(Reuters) – When Chinese worker Wu Jun heard that her employer, the giant electronics assembly company Foxconn, had given employees landmark concessions her reaction was worry, not elation.
Wu, 23, is one of tens of thousands of migrants from the poor countryside who staff the production lines of Foxconn’s plant in Longhua, in southern China, which spits out made-to-order products for Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and other multinationals.
Foxconn’s concessions, including cutting overtime for its 1.2 million mainland Chinese workers while promising compensation that protects them against losing income, were backed by Apple, which has faced criticism and media scrutiny for worker safety lapses and for using relatively low-paid employees to make high-cost phones, computers and other gadgets.
But at the Foxconn factory gates, many workers seemed unconvinced that their pay wouldn’t be cut along with their hours. For some Chinese factory workers – who make much of their income from long hours of overtime – the idea of less work for the same pay could take getting used to.
“We are worried we will have less money to spend. Of course, if we work less overtime, it would mean less money,” said Wu, a 23-year-old employee from Hunan province in south China.
Foxconn said it will reduce working hours to 49 per week, including overtime.
“We are here to work and not to play, so our income is very important,” said Chen Yamei, 25, a Foxconn worker from Hunan who said she had worked at the factory for four years.
“We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours a month of overtime. I tell you, a lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be reasonable and that 36 hours would be too little,” she added. Chen said she now earned a bit over 4,000 yuan a month ($634).
Foxconn is one the biggest employers of China’s 153 million rural migrants working outside their hometowns. Compared to smaller, mainland-owned factories, workers said, its vast plants are cleaner and safer, and offer more recreation sites.
Read the rest here.
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter
will the Woodshedder all-too balanced News Network report “General Motors Decides Climate Change Is Real, Pulls Support From Heartland Institute”, or how will he spin it to further his POV …. stay tuned to find out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/30/climate-change-general-motors-heartland-institute
How about how climate change was supposedly around 11.5 thousand years ago? Or that it occurs on every other planet.
Oh yeah, but we are supposed to believe its “our fault” for “carbon emissions” causing “global warming” when the last ice age saw carbon levels much higher than we have now.
exactly .. 8 billion & counting humans, have no significant impact on planet earth & its atmosphere … none, whatsoever
oh, that’s right… Hitler was a “hero” because he reduced the population and all the people he killed also couldn’t have offspring… I forgot. Limiting the population should occur and government should go around starting wars for population reduction and don’t forget increasing post birth abortion age to 17 years after birth.
When you put it that way that humans are the problem for other humans and that by effect mass genocide is thus a good solution all so YOU don’t get sunburned, and the polar bears don’t get a temperature, it makes so much more sense
rather than have the moniker ‘kill them all’, I would suggest ‘master of hyperbole’
but I will reply to your hyperbolic inanity
as we need permits to build homes; with global (over)population like it is, we should be required to have permits to bear a child .. based on
1) no one under the age of 25 is allowed to have kids
2) no more than 3 biological children per marriage
3) no unrehabilitated criminals can breed
4) no predisposition for serious genetic diseases
5) financially able & psychologically fit to raise kids – so they won’t be a burden on society
6) no alcoholics/drug addicts can have children
and more along these lines .. no one is talking culling the human population like they were deer thru your idiotic assumptions above
but this will not happen for centuries until sectarian-blinded hypocrites like Santorum, who want to preserve ‘go forth & multiply’ like vermin, die off & get replaced by logic-based humans … if everyone is having 7 kids like Santorum, who can’t control himself and uses his wife as a sperm receptacle, we’d have even more asking for handouts & govy freebies … he wants to preserve the right to have 7 kids for everyone but on the other hand & out of his ass, he wants to cut social services & govy freebies .. you cannot have both in this day & age
JUICE,GOODLUCK TELLING CRIMINALS AND SEX ADDICTS NOT TO “COMMIT CRIME” BY PASSING A LAW AGAINST TOO MUCH SEX!
I WANT TO NOT GET OLDER, LETS PASS A LAW AGAINST TIME, AGING, AND I WANT TO FLY SO WHY NOT PASS A LAW AGAINST GRAVITY TOO?
AS FOR SANTORUM, HE MAY BE AN IDIOT, BUT HE CERTAINLY DOES WANT TO REGULATE THE BEDROOM
“One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a “Libertarianish right”.
They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down, keep our regulations low, and that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world.
There is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”
-SANTORUM
“he wants to preserve the right to have 7 kids for everyone but on the other hand & out of his ass, he wants to cut social services & govy freebies .. you cannot have both in this day & age”
IF TOO MANY HUMANS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM, THEN WE SHOULD KEEP AS MANY HUMANS ALIVE AS POSSIBLE…
IF TOO MANY HUMANS ARE THE PROBLEM, THEN WHY SHOULD WE EVEN LIVE, OR SUPPORT UNPRODUCTIVE HUMANS BY FUNDING THEM.
YOU ARE THE ONE THAT CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
1)EITHER HUMANS ARE THE PROBLEM AND WE SHOULD NUKE THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE, AND LET THE UNPRODUCTIVE DIE OUT RATHER THAN GIVE THEM WELFARE, OR
2)HUMANS ARE THE ONES THAT CAUSE SOLUTIONS AND WE SHOULD ENCOURAGE KEEPING EVERY HUMAN ALIVE
OR
3)Only some humans are the solution and we should accelerate darwinism by killing off those who’s lineage hasn’t produced or accomplished anything in the last 5 generations. and we should also kill off old people over 50 as colonel Sanders and others are the exception, not the rule.
ALL 3 OF THESE MAY BE INSANE, BUT I TEND TO FALL SOMEWHERE BETWEEN #2 AND #3.
But don’t try to pass a law against human nature, and expect people to follow it, that is COMPLETELY unrealistic.
A-Bob,
If a child-bearing law is passed and is violated, it’s very easy to remove child-bearing privileges .. it’s called sterilization of offenders. No matter, none of this will be happening any time in your life or mine.
But to solve a problem, you must take the 1st step. You can’t wipe people out via death camps or nuking but you can pass laws and educate responsibly & to educate personal responsibility. This would not be an overnight solution and there is none. This would take time and must be done humanely. It would take many centuries to work out the kinks and get the global population back in balance. The resources of planet earth are not infinite, as such, there is a tipping point where too many people will trigger catastrophic consequences that will wipe out millions or even billions. It would be more responsible for us to begin taking steps towards responsible breeding today.
for example that LA mom , who already had 6 or 7 kids, had another 8 via assistance from some doctor who should have his license removed. And this mom is proud that she’s on welfare. Needless to say, she & her doctor are both irresponsibles and society is footing the bill for their selfishness.
Juice, this is clear evidence that you’ve lost your mind. I will not be responding ever again to anything you write as I will be debating a crazy person.
The resources of planet earth are not infinite, as such, there is a tipping point where too many people will trigger catastrophic consequences that will wipe out millions or even billions. It would be more responsible for us to begin taking steps towards responsible breeding today.
We shall see. I certainly admit we do face dangers of technology not advancing fast enough to do less and less with more and more enough to deal with these problems of growing population…. Or perhaps of population not growing fast enough to produce enough innovators and great people that are capable of contributing to solving the problem. It’s a double edged sword, much like the economy where debt solves the problem that the deflation of excess debt creates. I believe necessity is the mother of invention.
We do not have too few resources, we just don’t have the means to utilize them well enough to satisfy everyone.
“matter cannot be created or destroyed”. It just changes form… It can be converted back, but the technology isn’t there yet to do “modern alchemy”.
So far we have been able to do more and more with less and less due to human ingenuity and production. Perhaps there are limits, perhaps not.
“I certainly admit we do face dangers of technology not advancing fast enough to do less and less with more and more enough to deal with these problems of growing population….”
***Correction more and more with less and less******
Lol, I’m sure Heartland is just dying now that Gov’t Motors has dropped the 15K a year it was giving them.
you can do better than that
The amount of damage awards that are going to come from Peter Gleick and his Pacific Enterprise Institute for the fraud and theft of Heartland’s documents should more than make up for the 15K dropped from Gov’t Motors.
that’s a little better spin … and moreover, proof positive that the global population has no significant effect on our environment, hence no need to change a thing
Juice, you will not be able to find any writing or posting from me where I say that the global population doesn’t affect the environment. Furthermore, you won’t find me disputing that there has been warming of lower troposphere over the past 35 years or so.
What I do dispute is the assertion that global warming is entirely due to humans AND that any further warming will be catastrophic. There is simply no evidence for either of those assertions.
Wood, and neither have I asserted that global warming is ‘entirely’ due to humans, nor that any further warming will be catastrophic
It is ridiculous to take cultural norms from the US and apply them to China – there are simply too many differences. Money is important, and overtime is how you make money. It would not be unusual for a Chinese supervisor to publicly berate an employee for a minor mistake. Conversely, it took a year for my Chinese coworkers to learn to check email at night and weekends, something Americans do routinely (and I don’t claim that’s a good thing).
i used to average 85-110 hrs. a week for 11 years.just for the ot. at a time when assholes who had no backbone voted on a shit contract to freeze wages for a term of a contract,which has a lifespan of 3 years. anyone who,”only” want to work the bare minimum in life,should only expect a bare minimum.like the article said,these folks are “afraid”, who knows,maybe for once these heavily oppressed peasants can start feeling good in their new skin,only time will tell.