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Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever worked in a factory? I used to. They squeeze you as hard as they can, constantly. Most of the people have no leverage to push back. While having money is better than having none, that doesn't mean everything is ok and you can just ignore the way the workers get abused.

In the US, you can push back at things like unsafe conditions with threats of OSHA. I doubt there's any such thing in Bangladesh, but it would be a good start.

Having a job is great, but they should be required to provide reasonable working conditions. And even in the USA, they will do the absolute minimum unless pushed.

Source: I have worked 16-hour shifts in a US factory that was over 100F, sometimes unable to get lunch or bathroom breaks. I now work a normal office job and laugh at the very notion of comparing even a 100-hour week doing this to a 70-hour week doing that.

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Well, the original comment by L_Rahman is saying basically that. Except that it's phrased more like "while not everything is ok and you cannot just ignore the way the workers get abused, you also have to to consider that having money is better than having none".

That's a more reasonable opinion. I believe that the solution is to make sure people in situations like these have real, viable options. For example, places of employment with decent working conditions.

Incidentally, many of the complaints against Chinese/Bangladesh/etc. factories could also be leveled against US factories per my experience. Other than the child labor bit, I've seen just about everything here, too, though I expect some of the problems are simply more widespread and occur more frequently.

Factory managers know that their employees don't have a lot of options and tend to squeeze them hard. (Then collect bonuses for cost savings...) It was always amusing to hear them tell the crew how great it was that labor expenses were down. And yes, I did point out afterwards to the people that "labor expenses" === "your paychecks." For whatever reason, this was not obvious to some.

> Incidentally, many of the complaints against Chinese/Bangladesh/etc. factories could also be leveled against US factories per my experience. Other than the child labor bit, I've seen just about everything here, too, though I expect some of the problems are simply more widespread and occur more frequently.

When a US factory burns down and kills all the employees inside because they'd been locked in during their 15 hour shift - which has happened more than once in Bangladesh - you can say that US factories are similar to Bangladeshi factories.

I agree that conditions for many workers suck, but let's not pretend there's much similarity.

> When a US factory burns down and kills all the employees inside because they'd been locked in during their 15 hour shift.

I give you the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, killing 146 garment workers. Same general gist, even: doors were locked by management from the outside "to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911

Lots of things have happened in the US since 1911.

Factory fires killing employees still happen in Bangladesh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24453165

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24195441

It wasn't a factory, but there was a lawsuit over the Wal-Mart where the employees were locked inside while stocking habitually, only for someone to have a medical emergency.

You're right that there are better protections in the USA. But day-to-day conditions are not so great--there's nothing particularly abnormal about 15-hour shifts, or people who would lose their jobs for refusing them.

The #1 way to fight back is to quit which increases costs to the factory owner, if you don't then it's better than the alternatives.

I am unexperienced when it comes to such matters, but:

1. Quitting means you are no longer making money, and if that was an acceptable endgame then you likely wouldn't be employed in such conditions in the first place;

2. I find it extremely unlikely that such factory owners would have a dearth of prospective (eager, even) employees.

#1 Quitting does not mean you never look for another job or quit on the first day etc. It means when you perceive working for said factory is not worth it you do something else.

#2 Having a large labor supply suggests the job is competitive. However, even if that's the case having people constantly quit increases training costs.

The point of all of this is industrialization tends to follow a path where people move from terrible low wage jobs to more well paid work. Even China has moved past the first rung of the ladder with market forces forcing factory's to increase pay and or improve conditions. Presumably where going to run out of 3rd world countries at some point, though there is some concern robots / AI is going to end up filling that nitch possibly stranding a few countries.

You are begging the question. The reason factory workers in poor rural countries put up with no windows, ventilation, or air conditioning is that the alternative is subsistence farming. Suggesting that they quit in protest is almost cruel.

China has absolutely not moved past the first rung of this ladder. The majority of the Chinese population lives in abject rural poverty.

It's actually about a 50/50 split between rural and urban [0]. This means that the Chinese urban population nowadays is 150% of the total Chinese population in 1950[1]. So now that the facts are on the table, what is your point?

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/china-urban-populat...

[1]http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+population

Those Chinese in abject rural poverty seem to be quite content there from what I could gather from friends and relatives that went to rural China (I stayed in the larger cities, so I'm clarifying that I haven't had first hand experiences with rural rural Chinese, only from those that moved to the city).

Most Chinese in the city (some which you may judge as living in abject poverty), are actually pretty happy with their situation. Even the homeless people seem more content than over here in Germany (I've talked to quite some of them over some baijiu at the corner of the street).

Please stop painting China a some kind of post-communist hellhole where people are starving on the streets whilst toiling away in backstreet sweatshops. You're not doing the country any justice, and you should really visit it someday.s

If you think quitting is the #1 way to fight back, you must not be familiar with labor organizing, including strikes.

Several states are openly hostile to unions and there are more than a few businesses that would simply close a branch if it were about to unionize. Also, you end up with two sets of bosses, which brings its own issues.

I've seen constant double-digit monthly turnover and that didn't do much that I could discern. Yes, it raised costs but they were relatively insensitive to that.

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