vast majority of the assembly work is that labor conditions are Foxconn's problem. The Chinese are also highly nationalistic - if employed directly by Apple, they'd have big problems with being paid less than their US counterparts. They can't complain about Foxconn - it is paying them roughly the same (as Foxconn's other employees) to assemble stuff for Apple.
I think the point is about as invalid as say comparing apples to oranges. Where in America do we have any comparable amount of industry as China that makes products? We have off shored the vast majority to China, India, other Asian countries and cross bordered it to Mexico! Bring your production back to America you SOB, when there is industry parity let’s talk again.
Good points
inscrutable
You are absolutely right.
I recently ran for office. At a candidates forum I was asked what I would do to improve secondary education in the city and the state.
I said we could improve graduation rates by re-introducing non-college track programs like vocational education and business education.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Needless to say, I didn’t win.
Shocking !!! Oh my god, you mean US kids can’t cut it with their advanced degrees in gender studies? Who could guess?
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.
Replace Tim Cook with a Chinese ceo equivalent. He is insulting Americans.
Apple CEO is a commie pinko.
Rot in hell.
That is the most f-ed up thing I have ever read on Free Republic. Pure gloBULList propaganda. That is traitor talks talk to make himself feel better for selling out fellow Americans.
For instance the only real skilled workers in the auto industry are the mold makers, tool and dye makers , machinists and line robotics operators. Once all the stamping dye and molds are made the "high" skilled part is done. Almost ever every job could be learned by a 12 year old in 5 minutes.
I am making a point about the slide in vocational education in the US. Do you deny that that is the case and we now encourage EVERYONE to go to college for an academic education?
Cook may be using that as an excuse, but we need more vocational education and we need to stop pushing the idea that EVERY young person has to go to college
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