How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work on the Peoria.com Forums

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=apple&st=cse

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Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

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.”

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Fixed that for him. While it may be true that American workers aren't going to be roused from sleep in the middle of the night to immediately begin assembling iPhones, the average efficiency of American workers is significantly higher than Chinese. American manufacturing firms regularly use 25% as the comparative efficiency of a Chinese worker.

Fascinating article.

Is this what we want America to become?

No, he had it right. The red tape involved in re-tooling, re-certifying, re-training, and then actually manufacturing in a US plant is probably completely impossible in that amount of time. You couldn't throw enough money at that situation in the US and make it happen. OSHA, unions, ISO, and several other organizations would have to get involved.

Obviously not. But let's look at the other end of the spectrum...is it a fair wage to pay a guy $34/hr to screw a bolt in every 4 minutes? No, we obviously don't want work camps, long hours, low pay. We, as Americans, would rather be unemployed.

This went from being their commercial to their factory...

This is why we don't make them here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=4

We can make them here, they just would cost more.

We abolished slavery and we like to breathe clean air.

I love the comments on the article...I am still readign them. I am a little depressed now, though.

The audio link that I posted is very long, but its interesting as well as entertaining...worth the time if you have it.

Another stunning comparison was the construction of the Chinese Embassy in DC and the US Embassy in China. The agreeemnt was, for security reasons, that the Chinese could import their construction workers to build the embassy in DC. The USA took their construction cres to China to build the embassy.

The Chinese construction crews were housed in pre fab dorms across the street from the embassy. They worked about 16 hrs per day, 7 days a week. They finished the Chinese Embassy in just under 2 years. That includes from groundbreaking to move in.

I never did hear how long it took to for the US to build our embassy, but it was much longer becasue of our labor laws, OSHA, etc.

So when China is compared to the US, it really isnt comapring apples to apples. Some things they do better than we do. Other things, like labor and safety laws we are thousands of light years ahead of them.

I listened to it last week when you posted it, This American Life is by far the best non-music available on the internet.

We are quite beligerent when it comes to outsourcing our technology and designs to China, India, etc. They are most certainly stealing it, there is zero doubt about it.

In Short-term gain vs. Long-term viability, Wall street wins every time nowadays.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

An article on worker safety in the plants that make Apple products.

It would be naive to think that Chinese working conditions in these mega-factories live up to the standard that American factories uphold. Having said that, I hate articles that are 75% interview with an "anonymous" former employee. Is he / she disgruntled, trying to get back at their former employee? We'll never know, because he / she didn't attach his / her name to the story.

They cannot attach their name or they will never work in their home country again.

The Chinese factories create a black list of employees who complain about safety, injuries, overtime pay etc. etc. And that list is sent around from company to company.

The majority of the article was an interview with a former Apple employee who didn't disclose his / her identify because of a confidentiality agreement. Which, in and of itself, indicates that this former employee doesn't have the highest scruples to begin with.

Contracting with a company on a communist country that hires a quarter million slave laborers to push a piece of glass into a phone they'll never be able to afford isn't very scrupulous, either

Buying those phones knowing that is how they are made isn't very scrupulous either.