FoxConn Workers Threaten With Mass Suicide If Working Conditions Aren't Fixed
posted by 
OnThePath 19 weeks ago
OnThePath 19 weeks ago Understand consumption
"The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it," he said.
Also see
Mike Daisey performs an excerpt that was adapted for radio from his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them.
2 Comments
Two solutions:
Solution 1: raise the cost of iPhones to lower demand and so that the extra money can go to creating better working conditions.
Solution 2: automate, automate, automate.
Foxconn has chosen solution 2. Soon, their human workforce will be drastically reduced... and the process has already begun. In the next three years Foxconn plants to replace hundreds of thousands of workers with robots.
response
Solution 1 - if you join a union in China (the ones that are really trying to change things) or cause, what management deems as "trouble," you are placed on a list that is widely distributed and you cannot be hired elsewhere. Capital goes where labor is most exploitable, and since the workers cannot change things, and the corporations are seeking profit margins and do not give two shits (yes, Apple does audit its suppliers, but only about 32% pass their standards, and in an ironic display of what Apple calls "transparency," they will not call out, by name, which suppliers fail the audit so independent auditors cannot go in and verify) about 16 hour standing shifts and adverse conditions caused by hexane usage (amongst a litany of other things), it will be very difficult for this process of labor condition improvement to happen organically.
Solution 2 - what happens to the people?
Regarding my quip about solution 2, have you listened to Jaron Larnier's talk on "the local-global flip?" I think you did because I recollect us have a discussion on it, and he brings up this point towards the latter portion of the talk concerning the options of what do with the people that have been replaced by robots.
I wish I could be the optimist that you are, but I see a much darker view of the future.
What happens when there are not enough meaningful social roles
http://tiny.cc/6kkgf