“On a smoggy day in a gritty industrial suburb of Shenzhen, thousands of job seekers, many migrant workers from the countryside, massed outside the north gate of Foxconn’s gargantuan factory at Longhua, taking part in an epic recruitment drive to supply factory hands to meet relentless production quotas for iPhones and iPads globally,” James Pomfret reports for Reuters.
“As police sealed off roads in the area, recruiters lined up the young men in ranks, peppering them with questions before shepherding small groups into a building to register and undergo physical and psychometric tests,” Pomfret reports. “‘As you can see, everyone wants a job here,’ said Wang Jintao, a 19-year-old from central Hubei province. ‘I’ve been coming here every day for two weeks now. Perhaps today will be my lucky day.'”
“Foxconn is viewed by many workers as a tough but rigorously organized and fair employer in the harsh industrial landsape of the Pearl River Delta,” Pomfret reports. “‘The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm,’ Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) told Reuters in an interview on Feb. 15.”
Pomfret reports, “Despite the criticism Foxconn has faced, for many it is still a dream factory job, more stable and with wages, career prospects and living conditions superior to many smaller plants, which have struggled with rising costs and dwindling orders from Western consumers amid continued global economic uncertainty, particularly in Europe.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
I would really love SumofUs to send their morons in front of that mob with their boycott iPhone signs (“we want to close this factory!”) …
those sum-of-fools will get a dose of reality as they are ripped apart …
Lol… They would be eaten. 🙂
Ah, the abusive Foxconn factories. The place where mere underage slaves build iPads for Apple – the company that doesn’t like them. Man, look at them runn! Runn TO Foxconn. LOL
LIKE really eh?
USA apple has increase pay – GET the job…. !!!!
ITs money and it helps — if it did not THEY not interested.
Huh?
One man’s trash is another man’s garbage.
At 2 USD an hour please tell me why they FLOCK???
ok I tell you — because the CHINA government won’t pay even that… as bad as the conditions are – there is NO WORK for them… if they can not handle the work — if they have personal issues – the over working is NOT the cause of the deaths — MAKE more shifts — HIRE more and SET standards fro the hours they can work…
THIS IS not APPLES country — it is CHINA — it i snot APPLES factory — it is CHINEESE … set the HUMNA STANDARDS to a 8 hr a day 1 hr lunch brake and (2) 15 minute daily brakes… and maximize the week to 40 hrs.
THEY certainly do not HAVE A shortage of people so THEWY can CREATE a shift week — 4 teams and rotate them giving them time off and rest.
NOT APPLES problem – CHINAS.
Time for your meds, WL, time to sit back, take a few breaths, pop a Mento, and fix your caps lock key, then watch your spelling. I really want to watch my lunch brake as well, it brakes for ducks waddling across the road.
Say what?
You need to understand that the US$1 there is the equivalent of close to $10 there. For instance, you can get a pretty decent meal for around 6 yuans (or reminbi) in factory districts. They can do a lot more with the US$1 than we could over here. Get it?
Economics aside, why is nobody protesting communism?
Come to think of it, there are 800 million people in the world that live without daily access to clean water, where are the protesters?
maybe because communist Chinese on average earn more than double democratic india? The lifespan expectancy is also about 10 years longer.
China actually has an election system where villages and towns vote for the lower party members. These guys vote for the higher ups. You can even stand for election as a non communist, i.e an independent. But of course there’s all kinds of things which keep the communists in power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
China is actually a morph of pure communism in that you can own private businesses and farms etc.
I have lived and worked in asia and Asia is not like the West. Sometimes (sometimes only!) near dictator Governments seem to work. Singapore is democratic but practically ruled by one party (PAP) for decades with only one or two opposition members elected every time (until recently) and Singapore has per capita income higher than the U.S.
the Philippines although once ruled by the U.S and fully democractic has a much lower per capita income, even lower than China’s.
(no I’m not supporting communism but just pointing out Asia facts)
“James Pomfret”? Holy cow, now somebody named “fried potato” is reporting for Reuters? Where do they pick up all these stringers, anyway?
Pomfret is French for French Fries.
Actually it is French for fried potato – pomme = pomme-de-terre = potato. Frites = fried. But isn’t that what Freedom Fries are? 🙂
Hey…saying freedom fries sounded a lot more appetizing than saying spineless surrender monkey fries… 😮
Wait! Wait! Don’t these Chinese people know how evil Apple is?!?!? Don’t they know about the few smug liberal do-gooders in the US that know better how to live their lives?