Foxconn Reportedly Paying Huawei Workers More Than iPhone Builders | Hacker News Reader

Foxconn Reportedly Paying Huawei Workers More Than iPhone Builders

tomshardware.com

34 pointsthunderbong16 comments

As always, don’t just read the title.

> told the SCMP that FIH employees are often paid higher but that the group that makes iPhones "typically offers better welfare programmes for workers than others," suggesting better benefits.

About $3.60 per hour vs 2.89.

Almost 25% more, so a good deal more.

What are the welfare programs worth? What value do the employees see them as having? We’re forced to speculate about the only things that actually matters, to make a fair comparison. I expect better from Tom’s Hardware.

That reads very grim... if I could speculate, the welfare programmes are probably what's Apple mandating from their suppliers, so "if you want to earn more, give up on some 'comforts'.".

Maybe things like better break hours, vacation, some sort of counselling (they did have a lot of workers retiring by jumping out the window a few years ago...).

If China somehow stepped in and forced Foxconn to kick Apple to the curb, would that be the end of Apple?

Why you think Apple and other phone makers are trying to move manufacturing to India?

Large young workforce, far cheaper than building in the US or Europe, along with still being closer to China for resources, and the more pro-western government is another added bonus.

And as a bonus, entertaining videos such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VzxTDs5eA

essentially replacing suicide nets with bamboo canes.

India also heavily incentivizes manufacturing domestically. Given the large market of India it makes sense to have a facility there. Also it gives diversification to their supply chain, which they obviously want.

Why would they do that?

Oh I dunno to simultaneously give Chinese tech companies a huge boost while more or less ending one of the US’s most valuable companies?

They could easily argue it was tit for tat.

They haven’t done it because it would trigger the equivalent of an economic nuclear war.

Mutually assured economic destruction.

It would also cause every tech company in the western (and western aligned) world to leave China for good.

But where will they move to? We’ve put all our eggs in one basket, it’ll be a very long time before India can take China’s place.

I find it very strange there aren’t more people ringing the alarm bells about how we’ve positioned China to have the west by the short hairs.

I’ve brought it up in regards to the many generic drugs that huge swaths of the population rely on. People just look at me like I’m wearing a tin foil hat.

> Oh I dunno to simultaneously give Chinese tech companies a huge boost

USA could end Chinese chip production as a retaliation, since they are still dependent on US and European manufacturing machines that they can’t operate on their own. It’d take a decade to catch up and make their own manufacturing equipment. In the meantime they’d make themselves essentially irrelevant to the world if they can’t be relied upon for doing contract manufacturing.

There are many such areas where China would be more hurt be economic decoupling than USA.

FoxConn is a Taiwanese company, so that supposes that they have the ability to do things in countries other than China.

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