Hacker News Reader

That's creating a false dichotomy, though. Just because a sweatshop may be better than backbreaking farm work, doesn't mean we can't care about what is happening in sweatshops.

Also, it's "Daisey".

True enough, but I don't believe that's the discussion we are, or should be, having. I think it's a case of reanalysing our consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of low-wage labour and being very fastidious about how we approach both. It is correct to say that we can't care about what is happening in sweatshops, but it's also correct to say that we need to be more careful about our arguments against them. It's more complicated than many people (not to say that you are one of these) believe.

I totally agree it's more complex than just "sweatshops are bad!" I think that Mike Daisey would agree with that as well.

I would like the conversation to shift to simple concrete things can be done that aren't about raising wages or closing factories.

Two examples: Rotating workers through different parts of the assembly line, which decreases repetitive strain injuries and doing meaningful age verification so you're not employing people who are too young (based on the local laws) to be employed in that kind of work.

Ironically, Apple already does at least one of those two. See the section on "Preventing underage labor."

http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/code-of-conduct/...

I'm also a fan of less dramatic changes here. It's too easy to get romantic about this subject and delude yourself into thinking you can change the world tomorrow. I think it's better to work on making tomorrow a little better than today.

It's not exactly ironic, I mentioned it because I knew it was something Apple cares about and is working to address.

I am personally optimistic about the future, with small changes brought about by pressure, these jobs can be better than they are without destroying prices or margins.

Some items for your list:

* On-site nurses/trained first aid providers.

* Formal training program for anyone operating anything potentially dangerous.

* MSDS (material safety data sheets) for all chemicals.

* Proper PPE (personal protective equipment)

* LOTO program (lock-out/tag-out)

* Safety testing.

* Workman's comp

Ultimately the main problem with sweatshops is something to the effect that "the best kind of job these people can get is at a sweatshop". The real solution probably isn't shutting down sweatshops, but getting these people better opportunities. (Then the sweatshop problem goes away, since people can simply walk away to better jobs.)

Local effort will need to be involved. Some efforts to help organize workers into unions may exist, and will be of some benefit, but without good alternatives to sweatshop employment the picture is incomplete. Places with top-down command economies may also be ill-positioned to create additional opportunity...

It is important to understand that sweatshops exist because they offer BETTER working conditions than those locally available.

They look atrocious to us in the rich western world, because they are far worse than our worst jobs, and with that context mismatch, we react strongly.

It's important to remember that we had sweatshops too. Working conditions during the industrial revolution were horrible compared to conditions now, but that period was a necessary step on the path from the agricultural society to todays society.

The way forward is to incrementally make sweatshops better, until the local conditions approve so much that they're the worst alternative, and then they will disappear. But that change can't happen overnight, and it won't happen if you ban sweatshops. It tooks us hundreds of years in the west, it's going to take decades in the third world.

Ok. We had horrible conditions during the industrial revolution.

Why does that mean that everyone going through similar economic transformation has to go through the same living and working conditions?

China knows what is possible. I don't think it will take decades for a society that can build a fully functioning, very modern, highly automated factory in 6 weeks /decades/ to get their working conditions in order.

There's also the sad fact that there are other countries than China. If China would improve worker conditions in a short timeframe, the cost of employing chinese workers would increase a lot, and that in turn would cause a lot of foregin companies to go elsewhere for their cheap labour.

The whole reason for globalization is that we in the western world improved our own working conditions so much that the cost of labour in our own countries increased to such levels that it became profitable for corporations to outsource. But we're still competitive because we moved up the value chain.

So you need to move everyone up the value chain, and that means you need a way to still perform that labour that needs to be performed, and to do that you need to automate more, add more industrial robots, but there's a limit to what robots can do, and there's a limit to how many robots you can produce in a year.

But we'll get there. Cheap labour will be eliminated, the living standard and working conditions of the entire world will rise, and I think it's better to cheer the fact that it's happening at all, and faster than it did in the western world, than to lament the fact that it's not going as fast as you would like.

"The real solution probably isn't shutting down sweatshops, but getting these people better opportunities."

I think this is right. People seem to like to imagine that the factory owners are kidnapping people, locking them up and forcing them to work in terrible conditions. But these people are working there because there aren't better places for them to work...

"Just because a sweatshop may be better than backbreaking farm work, doesn't mean we can't care about what is happening in sweatshops."

It's not that we don't care about what's happening in sweatshops. Appeals to emotion and morality are often dismissed as fallacies but they are certainly real. The problem is a lack of context and solutions.

Most of the arguments used disappear in context. The linked article makes the point about the injury rate and the wage rates; I do think he's partly off on suicides by missing that they clustered around the exorbitant benefits Foxconn had given for suicide.

"Apple should use it's margins to do something" isn't a real solution imho. How do we know they haven't already "done something"? How many "somethings" should Apple do? Until they run out of margins? What do the companies with very/low margin do? They get to do nothing because their products are shit? If a boycott closes Foxconn is that helping these workers? Will the anti-Foxconn people be thrilled when Foxconn transitions to primarily automated assembly plants?

"Also, it's "Daisey"."

Thanks, corrected.

> How do we know they haven't already "done something"? How many "somethings" should Apple do?

IMHO, they should require their suppliers to have a worker safety program, same as factories do in America. It's relatively easy to check whether or not a factory has on-site nurses and whether or not the employees know what to do when someone gets injured when you want to audit this.

I don't disagree, simply uninformed. But do we know that this is currently actually the case?

One of the reports mentioned a man getting his hand crushed in a machine and then getting no medical aid. They also used toxic n-hexane to clean screens until it made workers sick.

Neither situation should happen anywhere with a reasonable safety program. The MSDS (or equivalent) would have let them know how toxic n-hexane was and what sort of PPE is required to handle it safely. And they generally provide nurses or at least train a few employees as first aid providers (I am one such employee, incidentally). They're plenty big enough to afford a few full-time nurses or the equivalent.

Ideally people shouldn't work for money. Machines should do it and people should just go on creating and having fun. But because we live in an economy dominated by scarcity, that's not currently possible.

Regarding sweatshops, it's just a matter of perspective - I'm currently in the process of finding passive income revenues because I hate work in general. Should I boycott all companies with employees because of my preferences?

I think Mike Daisy should spend some time in rural China with the relatives of Foxconn employees who do backbreaking farm work. But who would go to see that show without "Steve Jobs" in the title?

I was thinking about this. I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Daisey would do just that. He's a pretty unconventional documentarian. At this point, people probably would go see the show (or listen to the This American Life show, as I did). Seriously, you should suggest this to him, it would make for a good story.

There's some truth to both sides. Harsh conditions and low (relative) wages are pretty normal, even in America. There are legitimate gripes about those, but the fact is that even in America people end up working lots of overtime with little say in whether or not they want it.

However, the point this article makes about safety is pure and utter crap. The best they can come up with is to bury that matter on page two, then handwave some bogus calculation about how people get injured even in America. Yes, they do. I personally have had to deal with some of those industrial injuries. But they were caused by the worker screwing up, not by unsafe conditions. There's not much you can do if someone reaches into a machine that's in operation when they're not allowed to do that, ever. That's a far cry from having to deal with poisonous chemicals like n-hexane and from having no first aid providers to help you.

And from everything I've read, there are some ridiculously unsafe conditions over there. US employers are required to have MSDS sheets for their chemicals, so something like n-hexane doesn't get used to polish iPhone screens. The workers also have a right to learn about them. You also get proper PPE and training to deal with whatever you have to deal with. Finally, they do not leave you on your own if you get injured. They either hire nurses, or teach employees (like yours truly) first aid. Yes, I know what farm work is like, too. Everyone who grew up in the Midwest probably at least knows about detasseling corn. For the record, yes, it sucks. But I'd take it over a factory with no safety program any day. So, basically, the lot of you could stand to learn more about conditions here before comparing them to China. We have it bad, they have it worse, and it's not some kind of contest.

The whole Apple thing, though? I wouldn't boycott them, but I would push them into trying. They've got no direct control, no, but when the factory manager has to deal with a big customer like Apple, they will do something to appease them. It's probably a bit unfair to single out Apple, though, because I doubt it's that much different elsewhere. If they really want to do something, they should require their suppliers to have a worker safety program.

Farming in the developing world is very different from farming in the Midwestern United States. US agriculture is heavily mechanized. Developing world agriculture is not.

Detasseling involves pulling the tassels out of corn by hand. It's not mechanized at all, or at least it wasn't back when I was growing up.

You get up early in the morning and trudge through hot, muddy fields all day. You get paid according to how much your crew is able to detassel.

I refuse this appologia, especially the false dichotomy between an absolute minimum in worker benefits and the existence of jobs better than farming. Nike/Apple/Gap/Samsung all put substantial effort into their overseas operations and reap huge profits. Spending a fraction of their margins on creating healthy workplaces and increasing worker ownership could change the situation from lesser of two evils to a transformational endeavor. Given more free time, savings and ownership in the company she is helping to create, a Foxconn worker could turn around and mechanize the family farm. The only one to disappoint is Wall Street.