A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line | Hacker News Reader

A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom Line

npr.org

77 pointsdanso69 comments

While I'm glad that this experiment was done, because it resulted in better conditions for the factory workers, it bothers me that experiments like this are necessary in the first place. I get that managers and owners, qua managers and owners, are concerned with maximizing productivity, but it should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of humanity and common sense that productivity will increase when labourers are treated as human beings, with basic needs being met for their general welfare, rather than as beasts of burden.

Color me unimpressed at the discovery that productivity increases when workers have something as luxurious as proper lighting and air circulation so that sweat isn't pouring down their faces while they're sewing blue jeans for H&M with the utmost concentration lest they break their finger or hand in a machine.

Putting it in terms of cost & productivity is very clinical, very inhuman, but it's also virtually unassailable. Nobody will argue "We should continue to treat people badly and make less money". So to me it seems like the gold standard result. You don't have to argue ethics, morals, or worry about people cheating. Because you've just made humane treatment of workers economically rational.

You've missed my point. I'm not saying that putting it in terms of cost and productivity isn't virtually unassailable. I'm saying that it's ridiculous that this experiment was necessary to convince management that ensuring the basic welfare of its workforce would improve that productivity.

Just as it's obvious that productivity isn't maximized if workers aren't permitted to sleep or eat lunch (and we don't really need studies to know that), so it should be obvious that productivity isn't maximized when working conditions include stifling heat with no air circulation while you're at risk of maiming yourself at a sewing machine. This is a sweat shop we are talking about.

I've explicitly couched my comments in terms of worker productivity, so I'm not exactly talking about ethics. But ethics is certainly the subtext here, because I think it's obvious that humans perform and live better when they're treated the way they ought to be treated, with their basic needs being met.

Commonsense ethical rules aren't arbitrary; it isn't a coincidence that people fare badly, and perform poorly, when they are treated badly and are made to work and live in squalor.

I would go on a limb an say you have never been to India?

I'll let someone else play hobby-anthropologist as to the reasons why, but complete disregard to the plights of the poor is rampant among the middle and higher class Indians.

I'll take the armchair anthropologist bait. It's rampant because there are so many of us.

If you see a homeless man rotting away, your heart goes out to him. If you see ten thousand of them, then...meh. Human empathy is finite unfortunately, and available in vanishing quantities among the Indian rich. The Indian rich are vile in a way that cannot be adequately described in words. Those of us who've made it outside India and are living abroad often like to discuss the vast differences in the value of life in the west vs east, and also the much higher dignity of labour.

Financial self interest works as a motivator for a lot of things related to energy efficiency. There are idiots who will buy the least efficient thing just to spite the "hippie snowflakes," but anyone who answers to business owners or shareholders will be happy to have a way to improve the bottom line through efficiency savings and if it improves productivity at the same time then it's a double win.

Perhaps the problem lies with how our culture views the company as a “machine” (in a metaphorical sense) whose only purpose is to produce some useful output. All that matters is how can you tweak or modify the machine to be more productive or less costly to operate. People in this world view are simply the metaphorical cogs (preferably interchangeable ones). It would be silly to care about a cog the way you would your significant other or even your pet.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It just happens to be the state of modern work culture.

There’s an emerging world view that instead sees a company as a purposeful organism with all the biological messiness and unpredictability that it implies. This organism has its own needs and desires separate from the productive outputs. Traditional management hierarchies don’t exist for it. Instead, each person is like a independent cell that senses their environment and reacts on their own, but for the common good as they’re actually interdependent in each other.

It’s still early, but there’s emerging evidence from the last few decades[1] that this way of being in the world could be more resilient in the long term and may eventually supplant the company-as-machine model.

[1]: [Reinventing Organizations](https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic-La...)

That’s a great analogy. Almost all machines have consumable parts to save the rest of the parts from wear (in a car, it’s things like brake pads and motor oil). In companies, the workers are the consumable parts that are chewed up so that the executives and shareholders can thrive.

> anyone with a modicum of humanity and common sense

There's a lot of people out there who don't have those. And can be very driven for their own aims with zero regard for the lives of others. There are a lot of managers in every industry for whom unhappiness of the employees is a sign that they're "working hard".

Sometimes it's useful to remember just how privileged we are to be working in tech...

...many of us get microkitchens with as many La Croix and "delightful" snacks as we can consume. While for others, just a switch to lamps that produce less heat is a major life improvement.

speak for yourself, I work as a full time engine mechanic for a regional chain of repair shops. - its a full time battle just to convince some management that OSHA is real. earplugs and gloves were a luxury item under my last boss.

- one of our managers stole tools all the time and fired a technician just to cover his ass. That technician burned his car to the ground with a road flare in a mcdonalds parking lot.

-our former owner was arrested for illegally dumping waste chemicals in a protected habitat, and instead of just paying the fine the madman elected to serve 4 years in prison.

- I was asked to testify against her.

- two words: angry boomer. The number of times I've had a child of the greatest generation grab me by the collar and scream obscenities at me for something stupid borders on the absurd. Ive had one of them corner me in a hallway and refuse to 'let me go' until I discounted the work on his daughters car.

- People shit on you for doing this job, or openly remark that you're incompetent. Fun fact, my coworker in paint and body has a doctorate in mathematics from Pepperdyne. My transmission tech team lead was a former Formula 1 race mechanic. I build my own Linux containers and run my own Kubernetes cluster. We arent all just sweat and wrenches.

>> two words: angry boomer.

Yup. In my early 30s I had one challenge me to a fight after a lifeguard ejected him from the "fast lane" for swimming too slowly. I said I'd meet him in the parking lot, then left the back way. I still wonder whether he showed up. I assume something was wrong with his meds. While riding in a group of 20+ sportbikes we had another try to start a fight with us at a gas station. Twenty people on bikes dressed like power rangers and this old man starts throwing punches because he was stuck in line behind us. We laughed and rode away.

Any theories as to why those "boomers" are so angry?

Typically entitlement.

Many people tend to be less patient with age (rather than more patient). They see younger people as a disappointment and treat them as such.

I have to wonder though if millennials won't get to the exact same point. If feels like this is the classic generation divide rather than a specific "boomer" issue.

There is an idea among boomers that they literally own the past, and all things that spring from it. For instance, they talk of social security not as a government program but a property right, something personal that they own. Reductions in it therefore aren't cutbacks but theft. If you feel you are being stolen from, it is easy to see anyone else receiving benefits from government as collaborators in that theft.

They also cling to 1950s ideas about work and religion. They really do believe that hard work brings prosperity. So young people who aren't succeeding obviously just aren't trying hard enough. We know the world is more complex. They don't. When those ideas are challenged, say by a group of young people inventing cellphone apps rather than toiling in a shoe factory, their internal conflict expresses as anger.

The anger at us motorcycles I chalk up to reduced mobility. Old people feel trapped in their bodies. Movement is difficult or even painful. So they are jealous of those motorcycles whipping by them on the highway. Another manifestation of this are the "stand your ground" laws that literally protect one's right not to move away when confronted by a more mobile person.

I'm a tradesman in the steel construction industry. I worked for an ISP for ~4 years a few years ago before returning to the trade for the money.

After having worked for the ISP and come back to the tools, the culture of abuse in this industry kinda shocked me. Of the eight or so workshops I've worked in only two were well run by professionals.

Curious, if you have Kubernetes skills, could you not make more $ doing that full time? You may also find an environment where you are more appreciated.

> I build my own Linux containers and run my own Kubernetes cluster.

you build you own images...

for the uninitiated:

image = visible through `ls /var/lib/docker/$storage-driver`;

container = visible through `ps aux | grep -P "(docker|containerd)"`

An alternative way at looking at this is that, if you are pushing your employees to their physical limits, you can squeeze more out of them if you can prevent them from becoming overheated.

This is a negative way of looking at it, but I think, unfortunately, that it is realistic. Beyond the short term, the only way this will benefit the workers is if there is something external to limit the ways it can be exploited solely to increase productivity. Otherwise, the market will do its thing.

Not working in 85+ degree temperatures is a benefit on it's own.

That's a fair point, but to me, the article's message seemed to be that the important issue was the productivity gain (just look at the title.) That interpretation, and my response, may well be a biased, to which I can only say that it wasn't my initial response, which was more favorable.

Back when i was in high school, i did a summer job in a building without A/C. We got to do nothing if the temp hit 97, or whatever was the local regulation. small “pleasures”.

Negative? It's how the world works.

Those in resource-driven countries enjoy very little comfort, because you don't need very comfortable/educated people to extract resources.

Our economies are more based on knowledge, so we get better lives.

CGPGrey's rules for rulers is a very good outline of this and other related topics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Just because it’s true doesn’t make it not “negative” — even pessimists are often over-optimistic for project planning, for example, despite being closest to reality.

Also, this article shows that people can be irrational about the economically optimal level of comfort.

CGP makes a similar point with the valley of revolution, between impoverished and wealthy nations, and why it’s hard to get from poor to rich even though it’s clearly an improvement.

The horses that draw carriages in New York City, have similar restrictions [1] and [2]:

1. Carriage horses shall not be worked whenever the air temperature is 90 degrees fahrenheit or above.

2. Riding horses shall not be at work more than eight hours in any continuous twenty-four hour period.

3. Carriage horses shall receive no less than five weeks of vacation or furlough every twelve months at a horse stable facility.

[1] - https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2006/new-york-city-adm...

[2] - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/horses.pa...

We as humans can do better when it comes to other humans. We should.

To quote Ben Harrison: I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process.

(https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Harrison)

This is a really interesting article! I recommend anyone just checking out the comments to take a look -- it is quite short.

I wonder if there's a real opportunity here. Buy up Indian manufacturing firms with significant books of business and introduce productivity enhancing changes like LED lights. Of course, this is a simplification, but if the effect is as pronounced as described in the article, it seems like a fantastic opportunity.

I rarely see news about how business operates, or stories of business success and decline in India. Does anyone know where I could read more?

Thank you to the moderators for boosting this story after 3 days, it definitely spiked my curiosity. I presently import a few products from China and love learning about the challenges these manufacturers face.

There are plenty of small businesses in India going through productivity transitions and becoming bigger exporters. Air conditioning has been the easiest gain in the last 2 decades.

More recently it is mobile payments and computerized inventory and financing. The companies making these investments quickly become local franchises or quality exporters who can charge more.

Of course the owners and employees are richer for doing this, beating competition.

Do you have some example companies to read about?

These are really small neighborhood businesses. I remember walking down the streets and there were some local sweet shops with delicious street food. They used to sell it for Rs 5 (less than 10 cents) at the time.

Add some inflation, air conditioning, hygiene (using gloves for example), seating, led lights and these things cost Rs 30 now (50 cents).

You'd think the price would shirk customers off especially since competition was selling the same stuff for Rs 10.

But no. They got featured in local TV a few times, got large contracts to supply these food items to events. They mechanized their production keeping their recipe the same and franchised their brand, opened websites, created presence in malls and started exporting these foods outside India as a packaged food item.

All this in 15 years.

http://www.jumboking.co.in/

> The company, Shahi Exports, has more than 50 factories, employs about 100,000 workers and supplies brands that include Gap, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M. Some of these brands had encouraged the company to be more environmentally responsible by switching out the fluorescent tube lights in its factories for LEDs that would consume about one-seventh the amount of energy.

Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple of extra bucks for their Gap t-shirts and Gap can insist that Indian factory owners install air conditioning instead?

…switching out the fluorescent tube lights in its factories for LEDs that would consume about one-seventh the amount of energy.

Something is wrong here. Fluorescent tubes to LEDs is more like a ½ savings. I suppose if you reduce overall lighting and provide task lighting you could get to 1/7, but the technologies aren’t that far off in efficiency.

Check luminous efficiency in Wikipedia for a nice table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

The fluorescent systems in there are likely older and less efficient, so at the lower end of the range. For this kind of industrial setup you can probably do more efficient DC directly to the lights with fewer and more efficient conversions from AC, and there may be other improvements available (solar tubes, dimmable LEDs, task lighting, etc.). 7x seems high but likely achievable.

Don't forget about the power used by the ballast and the heat generated there..

> Maybe Americans and European yuppies can pay a couple of extra bucks for their Gap t-shirts and Gap can insist that Indian factory owners install air conditioning instead?

Like they weren't already overpaying 100x+ for them. Maybe Gap, H&M and others could cut their margins a bit...

H&M’s operating margin is at 10%. It seems that many clothing retailers are somewhere around that point. 100× doesn’t even work as hyperbole for me. H&M likely wouldn’t even survive a 2× reduction in clothing prices.

Which is not to say that H&M (or others) are blameless in this. It’s more to say that this is a structural issue.

That's because while the clothes themselves are sold for 10x or 100x the price they cost to make (which is dirt cheap, these stores pay the sweatshops close to nothing), the difference is spent on having stores in high rent areas in most cities.

This is part of the branding strategy for stores like H&M or Zara. Many of the items on sale are of similar (or slightly better) quality with what you find in cheap outlets at the edge of the city, even the ones that sell en-gross. But having a store in an affluent part of town gives them more credibility and a better image.

Which, again, hints at a structural problem (and gets the Marxist inside of me all tingly).

Because capitalism H&M can’t move those stores elsewhere.

The Gap already has the money to do that. If they aren't doing it now, how would a consumer know these next few dollars would go to improving conditions and not just more profits?

I wonder if the spectrum difference in the light sources would also have an effect?

As a fictional example, in Asimov's "Prelude to Foundation" one of the locations (Dahl, a geothermal power district) offset the sweltering heat by running dimmer, reddish lighting, which apparently had a psychological effect on the inhabitants' perception of temperature.

In real life, I wouldn't be surprised if offices choose to run high-colour-temperature lights in order to keep workers more awake and less drowsy (the exact effect that software like F.lux tries to offset).

Sorta, though I don't think normal office hours matter much here. Blue-spectrum light influences the circadian rhythm in your body by shifting it forward, keeping you more awake. Red-spectrum light doesn't influence that rhythm as much and from personal experience, will get you sleepy relatively quickly if it's late at night or you're otherwise exhausted. On the other hand, blue light keeps you awake however once you eat into the normal sleep time of your day enough, you'll start experiencing heavy eye strain, headaches and sore muscles rather quickly. (Personal experience is an Arduino-controlled LED strip with RGBW setting, which allows me to very precisely control the white temperature)

"There have always been these theories that part of why the Northern Hemisphere grew faster than the Southern Hemisphere was because of temperature issues," — it could also because the weather is nicer outside so we go surfing instead of working?

I'm from tropical country, and there's a saying that you can literally plant a stick and it will grow up a tree. Unfortunately it makes us lazy.

I wonder if the opposite is true? In my region low income people work seasonally in fish plants. Although now many fish plants hire people from outside the country because they can pay them less.

The fish plants are wet and very cold the workers wear rubber gloves and often have their hands in ice. If 30C is the heat stress threshold is there a cold stress threshold?

It's really great when a change like this aimed at improving workers' lives ends up helping company profits overall. It helps give credence to the idea that treating your employees well is not only a nice thing to do, but that it's better from a financial standpoint as well.

Link to the text only version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=629871725

I still think NPR should consider redirecting to the requested article. Can't be that hard, can it?

Nice, always exciting when academia produces immediate impact.

> Decline and visit plaintext site

This doesn't count as opt-out by default behavour for tracking. Have any complaints been made in the EU toward NPR?

EDIT: Glad this is getting some attention, whether it be upvoting or downvoting.

Doesn't it? By default, you're opted out of loading the page altogether. You may then opt in for the full version or remain opted out and continue onto the plaintext version.

Personally, I love this implementation.

If opt out were truly the default, it would, in turn here, imply that default behaviour of the site is to serve the plaintext version. This is obviously not the case and has never been the case.

I don't think it's "obviously" not the case. Plain text has been the default since before we had displays. It was not the default for NPR since before GDPR, and now it is.

Moreover, the only image in the article is a non-content header display image. The entire article is plain text. You are experiencing no degradation, and honestly an improvement! (smaller page, less loading, less waiting, easier to manage on smaller screens...) I wish this became the standard for compliance.

"opt-out as default" in the context of GDPR means that all EU citizens have to be considered as not having given consent to usage of their personal data until they explicitly do so. See Recital 32, Sentence 3: "Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent." [0] in the context of consent of the data subject to make processing of personal data lawful (Article 6 [1])

I'd be glad if you could point out a regulation on the content website owners must offer to people who do not wish their personal data to be processed.

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-32/

[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/

You shouldn't make frivolous complaints. You are just adding noise and drowning out the real signal based on your knee jerk reaction to something that you don't like but that is actually perfectly legal and in fact a reasonable solution, after all, you did get to read the article.

Personally I prefer the NPR's 'text' version over their fancy one anyway. It loads quicker and doesn't have any of the js nonsense.

I like the plaintext version better too, but when I hit decline it redirects me to the “main page” of the plaintext site which just shows a top 10 stories view. Am I missing how to go see the story from plaintext due to some browser settings or something? Running latest iOS on iPhone 7+

Same problem, the decline (opt-out) seems to make it impossible to read the article. Android chrome.

I feel like the majority of people downvoting my original top level comment haven't had to click the decline/opt-out link.

I feel like you did not really look:

https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=629871725

Pretty sure NPR shouldn't be particularly concerned about foreign regulations. It's an entirely US based entity.

In that case, why serve the page at all?

Because that's not how the internet ever worked before this foolishness.

Dude, they're trying to serve you. It's not as if you paid them anything for TFA. Yet you're perfectly satisfied for them to be threatened from abroad? Wow.

Lots of regulations eventually shift in people's estimation from "this might be a good idea" when introduced to "this is what God intended" after years of acclimation. The shift seems to have been really fast for this regulation.

GDPR is criminalizing all websites because compliance is impossible. It puts european officials in exactly the possition they want to be in, everyone is breaking the law an enforcement is a matter of who their friends are.

Majors websites are taking steps to remove access from eu. This will only get worse. Be prepared to live in the environmet your politicians have created, or be prepared to come back to planet reality.

I speak personally, as a technical architect for international sales organization. People who basically are not in that position don't realize the way the law is written that compliance is not feasible. You are simply gambling that the shakedown form the enforceres won't be to bad.

> GDPR is criminalizing all websites because compliance is impossible

I disagree, compliance isn't particularly difficult unless you're going out of your way to do something harmful to your users.

> be prepared to come back to planet reality.

Please refrain from hyperboly, I'd much rather a civil discussion about this.

> compliance isn't particularly difficult unless you're going out of your way to do something harmful to your users.

Please stop spreading this FUD. There are tons of architectures (e.g. Apache Kafka) which were totally sane and require total reorganization to become compliant. Dismissing this as "not very difficult" and adding a snide little attack on anybody who disagrees is untrue and an ad hominem to boot.

Complying with GDPR is costly and significant work. If implememtations match legislative aspirations, it could also be a significant boon to consumers. However, legitimate questions about the level of compliance, particularly from companies with unscrupulous business models leave it currently vague whether the boon will be realized in full, in part, or not at all.

Though I know hacker news discourages political discourse and meta, I would interject - almost all political topics have upsides and downsides. Pretending that the downsides don't exist on any policy isn't passionate advocacy - it's just degrading the level of discourse.

I think you have the definition of FUD backwards

> I disagree, compliance isn't particularly difficult unless you're going out of your way to do something harmful to your users

Article 27 is a big pain for those of us not established in the Union, regardless of whether or not we are doing anything harmful to our users.

If compliance is impossible, it's probably because your business model is incompatible even with the spirit of GDPR - the notion that a person should have control over their data and other entities should handle it with care.

If compliance is expensive, it's probably because your business profitted somehow from handling personal data (or you let someone else reap the profits, e.g. tracking ad networks).

I find your situation similar to the one of an engineer in a chemical plant who got the task to make the whole place completely ecofriendly due to new regulations. The solution to just block the EU and resume business elsewhere is the best course of action if complying is indeed impossible or infeasible for your business. If your organization decides to gamble because there is still profit to be made in the EU, it's on them when enforcement comes around someday.

In any case, competitors will find a way to offer GDPR-compliant services and there might be enough demand for data protection laws in the US, changing how businesses have to deal with personal data. Time will tell.

I agree with your statement, my business model IS incompatible with the spirit of GDPR. You and I are just looking at GDPR differently. You think its somthing good.

You are wrong about the business profiting from personal data however. That doesn't happen. Again, my assumption is you are a lay person and you do not understand the complexities of data management. You are making assumptions about why data is handled the way way that it is, assuming the reason is greed or incompetence. You're wrong.

I certainaly conceed that it is possible that compotition could come along and be GDPR compliant and 'win' but from my perspective that wont happen. What will happen is the largest organizations will be fined into regularly spending large amounts of money to work on GDPR, hold the regulators off to to some extent and small players will never exist or get destroyed because one small wrong move and one wrong bureaucrat has that power over them.

Time never stops telling a new story, but what time is saying right now is the America is dominating the EU in information technology and that sure looks like it will continue throughout my lifetime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com