Today’s New York Times has an article about why American manufacturing is not competitive with overseas plants. It will come as a surprise to many that wages while higher here have little to do with the export of manufacturing jobs. According to this article it is the nimbleness of the Chinese factories, the reliability of the workforce to consumer demands, the ability to quickly mobilize an engineering team, and then the wage difference that has driven the exodus.
The article also describes a meeting between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and US President Obama where President Obama pressed Mr. Jobs on why iPhones are not made in America. Jobs simply stated “those jobs are not coming back”. The two gentlemen did have some alone time and many believe that Jobs respectfully read the President the riot act on the role of government in business.
I’m call BS on this, this one quote in the story is very telling.
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“A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,†the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.â€
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Anyone who has read anything about the Chinese company Foxconn that Apple along with Microsoft and many other US companies use to build computers and peripherals for the US market amounts to basically slave labor.
These links will provide a telling story…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/16/foxconn-suicide-china-society
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/12/chinese-foxconn-workers-threaten-mass-suicide-over-xbox-pay-dispute/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-13/foxconn-workers-at-southern-china-plant-protest-redeployment.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3YFGixp9Jw
Foxconn is Chinese slave labor at its very core, and the very reason that the products are not manufactured in the USA, the Chinese look at labor the very same way we look at coal, it’s a national resource to be exploited and used.
JMHO
I would not go so far as to call it BS, it is very real. It is certainly not the kind of place that I would ever want to work and yes it is essentially slave conditions. The trouble is that American workers are in competition with this sweatshop for manufacturing work. I for one would be willing to pay an extra $50 for an iPhone made in America if the quality was equivalent. The big trouble is that the very people who lose their jobs to foreign sweatshops are the ones who shop exclusively at places like Walmart. The Chinese slaveshops exist to supply American consumers with the low prices that many of us have come to crave.
Joe….
The part I’m calling BS is the fact that labor IS the main reason that Apple and others use Foxconn for manufacturing, I’ll agree as to the root cause being consumers wanting low low prices but when you have a workforce onsite that can be roused at any moment (even if they just got off a 12 hr shift) fed a cup of tea and a biscuit your talking about labor conditions that haven’t existed in the USA since the great depression.
As for paying another $50 for a US made Iphone, it would totally depend on where that extra fifty wound up…if it was in Apples coffers and used to pay for labor that’s one thing but it probably would not make a difference in the cost of a Iphone to the end user given incentives and contracts with the wireless service providers, unless your getting the latest Iphone you can pickup last years 3G model for way less than the cost to manufacture it even in China.
China as a whole is nothing more than a manufacturing country because of the labor resource they have on tap, they do not invent, engineer, develop, design, or innovate a single product for export, that role is most often accomplished in the USA, Taiwan, or India….although they are great at stealing, copying, reinventing, reverse engineering, decompiling IP.
While I think that the citizens of the USA are partly to blame wanting cheap stuff it’s more of a global situation brought on by the so called global economy. The worlds raw materials and ideas are funneled into China which has the work force and factories (financed and built by foreigners) & (sans the environmental and safety regulations here in the US and other countries) the drones are given a biscuit and cup of tea and set to work on their next task….without the Chinese labor in the equation along with the lack of environmental controls there is really no compelling reason to produce a single item there for export which is what I’m calling BS on..
JMHO
Yes slave labor makes it more attractive to move over seas with manufacture. However it is even worse when it comes to the regulation heaped on American businesses. I as a Luther (builder of guitars) have a nightmare of regulation to contend with. I have to make sure everything is documented correctly, passed through the proper channels and legal to sell in the US or export to where a customers want. I have over 900 pages of regulation just to get the parts, build the guitar and sell the guitar in order to be legal. This problem is made worse because there is a number of guidelines however, a number of the laws have no clear cut path for compliance and/or lack a recommended way to be legal in what you do. It is made worse when people in the industry try to be legal and the agencies they call on for help report them instead of help them. A440 Piano is one such example when the owner asked for help he was turned into the feds and had his business raided at gun point.
All of this regulation goes away if one were to make their product outside of the united states.
While some regulation is good and needed (or we face slave labor like we see in China) too much is stifling and destructive.
Labor is not the main reason according to that article. At least not the way that I read it. It is the nimbleness, the lack of red tape etc. My impression from the article was the even if Americans would work for $17 a day that we would not have the iPhone factory here.
That is my point. The regulation is the red tape. It is a job killer and is out of control. If they (the government) keeps on this track we will not have jobs in this country. it will become a wasteland instead of the land of opportunity.
I doing my job could face a federal raid at gunpoint. I have put my job (self employed) on hold pending the Gibson investigation and gone to work for a local music store at a major cut in pay.
Doing business is dangerous and I now have had to lay off one apprentice wanting to learn and shutter my business in fear of regulation. How is it anyone in this country can expect a resurgence of the economy when the government is out to cut the Achilles heel of the engine that drives the economy.
We need to get sound regulation into place. I can tell you wages cost less than regulation compliance by a long shot. This is why a number of businesses do not hire ,do not build here and will not open shop here.
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