“On the 30th of January, thousands of hopefuls stood for hours outside a labour agency located in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou,” Chris Chang reports for M.I.C. Gadget.
“The lines stretched more than 200 meters along the road, and the people who were waiting in line with their applications just hope to get a job at Foxconn as the electronics contracting giant ramps up hiring for its iPhone plant at Zhengzhou,” Chang reports. “Previously, we reported that Foxconn is working with the city of Zhengzhou to double the size of the workforce at its facility there, recruiting an additional 100,000 employees.”
Chang reports, ” these people saw the job advertisement posted by the Zhengzhou government in the city which showed the salary at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory is CNY 1650 (basic salary), and the salary would be increased to CNY 2400 – 3200 after the appraisal. What’s more, workers do not need to pay additional money for dormitory and food. Foxconn incorporates the food and housing allowance into the basic salary. So, this attracted thousands of young job seekers to deliver their resumes to the Foxconn representatives.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Like most people, they must not read The New York Times, either.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Dan K.,” and “Sarah” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
BSR: New York Times’ Apple-Foxconn article contains untruths, inaccuracies, and misleading info – January 29, 2012
Your iPhone has to be made In China, and Apple can’t absolve your guilt (if you have any) – January 28, 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012
In China, human costs are built into iPads and tens of thousands of other non-Apple products – January 26, 2012
Or maybe they trust Apple to work on their behalf to steadily improve their working conditions. Like they said they would.
I have a poor nephew who went to Zhengzhou university. He just returned to China on Sunday from a semester in NYC. I told him to try and get a job at the new Foxconn plant, really. If he does, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Good, KenC! Instead of passively responding to fabricated stories, fudged statistics, cooked numbers, blatant misrepresentations, planted rumors, and cynical hit-whoring, let’s do our own, independent research! Let’s indulge in a bit of manipulation ourselves! Why should the jackals have all the fun?
1
I got you right up to the “manipulation” part.
It’s not just the Times- it’s plenty of people and places, many who’ve really let me down with their prejudice and ignorance. Story was a hit piece repeated by hitmen and dim bulbs.
It probably has more to do with desperately poor people with strong work ethics willing to take their chances. I’m very pro-Apple and realistic enough to realize that Apple is part of the eventual solution, rather than a villain. However, let’s not pollyannas and think that lines for work at Foxconn mean everything is fine in those factories. For example, underage workers wanting to work in sweatshops is. It evidence that sweatshops are OK – it is a sign that the underage are desperate.
Apple has a chance to really change things, to help usher in an era of better working conditions people across the globe. I think they will do this.
But are they sweatshops? They are assembly plants for sure, but I don’t think you could build an iPhone (or MacBook, or iPad) in a sweatshop.
He wasn’t saying Foxcon was a sweat shop. He was just trying to give an example. Over your head I suppose.
“sweatshops is. It evidence that sweatshops are OK ”
Should read “is not evidence”
I don’t quibble with your point, sweatshops are not OK. But a modern electronics assembly facility hardly qualifies.
I once saw a show that covered a segment about a family that existed on their ability to scrounge recyclable materials from the trash dump, in Bangladesh, IIRC. The mother was hoping her son would score a move-up job in the Nike factory. A good job doesn’t have to be perfect, it only has to be better than the current one.
That said, companies that take advantage of the situation do profit from it and we, as consumers, do reap benefits. But the benefit of SOME job to those workers should not be taken away, just because of our guilt.
But I thought those Chinese employees hate to be used and abused as slave laborers, so why are they lining up by the thousands to get jobs in the Foxconn slave camp. I guess they didn’t hear that assembling Apple products will drive them to suicide and beyond.
The main problem is that there are too many iHater pricks blogging on the internet and the media. I’m not saying that employees aren’t taken advantage of, but that’s how the job market is. If you don’t perform well enough, you can be replaced by someone else willing to put up with whatever for the money.
Those poor Chinese workers… Just a glutton for punishment right NYT?! Sadistic if you ask me…
Better than being behind an ox tilling a farm field… Not knocking hard working farmers the world over and I thank them with every mouthful of food I have, but you know the next generation of Chinese youth is yearning for something different…
For me the real question is, if you’re given proper tools, a safe working environment (with the exception of a couple of accidents which were obviously not right), and are paid well above the average, can you call it a sweatshop?
The people knocking the working conditions and the renumeration at Foxxcon have no idea about the the working conditions and the job pay in the rest of the country.
In North America, the working conditions and the pay packets in the 50s and 60s would be called abhorent slavery if they were in practice today.
Bleeding hearts, sanctimonious finger-pointing holier-than-thou journalists, hit whores and plain ignorant people would be surprised that exploitation of immigrants workers are widespread and sweatshops exist right here in good, ole squeaky clean America.
Go dwn to China town in Manhatten, there u see sweatshops. I have seen thm there.
Thats what Steve got for being a NY Slimes fan.
Works out to $507.33 per month, or just over $6,000 per annum. Sounds terrible, until you know that not too long ago, the average monthly wage in China wasn’t more than $25.
I knew a lady who was a teacher in China. She moved to the US to study art. She said you could buy a house for $20,000 us in china. So $500+ would be an amazing wage. Considering they don’t even have to pay for room and board, that means they can probably save most of it if they aren’t supporting a family.