Yesterday's NY Times article on Apple's manufacture of the iPhone shows quite clearly that the day of the huge manufacturing plant in the U.S.A. is gone. There are almost 300,000 people involved in producing the iPhone. 43,000 work in the U.S., the rest in Asia.
It's gone largely because of size. We just don't have enough of the kind of workers that are needed to produce something like the iPhone in quantities that will serve the world. An Apple executive comments, "The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need." Apple needed 8,700 industrial engineers to oversee manufacturing of the iPhone; China found them in 15 days.
It's gone because workers in other countries are willing to work in what are close to slave conditions where they are always on call. An Apple executive asks, "What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?"
It's gone because our factories are just not capable of being fast enough and flexible enough to handle 21st century demands. “The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.” From a Corning executive, "So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas."
It's gone because markets overseas have reached the state and size where they are quite profitable to American companies.
What will we do? Manufacturing has been fading in this country for probably thirty or more years and we have attempted very little to retain our manufacturing base despite the fact that almost all forms of manufacturing generate tons of related non-manufacturing jobs. Perhaps there is nothing to be done. But not even trying to change things is a defeatist attitude.
2 comments:
Apple's been covering up for years the appalling conditions endured by Chinese workers at its Foxconn factory complex in Shenzhen. Thirty hour shifts, six day working weeks, compulsory overtime, all for under $17 a day. Many of its workers live in military-style dormitories. Foxconn has installed grills and nets around the complex to help prevent the suicides of workers that regularly occur.
Only this week, 300 employees at the plant threatened suicide, and the response of Foxconn's chairman, Terry Gou, was to liken his workforce to 'animals'.
There was a time when western nations stood together against the appalling human rights abuses of certain other countries. Now, they condone those abuses for the sake of fat profits.
Americans won't tolerate being treated like 'animals' and paid a pittance. Sadly, we are all prepared to benefit from the plight of others treated that way.
The only way to alter this situation is a ban on overseas production, and let us all pay the higher prices resulting from decent working conditions and fair pay for goods made in America.
It'll never happen, of course.
Steve Jobs died recently and was feted as a visionary who helped to change the world. To me, he was no more than another greedy capitalist who acquired power and riches off the backs of slave workers.
He had the temerity to call himself a Buddhist, just as so many fatcat billionaires in this country pretend to be Christian, when they've no inkling of what the word means.
Links:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20120110000064&cid=1103
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1102&MainCatID=11&id=20120119000111
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