Good on them. Smash it up, make noise and don't let Apple ignore this. No doubt they respond with the usual "When we worked with factories promising us cheap labour and massive profit we didn't realise people and the planet would be exploited. No one could have known".
To be honest, Apple will simply blame Wistron suspend them. In the end these folks here will loose their jobs, and Apple will simply switch manufacturing suppliers.
The problem is the big corps have zero accountability when operating in developing nations. On the flip side, developing nations are desperate to attract big firms in order to bring profits in.
For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.
>For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.
but why? If you hired a contractor to renovate your house, and it turned out that they were committing wage theft against their workers, should you be fined?
Slightly different issue, but in the US if you hire a contractor to renovate your house and they are not insured and following workman's comp rules, you will very likely be sued if one of their employees hurts him/herself on your property. Some people hire cheap contractors without realizing this. Any time you hire a contractor make sure they are licensed, bonded, and insured before they set foot on your property.
You can also be held liable for your contractor not paying the sub contractors. The sub contractors can take out a lien against your property to be paid. This is more akin to what Apple is getting away with by sub contracting to suppliers in the developing world.
The contractor example is a broken analogy. Apple’s manufacturing experience is as deep as any firm in the world and their ability to audit manufacturers is much different from your ability to audit a contractor.
They will rise and fall to the level of accountability that the public is willing to hold them too.
Yes, it's common practice to perform due diligence and regular audits on your manufacturing chains, especially ones that yearly get news articles about how many of your workers commit suicide.
Why would they audit if they're not held accountable? This starts to become chicken and egg, it sounds like. Perhaps best to just pick the party that should be responsible and then move forward.
The problem is that Apple would have to establish its own private Ministry of Labour to meet this level of accountability, telling everyone exactly what their labor standards need to be and deputizing investigators to go poke around in response to any accusations. I don't think Apple should have that level of power over other companies, especially if we don't think they have a strong ethical commitment to the cause of workers' rights!
Lots of companies already audit their production chains, precisely in response of public pressure on the subject. Nike and football manufacturers are the most famous examples; also coffee, chocolate, and banana producers. This sort of thing, while not perfect, brought massive improvements in working condition in poor countries over the last 30 years.
Chocolate, coffee, and banana producers are in a different context. If you want to stop child labor on the chocolate farms, there's currently no choice but to have Nestle and Hershey do it, because the governments in Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire either can't or won't enforce their own laws on the topic.
The various Asian governments involved into tech production chains know what goes down in each and every factory. They know workers exploitation is massive, and they don’t care.
They already effectively have this level of power, though--they choose instead to not use it. If they want to be freed from the responsibility of ethically deploying the power they have collected for themselves, they need to be made smaller.
Their only power in this situation is to choose who to do business with. They can’t fine the company or revoke business licenses, as a Minstry of labor could do.
Also, are you suggesting that the actual Indian government has no responsibility?
"Behave ethically or we don't work with you" is within Apple's power. Choosing not to exert it is choosing to endorse the alternative.
> Also, are you suggesting that the actual Indian government has no responsibility?
Of...course not?
But Apple wants to be a world-spanning power, they get to be treated like one. If they don't? There's a line once misapplied to government, about being shrunk 'til it can be drowned in the bathtub, that we can apply to all of these somehow-too-big-to-expect-moral-behavior-of corporations.
“Behave ethically or we don't work with you" is Apple’s power”
I agree with this. Presumably it’s what Apple is going to do in this case.
What would you suggest they do if they can’t find a more ethical alternative to Wistron?
“Apple wants to be a world-spanning power.”
Does it? Or does it just want to keep making computers and software? It’s not obvious what Apple’s size has to do with Wistron breaking their contract.
Ah - but that’s funny isn’t it? Some countries actually require local manufacturing as a condition for market access. So they don’t exactly have a free hand here. And Wistron is a fairly well known name and should have been a reliable partner in this enterprise with Apple.
They tried that, but the Indian government put tarrifs on their products and prohibited them from opening stores to induce them to use local contractors.
In support of your comment, why can't apple have a few DIRECT EMPLOYEES at each major supplier factory full time to monitor the working conditions and terms adherence on a day to day basis ?
I just fundamentally disagree with this conception of power. The fact that you could in principle force someone to do what you'd like doesn't mean that you should.
It wouldn't be "forcing" with threat of imprisonment and Apple given the power of police, judge, jury and imprisoner such as a government has; it could be written into the terms of the contract - "we will buy from you, if your product is up to our specifications, and its manufacture is up to our specifications, and that the manufacture is done on ethical terms described in clause B, and the contract depends upon us being able to send auditors to all premises involved in our component supply chain and talk to all employees so involved at any time".
If there is no company willing to agree to a contract like that, Apple would only be able to force them by offering more money until it was worth their while.
It's no more /force/ than employers have over employees - do what we say or lose your income. Which is not exactly a level of force I like all the time, but if you agree with contracts and employment in general then adding "and treat your workers well and let us see it" doesn't seem like a hill to take a stand of fundamental opposition on.
I'm replying to "forcing is wrong!" with "it wouldn't need to be forced, X wouldn't be force".
You're replying with "well they didn't keep their supply chain ethical". We know that, that's why this thread exists on HN. You don't address whether doing so would involve force, or is impossible, you're just saying "ah but they tried and failed" - and it's not even clear if they did try as much as they could, or if they tried a bit and could try a lot harder if they wanted or were held to it.
“well they didn't keep their supply chain ethical”
No - I’m saying that didn’t keep their supply chain ‘ethical’. Perhaps nothing could have done.
"ah but they tried and failed"
Weird that you put this in quote marks as if it’s something I said. It’s not. You might be saying that, but I am not.
Contracts aren’t magic. It’s not a ‘failure’ when someone breaks one. What a contract would do is give Apple the legal mechanism to switch to another supplier despite having agreed to pay Wistron to make iPhones.
The contract only means something if one of the parties doesn’t do what is expected.
Contracts can include penalties like late fees, having such penalties apply to poor worker conditions is well within their negotiating power for a new contract.
It's within their negotiating power, and Apple appears to have negotiated such terms, since they say they're investigating potential violations of their supplier agreement. What the original commenter wanted, and what I don't think we should be encouraging companies to do, was intrusive audits to prevent the violations from happening in the first place.
> They already effectively have this level of power, though--they choose instead to not use it. If they want to be freed from the responsibility of ethically deploying the power they have collected for themselves, they need to be made smaller.
This comment is confusing. The first half sounds pro-corporate ("corporations should self regulate themselves!"), but the second half you want large corporations to be broken up. Which one is it? Do you want a future where corporations rule over everything or not?
I emphatically do not want a future where corporations rule over everything. (If the "awww, poor widdle Apple, having expectations put upon them" was not sufficiently clear, I apologize.)
I am saying that, when the rubber hits the road, Apple has the ability to impose their will on their subcontractors when it comes to human rights and worker treatment (which, I stress for the wait-wait-but-for crowd so desperate for reasons to excuse large companies from having to act like citizens of the world, is a distinctly different use of power than self-enriching commercial ones, so save the handwringing). If they don't want to be held to account for doing so ethically and proactively, they must be made--significantly--smaller until that expectation can be reasonably removed.
That doesn't elide the role of the state--it recognizes that, to our general detriment, we have allowed corporations to grow to the point where they are not practically regulatable by any given state due to their extranational operations. And that we should break them with hammers until they are.
>Apple has the ability to impose their will on their subcontractors when it comes to human rights and worker treatment (which, I stress for the wait-wait-but-for crowd so desperate for reasons to excuse large companies from having to act like citizens of the world, is a distinctly different use of power than self-enriching commercial ones, so save the handwringing).
The problem here is that you want corporations to use their powers do The Right Thing™, but ignore what happens if they make a mistake. Sure, we want amazon to crack down on counterfeits, but then we hear of stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24914501. Or worse yet, when The Right Thing™ is in the eye of the beholder, see: conservatives thinking that facebook/youtube is censoring them, and liberals thinking they're not doing enough.
>That doesn't elide the role of the state--it recognizes that, to our general detriment, we have allowed corporations to grow to the point where they are not practically regulatable by any given state due to their extranational operations.
But is that the case here? Winston is operating a factory in india and is therefore subject to indian labor laws.
Winston is certainly subject to Indian labor laws. Apple should be responsible for the selection of them and the failure of those companies to do the right thing in business with them, too.
If you have to use a stick to align business with decency, use it liberally. Such is the burdensome life of a multinational company with more global pull than some companies.
I'm just not sure what it means to say that they effectively have this level of power. They could in principle use their market dominance to bully smaller companies into doing what they want, but that's generally considered to be unacceptable behavior - "monopolistic", it's called in many contexts. Should Microsoft impose strict labor requirements on everyone who uses Excel?
I don't know about should you be fined, but anecdotally, I believe you will be responsible. At least that's what I see in our RWA (Indian for HOA) in Bangalore: if we hire a contractor, we have to make sure all the right stuff is mentioned in the contract about labourer safety. I never cross-checked this, and I don't know the law in this case, but it seems to be a thing. And IMHO, it's a good thing if the law requires it.
It's not obvious to me that a supply chain department would be interviewing random line workers of suppliers to make sure they're being paid the advertised wages.
The reason they don't is because they don't want to find out things like this. There's no reason a company as rich as apple _can't_ do such interviews...
I don't know what the right solution is for forcing Apple's hand in treating the workers this far down the line better -- though I firmly believe the richest company in the world owes it to everyone involved with it (i.e. the people making the phones themselves) to ensure they're treated better.
That said, the house/contractor analogy shows more than anything else that while analogies can illuminate the subject matter, they're imperfect: I don't believe there's one meaningful set of laws that can govern the typical homeowner hiring out renovation and the richest company in the world hiring low-paid workers through an intermediary that ostensibly gives it some legal protection and distance.
These workers claim to be paid pennies on the dollar. It's not like that kind of scam isn't hard to fix. Either the supplier corrects the situation or Apple ditches them.
It's not like the workers are getting a fair shake anyway.
No apple will still be treated like a star of the show, with the local government rolling down the red carpet for them. Because apple brings the local area "high tech" jobs, electronics manufacturing. Apple controls the tech, has the management experience, has the worldwide market and brand name. As the local people in the developing world, it would almost feel as a blessing from these companies if they decide to build a factory in their town. So local people and government would bend forward and backwards to win their business. And you never want to piss these companies off, because they might just bring their business elsewhere. There is no shortage of places to do these manufacturing in India or Asia. A pattern I learned from apple and the likes of Foxconn's during the early days of their manufacturing in China.
Recently india government created tax reductions favorable land prices for electronics manufacturers. Wondering if this plant used any of these incentives. That would be a shame, billion dollar companies used developing world tax payer's money and then failed to pay them stated wages.
Tiktok' sin for what it got from India was it's born Chinese. There was no actual evidence in wrongdoing on tiktok' part, no innocent until proven guilty. No chance to explain and address concerns if there was any. It's all about political pressure on China to retreat from the LOC at the india china border.
They can’t switch the manufacturing location if they want to continue to sell in India at a reasonable price which they definitely do. That’s the benefit of a protectionist economy though it has a myriad other downsides.
Apple don’t employ them. I mean I’d like Apple to be held accountable for not auditing their suppliers. However, they don’t have any legal obligation to the workers.
I guess the question then is should they have a legal obligation to the workers. Western companies make a big show of complying with regulations and higher standards of worker safety only to contract that work out to the lowest bidder, where in many cases that bid could not possibly be offered if they were actually treating their workers in the way the western company claims they are.
A recent example of this is exemplified in the practice of shipbreaking. Sellers can tell based on price exactly which type of shipbreaking yard their ship will end up[1], but will attempt to claim ignorance by using a series of middlemen to extract the most value, sending ships to places where people are forced to work in subhuman conditions[2].
True, they might not have a legal obligation, but the court of public opinion should have way more influence on something like this. With their billions, they should have the means for oversight enforcement and inspections (including inspecting these companies financials since they're getting millions).
Unfortunately ... who's going to stop buying Apple products over things like this? Not many who don't already dislike Apple to begin with. It wouldn't make a dent.
> Couldn’t Apple put it in the contract if they wanted?
It is probably in there. We are dealing with a party who broke their word to their employees. I see no reason to assume they aren’t similarly dishonest with their customers.
This is kind of what fair trade certification tries to address.
The issue is that a company like Apple will require in the contract certain things like wage minimum or environmental requirements, but the winning bid will be below the amount required to actually fulfill those requirements.
It’s not even that the manufacturer set out to ignore Apple’s requirements, but what happens is that these bids have zero margin of error built in. So once something unexpected happens(lower order volume, initial inaccurate estimation, tax or regulatory changes, etc) these companies are faced with a choice. If they cannot renegotiate the contract they are forced to either reduce salaries, cut environmental and quality corners, or run at a loss and go out of business.
The very nature of this type of third party bidding for a few large and powerful customers is that you are almost guaranteed a high percentage of labor and environmental violations because the companies will eventually be forced to chose between that and insolvency.
This shit isn't new, and it's not like Apple don't know about it. They will move to a new supplier, do a press release condemning them. Rinse and repeat, see you in a few years when the next thread pops up.
Worker wages weren't the primary reason for Apple to set up iPhone manufacturing in India. It was more of a quid pro quo deal with the Indian government. In exchange for doing that and providing jobs, Apple gets to open their own single brand retail stores and gets a break on local sourcing tariffs for their other products.
The last paragraph of the (very short) article says this:
> India is the world's second-largest smartphone market after China, but India is an extremely competitive, price-conscious market that Apple has struggled in, only capturing around 3 percent of the market. One way for Apple to lower prices in India is to build phones locally, allowing it to dodge Indian import fees that are especially high on goods made in China. The Wistron plant, naturally, makes Apple's cheapest phone, the iPhone SE.
> Worker wages were their main reason to move from China to India.
You mean, after the Foxconn PR fallout? And to my knowledge the "main reason" they moved out of China was to reduce their dependence on China due to ongoing political tensions, not that they were feeling bad about worker wages.
> NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters.
> Apple is hoping to expand its retail presence in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets, at a time when sales in the United States and China have slowed.
> A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, which states 30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India.
> However, Apple’s products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter.
Regarding your issue, let me copy-paste randomly [2]:
> “With India’s labour cheaper compared with China, and the gradual expansion of its supplier base here, Apple will be able to use the country as an export hub,” Neil Shah of Hong Kong-based tech researcher Counterpoint said.
> India is also working to boost electronics manufacturing by firms such as Foxconn and last month launched a $6.65 billion plan, offering five global smartphone makers incentives to establish or expand domestic production.
> Building more phones in India will also help Apple save on import taxes that further push up its prices.
No, that's the PR spin on why they (moved part of) their production to India. They could have moved OUT of China (citing bad Chinise gov etc.) and IN TO Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, etc. were countries operate under properly functioning democracies. Buuuuuut they didn't.
They only moved IN TO India for the reduced costs (aka capitalism). And when India salaries outgrow e.g. country XYZ salaries, they will move there (in a decade or so).
The political tensions is BS imho. Capitalism is capitalism, and Apple offers master classes in capitalism.
In this case political tension has very little to do with China and very much with India. India is one of the largest markets Apple has yet to penetrate, primarily due to excessive import tax as the Indian government (much like the Chinese) requires manufacturing within the country.
Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking China is not a reliable partner, or that Apple cares much about worker rights here (see wage fixing between FAANG as one example that likely affects many here at HN) or abroad. This was purely about expanding into a new market.
Well, Apple doesn’t include chargers on their new iPhones to protect the planet and their keynotes are feel-good orgy of virtuosity. Hard to believe they exploit people...
I'm fairly certain the parent was being sarcastic. I completely agree, if it was about the planet and not just saving money on their BoM they could (should?) at a minimum have included a discount voucher for a USB-C charger.
Can you explain this? I don't understand the reasoning. Surely it's better for the planet to manufacture less USB-C chargers? Especially assuming that people/families likely have them already (from iPhones or other devices they've bought before)
Sure, it's better for the planet to have less USB C chargers in some abstract sense. To accomplish that goal, Apple could have included lightning-USB A charger cables, which everyone has a brick for. Instead, lightning-USB C. Either USB-C chargers are better than USB-A (and in several respects, sure) and the planet should have more of them, or just provide USB-A compatible charging.
This choice was dumb even if their expressed environmental intent is authentic and it wasn't a marginal revenue grab.
My only Apple USB-C device beside my new iPhone 12 Pro Max is my MacBook Pro, so at least now I’m forced to get quick charge times with the 87W brick that looks absolutely ridiculous charging my phone.
Yeah. My only USB-C device is my employer MBP I got two weeks ago. I've never owned a USB-C device. It's pretty laughable that Apple thinks there are enough USB-C bricks in the world when first-world tech workers largely don't have USB-C bricks/devices.
Is this still really the case? My Pixel 3 is USB-C, as was my 1st gen pixel. The Nintendo switch is USB-C as is the pro controller. Heck even my vape pen is USB-C charging now.
I feel like USB-C has proliferated sufficiently. Not denying your perspective, just offering an alternate one.
I have other USB-C devices as well, but most of them shipped with an A-to-C charging cable, and if they included their own brick it was a USB-A brick.
The only USB-C chargers I've had included with a device are from my iPad and my laptop. For those of us in Apple-land, that started around 2016 for laptops and 2018 for iPad Pros. The iPad Air just went USB-C a few months ago, and the base model iPad I assume still comes with a USB-A charger (though I didn't check).
But at least with USB-C instead of MagSafe I can get a $17 multi-port charger with 60W power delivery and 3x USB-A ports to hook up at my desk, and keep the laptop brick handy to toss in a bag or use elsewhere without digging it up from under my desk every time. https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=24425
I'm not saying you're wrong, either! I just don't have any USB-C stuff myself (aside from the aforementioned MBP). My phones have all been lightning <-> USB-A for the last decade or so.
My wife does have a Nintendo Switch, so there's that. (IIRC, the Nintendo Switch's USB-C is non-standard? I might be misremembering.) I don't think I could use it as a phone charger on a regular basis, just for logistical reasons.
If it was about the environment they wouldn't have included a charger either, yes. (They wouldn't sell disposable in-ear headphones either. No exchanging batteries) But if it wasn't about money, they would've added a coupon/code to buy a charger because the product is useless without one...
Just because the actual action can also be spun in q environmental friendly way doesn't mean the company actually did it for that.
They didn't want to include a charger and just used the environment as an excuse so they can argue all criticism away
Sorry, I didn’t see your reply until now. I didn’t make my point very well, but essentially I believe that Apple has found a positive spin for the fact that they decided to reduce their input costs by removing the bundled charger. They did that at the same time that they - first the first time ever - included a USB-C to Lightning cable.
If it were about saving the planet and not just reducing costs they could have included a discount voucher to allow anyone buying an iPhone who genuinely needs a charger to get one without incurring an extra expense.
Ultimately it is a good thing if we reduce the number of unused chargers being manufactured, but right now I suspect many iPhone 12 buyers had to buy a new charger anyways and wound up paying extra for it. In that case it’s rather cynical of Apple to pass it off as being for the environment when the benefits accrue to them.
Why would making chargers available for free be better for the planet? If people need a charger they can buy one. Offering one for free does not help, and in fact may be worse since that can only increase the number of chargers shipped.
As far as I can see, they stopped including chargers partly because of EU pressure (new law?) that mobile phones should be sold without chargers in order to reduce e-waste because everyone already have a box-load of these at homes. Hence also the push to standardize so that any charger works with any device.
Of course, commercially this allows manufacturers to potentially cut costs while keeping the price of phones the same... But why not, nothing wrong with that.
From an environmental point of view, making people specifically pay for chargers is the best way to make sure they only get the number of chargers they actually need, which fulfils the aim of reducing e-waste.
It’s the 12 that doesn’t. The logic being that everyone already has a draw full of chargers and cables so it makes sense to remove the brick from the packaging which slims it down and reduces waste.
Which is rather humorous, because if I buy a $1500 phone, I want and expect a big ass box with fancy ass packaging, and I expect a charger, and frankly I expect high-end earbuds.
Goddamn, this is why I really fucking hate Apple so much. Its why I fucking hate the fact that I picked up a base model Mac Mini. I can't argue its better for many use cases and that I switch between it and my 3900X workstation throughout the day for various workloads, but fucking Christ in Heaven it pisses me off that I have to, to begin with.
I fucking hate giving that shit company even a dollar.
Because it is necessary for a functioning device. Because they made changes to their charger during that generation for improved performance. "Free" is a loaded term in this context. It should be included in the purchase.
I can see simplicity reasons to sell the user guide and box separately, too. Why not just hand them $1k in cash and get an unboxed phone? Much simpler than packaging and credit cards.
The means by which people will bend over backwards to paint Apple in a good light is insane.
It is trivial to reduce the environmental impact by changing the type of packaging materials and shipping multiple phones in one carton, while protecting each phone individually. Apple chooses not to do this since it doesn't fit their marketing strategy.
As for those missing chargers, they probably have multiple reasons for not including them. The environmental impact may even play a small role. Ultimately though, the main reasons are going to be business driven (e.g. reduced manufacturing costs and perhaps increased sales of chargers). If these people were truly interested in protecting the environment, they wouldn't be in the business of selling disposable consumer goods.
Dont forget the 12 is first iPhone supporting fast charging, which none of the previous iPhone chargers supports. So if you want to utilize its full potential, you need to spend bucks.
Wait, that's absolutely not true. IPhone 8[0] was the first one that supported fast charging, and it didn't come with a compatible charger in the box. You had to use an 18W USB-C charger and a USB-C to lighting cable, neither of which were in the box. But the phone supported it. So the same argument was true for years and yet people behave as if it's new.
this may be a bit OT but for some reason, that recent book "blockchain chicken farm" or something like that popped into my head, where a chicken can be cryptographically verified to be organic, etc, in every stage of its "production".
I realize this isn't the whole solution - part of this is Apple's heavy handed way of squeezing margins, but for at least the "supply chain labor compliance" part, could blockchain be a useful tool for labor unions and workers' rights to ensure that workers are paid their fair share?
That would be according to one moral theory, but another (critical) approach elaborated upon by 19th c. thinkers rejects it as a "mere pretension", just as with the system's laws and rights.
In the wrong conventionally, according to our morality developed in the system it works for? Sure. But on a matter like this, I'm personally more than happy to take another look. Many moral systems that serve the current structures we are rightly critical of - the moral system that had no problem with slavery or marital rape, for instance.
I imagine the people destroying property might just feel the same way about Apple's right to property, and the system which provides it.
Well, in all seriousness smashing things does send a bad signal to everyone and motivates companies to look for other options. Paying peanuts for hard work is certainly bad but not having jobs in the first place is even worse.
> Smash it up, make noise and don't let Apple ignore this.
Huh? It was Wistron that was witholding and lowering wages, not Apple.
> No doubt they respond with the usual "When we worked with factories promising us cheap labour and massive profit we didn't realise people and the planet would be exploited. No one could have known".
Again, wut? That cheap contract labor helped the Chinese middle class, and also helped China set up the most advanced technical manufatcuring pipeline and supply chain in the world, and now China is the first place the western world goes to make their stuff. No doubt that conditions were sometimes terrible (like creating nets around the building in case workers would try to commit suicide), but those workers (probably) got paid their promised wages and the China realized some benefit.
It's not always all exploitation by Apple all day everyday. And again, those Indian folks are employed Wistron, not Apple.
8000 rupees per month, in Bangalore! At 160 hours, it comes to 5 rupees an hour. You can’t get even half a cup of tea for 5 bucks. This is the very definition of exploitation. These are people working for the richest company on the planet, by proxy :(
This is just depressing
Edit: it is 50 rupees per hour, not 5 (I need coffee). Leaving the error as is in the comment above.
The larger point still stands though
It’s not like Apple is an outlier and non-richest companies are any better. Electronics manufacturing, as well as many other kinds of manufacturing (e.g., clothing which is even more notorious), operate on razor thin margins. Guess how much you can realistically pay workers when you make a grand total of <$5[1] on a $1k device? Not gonna come close to U.S. minimum wage, that’s for sure.
Anyway, this kind of exploitation is part of how Western companies accumulate wealth and it partially funds your first world salaries and lifestyles.
[1] The higher estimates I’ve seen are always <$10, and lower estimates are way under.
Manufacturing margins are razor thin. The brand names pocket all the profits, the people producing commodity parts and assembling them get nothing, which is my entire point.
And no, Apple is not an outlier in that regard, even though they pocket more than HP, Dell, etc.
Indeed, a decent company would split all its profits amongst its workers, commensurate with the value they created. Rather than handing it over to shareholders and investors who, by and large, have done no work to earn it.
How much risk is the average employee taking on, compared with the investors who are supplying capital so the business can operate and scale? This idea that it's only the employees who create value is simply bunk. By all means go and start your own company if you think labor is the only part of the equation, and scale it without taking on investment or paying out to investors.
>How much risk is the average employee taking on, compared with the investors who are supplying capital so the business can operate and scale?
I'd say it's a pretty big risk to become unemployed, especially where the welfare system can be unstable, and you have dependents to support. The investor, at worst, will have to take a "labour" job. The worker, at worst, will be food and shelter insecure.
>By all means go and start your own company if you think labor is the only part of the equation
That's not really a valid response to a criticism of the system which necessarily operates with the division of capital and labour. Obviously you need money; that's not what is in dispute here.
Capital and labour are integral parts of the equation, but the social function of an owner of capital who commands an army of labourers and sells the goods for profit is arguably not. Production can happen (and has happened) outside that social relationship.
You can work at a company for years and then job hop with no subsequent risk, whereas the founders and investors will get shafted if they don't continue to lead the company in the right direction. Shareholders and investors absolutely need to be rewarded for this.
The person I was responding to was acting as if there is NOT a division of capital and labor. I agree with you that we need both. You can't treat only capital well, and you can't treat only labor well. And the person I was responding to seems to have been suggesting that we treat only labor well. Production at our modern scale needs owners and investors and shareholders. That doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't improve things for the worker, though.
> Indeed, a decent company would split all its profits amongst its workers, commensurate with the value they created. Rather than handing it over to shareholders and investors who, by and large, have done no work to earn it.
But how do you calculate how much value they created? If a worker turns $10 in raw materials to a $100 widget by himself, then it's clear that he created $90 worth of value. However, what if he did so using the company's $500,000 equipment? What if he was using a design that someone else created?
The factors of production are land, labor and capital. To produce any good or any service, anything of actual value you need them all, and by providing one you are entitled to a share of the profits proportional to whatever it is you put in. Shareholders provide the capital, workers provide the work, landlords provide the place. Workers get wages, shareholders get dividends, landlords get rents.
ALL OF THEM ARE RESPONSABLE FOR THE OUTPUT, you cannot build anything with workers alone.
just because someone doesn’t screw screws doesn’t mean they did nothing to earn the rewards.
It is essentially the world we live in, save that the workers usually want their share of the profits before they are made, and so the determination of how much profitability there is to be and their commensurate value within is built on a best guess from incomplete information.
It is not always that way. Sometimes the workers are willing to wait to see how much profit is actually made before receiving their agreed upon share, but there is a good chance they will end up with nothing in the end, and so the aforementioned model, which carries far less risk for the worker, has become the most popular way.
It's not the world we live in though, workers are rarely paid from the profits in the same sort of way shareholders are.
Ideally, workers would be paid a wage for their time, and later have the profits of their work shared amongst them. After all, they are the ones responsible for generating this wealth.
Workers are rarely paid that way because they don't want the risk. Most businesses will end up with negative profits. At best, no profits. Imagine being an employee for a year or two and then having to pay for the luxury at the end. It is no surprise that it is avoided, usually. It is definitely an option, though, for the workers who like the risk and think the chance of winning the lottery is there.
Instead, workers usually prefer to estimate what the profitability will be up front and determine what they want out of the pie based on that assumption. Then they lock in at that price regardless of what happens. If the business fails, they still get their agreed upon amount. If the business thrives, they might only end up with a small piece of the pie, but it was worth it given the risk of ending up with nothing. It's essentially a futures contract.
It seems a little much to get to have it both ways – to be guaranteed the estimated piece of the pie when the business fails, but also all the upside when the business succeeds beyond imagination. Why would anyone agree to that? Those rare moonshot wins are what pays the workers for the times that there are losses. If the workers got the proceeds from the moonshot wins and the proceeds from their futures contracts, the math would stop adding up and employment would grind to a halt.
> Instead, workers usually prefer to estimate what the profitability will be up front and determine what they want out of the pie based on that assumption.
I'm not certain what you mean here. When does this happen? This doesn't sound like the usual method or motivation for job seeking.
It happens all the time. It is why software developers in incredibly high margin tech companies will ask for incomes >$100,000/year, while servers at low margin restaurants are left to ask for minimum wage. Tech companies can end up never making a dime and restaurants can produce fortunes, but on a statistical probability basis, the profitability of a tech company is more likely to round out to that $100,000 per employee figure and a restaurant the minimum wage figure, on average. That makes those asks to be quite reasonable and the market settles there.
When the future is unknown, when the futures contracts are being established, one can only guess as to how much money that labour input is going to return. The value that is established for a given job, commensurable to its relation to producing that future income, is always done on a best guess basis, knowing that reality can swing widely in either direction. It's an average, of sorts.
If you think the prevailing best guess is wrong and that a restaurant will easily make enough to give you back $100,000 as a server, you can defer your payout until that quantity is known. This arrangement does happen, but is usually eschewed as the worker would usually rather have the guaranteed known quantity, based on the best guess of their contribution in the profitability, even if removed from the final earnings, for their work. It reduces their risk.
As an aside, servers at restaurants are an interesting example as they do commonly play both sides. They lock in some of their income on the future's market, but also capture a share of the profit when it is made. There is a lot of flexibility in your options. Typically, most workers prefer to stay within the futures market entirely, though, as they want the security of a known quantity for their income, rather than making millions one year and loosing millions the next.
Are you talking about employees being paid a wage?
If so, what you describe isn't what happens for the vast majority of people. We need income to pay for rent (or mortgage), food, utilities, and other essentials. With a bit saved over, where we can. There's no scope for estimating the profitability of the business or anything like that, we just need money to live. I'm sure it's the same for Apple's factory workers in the article.
Yes, although not specifically as the specific dispersal mechanism is immaterial. A wage is one of many ways payout of the futures contact can be structured.
I don't believe the workers at these huge factories are doing anything approaching "estimate the profitability and determine what they want out of that pie."
I think they're desperate for jobs in a way that precludes estimating profitability and negotiating for pie.
You're free to buy as big a stake in your employer's stock as you want, and reap the profits. The point I'm trying to make is: what is a fair % of Apple's profits for an individual worker, and how much would it cost that worker to buy in as a worker-owner? Back of the envelope: $2.13T market cap, 137k employees: $15.5 million buy-in cost per employee-owner (~123k shares each). Dividends per share 2020: $2.615, or $323k/yr per worker. Please check my math, but I think I have the orders of magnitude right.
Personally, if you have a spare $15.5 million, I'd recommend a more diversified portfolio of broad-market low-fee index funds and (IMO) early retirement.
Congrats on entirely missing the point, which is that the workers created that wealth in the first place and should not have to “buy in” (read: purchase equity from capitalist owners) to receive the reward that is rightfully theirs
I might be missing the point still. When did workers create the wealth, exactly? If you're talking about Apple's first five employees, sure, they could have bought in for not very much money in 1980 or whatever (they probably were part-owners and/or paid in equity!). But there weren't any profits in 1980, either, nor for a long time. And most employees have probably moved on in that 40-year window.
Someone joining Apple today did not create any of that wealth.
Not sure why a random hire today "rightfully" deserves some huge transfer of wealth from the "capitalist owners" (read: owners) on their start date. Can you elaborate on that step?
> Someone joining Apple today did not create any of that wealth.
Everyone working for Apple, including indirectly, i.e. all the way down its supply chains, are collectively generating wealth for the company.
Just imagine how much fairer it would be towards all these people who did the actual work, if the profits generated from every iPhone, every iPad, every MacBook sold (and so on) ended up in their pockets instead.
Even if we accept that, what I find the most unjust is that (at least in my country) a shareholder will pay less tax than a worker for the same money - the money from dividends doesn't count as a regular income.
Consider that on ~40 billion revenue, Costco makes ~1 billion profit. Compare that to Apple making ~60 billion income and ~11 billion profit. Apple brings in only 1.5X more money than costco but makes 11X more profit. Sure Costco makes a lot of money, but Apple makes way more money by employing these sorts of practices. There’s rich, and then there’s apple rich.
Haha when you put it like that, it helps Apple's case. They're only making less than 10x more than Costco for all the serious technical innovation vs large-scale reselling.
very different business models and markets.. apple could be gigantic without this kind of manufacturing model, though. it's probably the rat race of management looking for carreer progression based on metrics and/or bonus. disgusting
Costco has a different business model from Walmart. Their revenue per employee is over twice that of Walmart. They keep labor costs low by employing as few people as possible. As such, they need to hire the best workers and pay them competitive wages and benefits. When Walmart wants the best workers, they also treat their workers well like with truckers and researchers at Walmartlabs.
This is why the meme about Walmart is subsidized by the government is completely preposterous. With Walmart was forced to, they could restructure their company to support the Costco model and lay off a million people.
> With Walmart was forced to, they could restructure their company to support the Costco model and lay off a million people.
I'm not so sure it's that simple. Costco has higher revenue per employee because the price per item is much higher. The customers who can afford to shop like this are comparatively much wealthier than those who shop at Walmart. That being said, Walmart does exactly this with their Sams Club locations. It's certainly a profitable business model, but the market is smaller than the customer base that Walmart serves.
Granted, I haven't been to a Costco in several years, but I thought the primary appeal of Costco was their low prices. I doubt that people want to drive to a store in the middle nowhere where everything is sold in bulk, on pallets, unless if they were getting a good deal off of it.
Costco has low prices per unit of product. But they are sold in large quantities so price per SKU is high. This is why Costco has low labor costs. A cashier scanning one average item at Costco is something like $20 in revenue, but at Walmart it is something like $5 revenue -- for the same human labor. (I remember seeing real numbers for this at one point but I can't find them.)
While a middle income person might be able to buy a month's worth of groceries at one time, and fill their freezer and pantry, lower income people often do not have the cash flow to afford making grocery trips that large. Even if the unit price is slightly higher at Walmart, they have no other option, because they can't afford to buy $50 of beef at one time if their entire shopping budget $50.
This is a dangerous oversimplification. Yes, you can increase the chances of getting rich faster by being dishonest, and in the cases it works, you can get spectacular results (like early Microsoft) or you can get caught and finish in jail. But many businesspeople get good results by a combination of already having some initial capital, the right idea in the right time, some talent and willingness to work and take some risks to make things happen. Many of these don't ever consider anything unethical. But of course only the worst cases get publicized.
I call this idea dangerous, because it stigmatizes all successful people, not just the bad ones. Accepting this kind of collective responsibility is as repulsive as racist statements.
It's quite a low wage, but not 5 rupees an hour: 8000 / 160 = 50. 50 rupees an hour is probably a decent wage in a small town / city in India, but would be a tough wage to live on in Bangalore.
Apple assembles (some) phones in India in part to reduce tax/tarrif costs more than to reduce labor costs. Not all of the produced phones will be sold in India, but a lot of them will, and I think the exported ones will still count toward quotas for reduced tarrifs.
If you take in account that the public company works in their shareholders best interest, i would say it is done with silent approval of shareholders. Ugly, mutated form of slavery.
I said sardonically to a friend that with a strong authoritarian state, the protests don't occur or don't make the news, so thank you police state for our cheap gadgets. And yeah, our consumerist mindset traps us too: if faced with 2 phones of similar capabilities, 1 costs 500, 1 costs 200, which would you pick? (Even the more expensive product doesn't mean better working conditions for the factory workers, just for the Silicon Valley bug coders)
Talking about exploitation, imagine condition of the miners of the minerals needed for the phones..
The Chinese government likes to pretend that they're in control of everything and Western media doesn't tend to question that. But authoritarian crackdowns are not a surefire tactic to prevent all protests, they can just reduce their frequency (maybe).
> if faced with 2 phones of similar capabilities, 1 costs 500, 1 costs 200, which would you pick?
People love to hate on Apple, but the $200 phone in your example is definitely an Android and definitely has same-or-worse manufacturing practices as Apple.
You are being all over this thread defending Apple, do you have something to disclose? Even if what you say it is true, it is less immoral because at least they sell the phone damn cheap.Apple is pocketing the huge markup all by itself (And yes their shareholders, 99% of them rich people), and these Indian guys are paid 6 dollars a day.
I never really understand the exploitation argument. If I offer you $1 an hour and you agree, is it exploitation then? Maybe if you demand $6 I just go somewhere else. And maybe if I offer $1 you go somewhere else.
The point is that the job market is also a market with supply and demand. If we can agree on a price, why is it exploitation?
Lets say I am injured and urgently need medical attention and you are the only doctor that I have access to. You quote your price which is signing away all my wealth to you, immediately. I have no choice but to agree. Is that fair?
That is an extreme example, to get the point across. These workers didn't agree to your offer of $1 out of choice, they agreed because they have no other option. This is where governments need to step in and create laws and regulations so a small group of people do not screw the majority of the population.
We do not live in a jungle where the strong survive the weak starve. Not everything should be tied to supply and demand. A huge portion of jobs done by humans today will be done by robots soon (for example, truck driving). What happens then? You don't pay even that $1, because you don't even need humans at that point to drive your trucks. You just let millions of truck drivers starve? These are not pure economics problems, these are societal problems. If not handled correctly and early, we'd have bloody revolutions on our hands.
Another option is to refuse and leave wealth to your descendants.
Even with an example this extreme I don't see what's unfair here. Why is the onus of provided high wage jobs in India is on Apple? Why would it be preferable to regulate it and potentially drive Apple to another country, leaving those workers without any jobs at all?
I didn't say that. If you have a free market, you don't have the lockins described above. So you a market where people decide whether to do business or not.
What free market economy do you like best? I live in the US, and we have a minimum wage, safety regulations, mandatory breaks, etc. We’re generally considered wildly free market compared to most of the developed world, but we’re still a far cry from a totally free market because we acknowledge that people have certain rights, and the government is the guarantor that those rights aren’t trampled by sociopaths. We don’t do a perfect job at it— not even close— but I think things would be much worse for the average worker here without some of that regulation.
That view is missing human consideration, however, and is a cynical take. People in those non-free economies you speak of simply do not have the choice and can not just choose to emigrate to a free market at will. We must have some constraints to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
I’ve never really understood why people object to me holding a gun to their head and telling them to give me all their money. I’m not reaching into their pocket and taking it, they are choosing to accept the deal I’m offering.
Absolutely nothing is making them their arm reach into their pocket and pull cash out, it’s their choice. They are free to say no and get shot in the head.
If the market is so free, how does Wistron have any employees? As soon as they didn't pay, you'd think all employees would have quit and went to work somewhere else.
> I never really understand the exploitation argument. If I offer you $1 an hour and you agree, is it exploitation then?
I'd tell you to check your privilege, but then I'd be reading your comment incorrectly. You're being intellectually dishonest.
Realistically, you could staff your company with homeless people and pay them $1/hour. That's a slave wage but any adult will end up at the same conclusion; that you will still find people willing to work for you.
> Maybe if you demand $6 I just go somewhere else. And maybe if I offer $1 you go somewhere else.
Amazon pays more than the minimum wage. Based on your thinking, why then are Walmart et al. still employers? They pay less than AMZN yet are still in business. Why is that? Why are people not going somewhere else like you say? A cursory reading of retail labour practices tells a different story.
Say what you will but please, don't think we actually believe that you "never really understand the exploitation argument". It may be inconvenient for you but any thinking person understands plenty people have no choice between making less than $10 a day vs going hungry.
> The point is that the job market is also a market with supply and demand. If we can agree on a price, why is it exploitation?
HNers think the labour market consists entirely of folks with a complete grasp of market dynamics, have good credit and zero financial burdens. Taking on an exploitative job does not mean I agree on price. It simply means I'm in no position to decline said job.
Even if pay is good, I can't think of one employer I holistically agreed with but I took the job because I have responsibilities.
"It's just supply and demand, stupid!!"?!? eye roll
> Self-hire _slaves_ could command between $100 a year (for unskilled labour in the early 19th century) to as much as $500 (for skilled work in the Lower South in the late 1850s).
I find all these slavery comparisons in poor taste. Across history you will find slaves that were treated well, accumulated wealth, were educated and held in high regard - yet they still legally were the property of another person. The fundamental distinction with slavery is not a bad paycheck.
In this case, the distinction wasn't a bad paycheck either. The compensation was fine on paper, it just wasn't actually paid out, which is plain fraud. If the response of these workers is to ransack the place, that just tells you how bad/corrupt the legal system must be.
I think the point in comparison to slavery is that:
> Across history you will find slaves that were treated well, accumulated wealth, were educated and held in high regard - yet they still legally were the property of another person
They were still - off paper - treated better than employees indirectly working for apple now. Bad taste? Sure, history wasn't pretty. It's absolutely crazy that slaves were paid more money than these employees, though. That is the point here.
These worker were defrauded. They expected a salary that they didn't receive. Had they known they wouldn't get paid, they wouldn't have taken the job, they would've looked elsewhere. Slaves can't do that and they don't have to get paid at all, even though it may make sense to pay a slave in order make them do a better job.
> I find all these slavery comparisons in poor taste. Across history you will find slaves that were treated well, accumulated wealth, were educated and held in high regard - yet they still legally were the property of another person. The fundamental distinction with slavery is not a bad paycheck.
"Poor taste"? Seriously? I didn't say this is slavery, did I? I compared 19th century slaves' wages with these factory workers' wages. Somehow I can't do that because... why, exactly? Because you don't like it when people compare the working conditions of slaves with those of modern workers?
And it's not like I cherry-picked some well-off slaves here. $100 is the minimum slave wage numbers I could find—even the page said it was for unskilled labor. And to add insult to injury, those numbers appear to be NOT adjusted for (15x?) inflation! (Probably worth double-checking this part, but see: http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC4E79-B361...)
> In this case, the distinction wasn't a bad paycheck either. The compensation was fine on paper,
The engineers here hired for $286/mo and had their pay "on paper" reduced to $163/month ($109/month for non-engineers).
I don't know what your standard for "a bad paycheck" is, but I suppose, given how you were fine with this being equal to actual slaves' wages, I shouldn't be surprised that less than half the average salary for a person who build products for the world's richest company isn't bad enough for you.
Thanks for elaborating here. Your original post was low on analysis or context and left readers to draw their own conclusions about what relationship was implied between this scenario and slavery, which is probably why GP responded the way they did.
No, you're just pointing out that some slaves across history have been paid better than some modern workers. This is of course factually true, but also factually irrelevant.
On an emotional level however, it sounds like "Apple pays its workers less than slaves". Saying it plainly like that would be too obviously disingenuous, so you're going for the "I'll just leave these numbers here!" kind of middleground. Again, that's not wrong, that's just in poor taste (for me).
> I don't know what your standard for "a bad paycheck" is, but I suppose, given how you were fine with this being equal to actual slaves' wages, I shouldn't be surprised that less than half the average salary for a person who build products for the world's richest company isn't bad enough for you.
I don't actually know what these engineers were expected to earn in their respective market, but considering that they voluntarily entered into these contracts assuming to actually get paid that much, it must've been the best offer they have received. Consider that gatekeeping can keep earned wages high while simultaneously leaving a lot of otherwise qualified workers out of a job entirely.
If that salary is lower than whatever certain slaves may have earned at some point in history, that may be unfortunate, but again, factually irrelevant.
as someone who has spoken English from ~2 years old, I have never heard that definition. Slavery has always been a person who was forever forced to do what their master told them to. Are interns/apprentices slaves? After all, they work for a day for even less than a day's worth of food.
There is a lengthy wikipedia page on "wage slavery", which has a long history, even if it is not part of the currently accepted definition of slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
"Similarities between wage labour and slavery were noted as early as Cicero in Ancient Rome, such as in De Officiis."
If you need the wage from your labour to feed and house yourself, such that you are completely dependent on your employer, how is that functionally different to slavery?
Unpaid internships are increasingly considered immoral for reasons that you identify - many people literally cannot afford to take such an internship, so cannot gain this experience.
IS this really the definition of slavery here on HN? Pathetic. I've been supporting nonprofits engaged in anti-slavery issues - I will ABSOLUTELY stop if this is what is considered slavery. Such pathetic misuse of language.
"I find all these slavery comparisons in poor taste."
The employer got caught trying to enslave it's workforce. I think the comparison is accurate and should be classified as the worst sort of behavior towards a workforce.
The employer tried to get out of paying its workers, which can work but only for a while. Nothing forced these worker to stay aboard except their hope to get paid eventually. It's fraud, that is all there is to it.
Speaking of actual modern day slavery, there's always some form of coercion, some threat of violence, some legal/immigration issues that keeps the worker from leaving. This just isn't the case here.
Thanks. I'm not sure that "identity card" here would mean something like a passport versus a company identification card. Taking away the passport is indeed a common scheme in human trafficking, but these seem to be domestic workers so it's unclear how that would work.
If these workers don't have other choice but to take that miserable paycheck or starve, there's not much difference with being enslaved.
Edit: downvoting without discussion in this context means to me that you're hurt by my statements but have no rebuttal. It feels like you're acknowledging what I'm saying as true but you're not happy about it.
There also needs to be a meaningful distinction between the choices. If every employer is offering the same devil's bargain, and every one leaves the person at the edge of starvation, then the freedom to choose which devil to deal with doesn't mean much.
That's one of the arguments behind Georgism. If someone is not able to own enough land in order to provide for themselves then working for someone else isn't actually a free exchange.
Pretty much. You're only doing a free and willing exchange when you have an alternative. Otherwise by definition, there is no choice. Not that this means employers are slavers, it's the system that enslaves people, but employers gladly take advantage of it.
Edit: downvoting without discussion in this context means to me that you're hurt by my statements but have no rebuttal. It feels like you're acknowledging what I'm saying as true but you're not happy about it.
I don't think having alternatives is the criterion for a free choice.
The problem with "free" is like one of the other commentators suggests. If you get two guys offering the same terrible deal, you're no better off, but the critic can tell you you had a choice. And it's turtles all the way down, package the choices as one and the critic will tell you to unbundle them.
Instead we have to look at cultural context. What people think is reasonable changes. At one point, people thought it was just fine that if you couldn't pay your debts, you had to work it off, and your kids would inherit that debt. We also thought it was just fine to let kids work in mines, and that labourers should work every day minus Sunday.
"Whatever you can get someone to shake hands on" (which someone else is essentially saying) is another one of those ideas that seems simple, but actually there are social constraints on what you can agree. It's inviting to pretend that whatever the person agrees to is free, but actually this isn't the case and historically hasn't been.
> If the response of these workers is to ransack the place, that just tells you how bad/corrupt the legal system must be.
This suggests that the legal system ideally ought to exist for the benefit of capital owners who commit fraud, so they don't suffer material loss. Is that what you mean?
GP may also have meant that a functional legal system could provide a better remedy to the workers by enforcing compensation. And perhaps the destruction could have been avoided.
I think what the poster means is that the workers had so little trust in the legal system that they did not bother pursing this is court. Instead, they tried to create a media narrative to get Apple to pay attention.
1. We might reasonably assume that a worker who expects compensation through due process would also expect that same due process be used against them for causing property damage.
2. If I had assumed this to possibly be the case, I could not have reasonably made the argument. I am assuming this is a case of fraud and therefore it should be theoretically subject to legal recourse. If it's possible for the workers to cause 7 million dollars worth of property damage, it should've been possible to liquidate some of that equipment to pay the workers.
3. The company responsible for paying the salaries is not Apple.
> It strikes me as a long stretch to reach "bad/corrupt legal system" as a conclusion.
Your parent and multiple siblings interpreted my comment correctly.
1. Again - there are multiple workers; different workers do not have to take the same position (and, despite the headline, there's no evidence presented that the rioters were workers)
2. I make the opposite assumption. If the company has 7 million dollars of assets, why would it be defrauding wages?
3. Yes, we agree that Apple is not involved in this dispute. There is a good argument that they hold some responsibility for the situation, that is not currently recognised in law.
So, we simply disagree.
But, even if I were to agree with your points, I still don't reach "bad/corrupt legal system".
Do riots which occasionally happen in every country in the world illustrate a bad/corrupt legal system? I think not, and I wonder why you reach this conclusion in this case.
1. Of course, not all workers were necessarily involved, that's besides my point. I'm assuming that they are indeed workers and not, say, agent provocateurs on behalf of some sinister agency.
2. What's better than 7 million dollars in assets? Free labor plus 7 million dollars in assets. To make fraud work, there must not be doubt about your liquidity. If you promise someone to pay money that can't actually be earned, that's a Ponzi scheme. If you promise someone to pay money, but the contract says wages can be reduced arbitrarily for something vague like "underperformance", you may well get away with it, at least in a sufficiently weak legal system.
> Do riots which occasionally happen in every country in the world illustrate a bad/corrupt legal system?
I'm talking about this specific riot with its specific circumstances, not a generic riot that may occur for any reason.
> This suggests that the legal system ideally ought to exist for the benefit of capital owners who commit fraud, so they don't suffer material loss. Is that what you mean?
> I find all these slavery comparisons in poor taste. Across history you will find slaves that were treated well, accumulated wealth, were educated and held in high regard - yet they still legally were the property of another person. The fundamental distinction with slavery is not a bad paycheck.
How do you hold someone in high regard when they are your property? You cannot see me as less than yet hold me in high regard!
Right! A slave or two that were "treated well" speaks for generations that were maimed, raped, erased from existence.
The only thing I could discern from this is that you would have owned slaves were you born in that era.
Believe it or not, it appears to have NOT been adjusted for inflation. (So, multiply it by 15x.) See the $249.60 per year figure here and the following paragraph.
> > Self-hire _slaves_ [in the early 19th century U.S.]
Note that what you're referring to in that quote is what was called wage slavery. Today we just call it a job where we're not an owner. Back then such activity was considered a form of slavery and was frowned upon. It was semi-acceptable only because it was considered a temporary means to save up enough wealth to become a business/farm owner.
Nothing in the article tells me this is some exaggerated terminology for "people who weren't business owners". Everything in it is pretty clear that these people earned that wage while they were actual slaves.
That comment provides context for the phenomenon of "self-hire" slavery in the civil war era United States. Not talking about contemporary wage slavery.
It's been my understanding that many Indians took a 30% paycut due to the covid related hit on the economy. It seems like paycuts without cutting jobs seems to work better in Indian corporate culture as opposed to USA where companies will just cut the jobs entirely. The first pay cut seems to reflect that and isn't surprising.
The next pay cut is surprising - the economy in India has been on recovery and global demand for Apple devices is not an issue. I'd keep eyes on the local company executives, many of whom probably walked away with large Diwali bonuses thinking they are kings for bringing Apple manufacturing to the area. They're the ones to blame for not bringing on more HR resources.
Why yes, Apple does have responsibility for vetting suppliers, this specific factory seems to have gone sour very recently and the workers didn't let them get away with it. Apple seems to have acted appropriately with a probation and the local/national governments of India are also responding in a positive manner I believe will create stronger policies supporting tech manufacturing that properly care for staff and corporate oversight needs. I believe there will be closer eyes on the BMW driving corporate staff who hopefully will not continue behaving like kings.
> paycuts without cutting jobs seems to work better in Indian corporate culture as opposed to USA
Most of the folks I know who've had jobs affected by this had a mix. Some people were laid off, some had hours cut, some had pay cut - sometimes at the same company (different workers affected differently). I don't think there's an across the board "one approach fits all" that companies have taken in the US.
The next time you buy an apple product, keep this in mind. Along with that shiny new phone comes curse of thousands of poor people.
We are up in arms about climate change with govt, but when a TRILLION dollar private company screws people over - not a word. Wait in line to buy their products.
Its hard not to think that most Americans still prefer and like slavery. Just that a few black people managed to escape the publicly acceptable version of it.
If you don't want to be a hypocrite, you should also keep this in mind when buying from any company that partners with Wistron. Though it seems difficult to find a full list of partners.
>Within 16 months Wistron was making Dell handhelds and Microsoft's Xbox videogame consoles, according to industry reports. (Wistron doesn't identify its customers.)
Wistron is the result of Acer spinning off a bunch of their brands in the late 90s. I remember slinging AOpen (Another Acer spinoff) motherboards and shortly after Acer spun off Wistron, AOpen started offering laptops from Wistron. Dell shortly thereafter offered same/similar models.
They weren't very good; while thankfully my laptop was not a victim of the capacitor plague, they had some really bad design around the power port; over time just normal insert cycles would cause the connector to get loose and short in various ways. At one point I would have to 'shim' the plug in with paper to make sure that the contacts were well connected. The problem surfaced after a year, and after a factory repair, I got another year before the problem came back.
Thankfully the real fix was to use a better 'plug', one that had a threaded base (i.e. a threaded hole goes through the plastic, a 'cap' holds it in place).
> when a TRILLION dollar private company screws people over
It's an Apple supplier, not Apple. Besides, what does it matter that it's a trillion dollar company? It implies that if say 1 million small companies worth 1 million, would fare better in forcing a large supplier like Windsor or a large number of smaller suppliers, to respect India's local labour laws vis-a-vis their employees. That's a ridiculous assumption I think. If anything I trust that Apple's market power will force Wistron to pay out its workers according to the terms they agreed, much quicker than if Apple was, say, a small-time no-name company.
It's entirely right to be outraged about this, don't get me wrong. But I don't see the cause being related to Apple being a trillion dollar company. Nor do I see Apple screwing people over.
Tons of small and large companies in India screw with local labour laws all the time. If anything I'd expect that Apple suppliers would do so less on a per-worker basis. That's an assumption I'd like to see tested. The current system (courts or trial-by-media) will likely work for Apple holding its suppliers accountable. For a small company? Not so much.
I have nothing against Apple. I respect them for their stand on privacy, I respect their innovation in hardware, but, this is not the first time their suppliers have used slave labor. It happened multiple times in China, now its happening in India.
When a company claims it is not shipping a charger in the box due to environmental concerns, how can it repeatedly be caught using slave labor ?
Can't a company that builds monumental buildings in the MOST expensive real estate in the world not hire a few DIRECT EMPLOYEES who monitor working conditions in supplier factories on a day to day basis ?
Any recommendations to prevent supporting these companies? I've bought used for years as to not support a company directly and the initial damage had already been done. I'm interested to hear more ideas. How many phone companies are actually good with their manufacturing?
I have wondered for a long time why can't we have a Kickstarter / some crowdfunding started to port Linux to ARM phones. We spend so much money on phones, if we donate $1 a month for a few months and fund a few top class open source developers to do this full time whilst giving them market rate salary we can dramatically change the mobile ecosystem.
If a trusted name in HN Community or the tech world starts this many would contribute and it would have network effect.
Once we have Linux on mobiles, many startups would form around this ecosystem. Which would -
localize jobs
redistribute wealth so that Apple & Google don't get to hoard it.
stop planned obsolescence which is rampant these days.
create a market for open source hardware / cruelty free hardware.
Samsung, Apple's #1 competitor and the largest smartphone maker in the world, also has factories in India and doesn't have the kind of problem that Apple has.
Erm, Samsung is just as bad, if not worse. Hell, they don't even have a great rep with their own countrymen. They just don't attract the same amount of clicks here when their dirt is exposed.
I'm not sure if you actually read the report. I just don't see the kind of abuses publicized in this incident in India -- namely deceptive "bait-and-switch" and skimming/unpaid wages. For instance, according to the report, their main grievances are that (1) the use of contractors and apprentices who make up 15% of the workforce there and are paid lower; (2) overtime and Sunday where they are required to work 1 or 2 hours more or work on holidays/Sundays during high production season. (3) resistant to unions.
According to SCMP, most, or about 85%, of Wistron's factory workers are contractors[1]. While there seems to be some discrepancy between workers wages reported and received at Samsung factories, the figure reported by Apple/Wistron's factory workers are as much as ~45% less -- Rs 21,000 promised vs Rs 12,000 received.
Now, I'm not saying that Samsung is a better corporate citizen, but it's just that I don't hear Samsung's CEO parading around making grandstanding speeches about how ethically they run their business or socially, environmentally responsible they are, at least not as often.
We moved manufacturing out of the west because wow, other countries could do it so cheaply. It never occurred to us to ask how they would achieve that. (Or perhaps some of us already knew).
What good is ending slavery here if we're still receiving the benefits of effective slavery taking place there? Did we win some moral victory by not doing it within sight of our citizens?
Companies that manufacture elsewhere but sell here should need to prove that the people who made their products did so ethically. Clearly, we can't take that for granted.
My dad was in US manufacturing his entire career. He retired at a pretty high position and was largely responsible for keeping that manufacturing from going overseas. He said by far his biggest difficulty was that he had to pay a living wage, conform to rigorous environmental standards, and worry about pesky things like people losing hands or digits, where none of his competitors had any of those concerns. We’ve passed much needed internal regulation without requiring the same standards from importers. This is one of the reasons the blue collar middle class has vanished here, and it’s a real shame.
We just outsourced slavery and it makes us a bunch of hypocrites yes each time we use "human rights" to chastise countries in the south. Our politicians are fully aware of this exploitation dynamics and legal arbitrages they engineered.
The stupidest thing is that despite getting our stuff from slaves by the very definition of that word, our stuff ain't cheap at all, especially Apple which are luxury goods, it's just Apple making crazy margins. Apple could produce all their stuff in the West they would still be filthy rich. But it's not as profitable. But hey, 'carbon neutral','diverse and inclusive' or something, it makes yuppies in California feel good about themselves...
The thing here though is the wage Apple thought they were paying was a good-ish wage, its lack of labor protection that allows the contractor to corruptly reduce it.
Apple itself pay their contractors shit. Apple investigating? give me a break! i used to work at a Dell repair depot. Dell contracted out to make repair for their stuffs. Dell pay the contractor shit and that in turn make their contractor pay their employees shit. i work in the IT dept of repair depot so my salary isn't like the front line workers. believe me when i said company like Apple, Dell, HP...etc. use contractor like Wistron is because they can pay as little as possible and pocket in as much as they can.
MBAs see these all as cost centers. So, they will spend lower and lower money on these departments. To them, only sales/marketing are profit centers, and will keep funding those departments for ever
> NEW DELHI/BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple Inc has placed supplier Wistron Corp on probation, saying on Saturday it would not award the Taiwanese contract manufacturer new business until it addressed the way workers were treated at its southern India plant.
Apple paying their contractor's employees? That's not how business works.
I'm on the side of the workers. Their treatment is dogshit. The target should be placed squarely on the taiwanese company however, not Apple. Apple should have a higher standard, but they can only apologise for the actions of their contractor. If they did that it would make no sense business wise
But at what point does turning a bling eye become complicity? I could maybe understand if we were talking about a small US company that unknowingly contracted out to a sketchy overseas contractor but I have a hard time believing one of the most highly valued and profitable US tech companies like Apple doesn't have direct knowledge of it's own supply chain.
They likely do but to what detail? Should they have a line-by-line item of each employee being paid into their bank account each week?
Apple can only give guidelines and draw contractual terms. If a supplier is in breach then Apple can go ahead and break the contract and that supplier would lose out on a lot more than just the contract (as is the case here). But to hold Apple accountable for the actions of this company (and it may have only been the finance team being pushed by say, a CFO to show profitability for a quarter before a promotion or something) seems out-of-the-ordinary and unreasonable.
They're an easy target but you have to put the bias aside with Apple.
For anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth is, you can buy a Librem 5 USA edition, which is fully made in the USA and costs $2000. (For comparison, the third-world labor edition costs $800)
It's certainly better than nothing, but the number of caveats in their language shows just how hard it is to accomplish. "All the electronics will be made in our USA facility" they say, but I wonder how many components are made in the US? It sounds like it's mostly PCB soldering and assembly that are done in the US.
"Fully made in the USA" is an almost fractal claim that can't be literally true unless all raw materials were mined in the US, but even without demanding that level of depth I think calling this "fully made" in the US is a stretch.
> For anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth is
Hahaha, no, this is just an opportunity to bash Apple, no need to actually do something about it.
Anyway.
This looks very interesting, thanks for linking.
Can you tell me on the spot (if you have to look it up, I'll do it myself…), if there is an easy way to run Org-mode and sync my Org-mode files from a Mac?
Almost everybody here focuses on Apple instead on the Wistron. Having said that I am more inclined that the fault lies on the local managements and myriad of subcontracting companies or even third-party payroll and HR systems.
Apple probably audits their suppliers and contractors better than almost all of their peers but they are also culpable here for creating the ingredients for workers to be treated like shit by their pseudo-contractors. This isn't some widget factory that Apple signed on to make iPhones for the near future, it's a factory that only exists in the first place to make Apple iPhones and Apple fronted all the money to build it, etc. But Apple has set it up in a way that artificially distances themselves from what should be Apple employees (or at worst employees of a joint venture where Apple execs could run the HR and avoid these shady labor violations). I'm sure there are many benefits in doing it this way and they are lauded for those every quarter so they are also going to take the lumps as well.
It’s kind of hard to know what is going on from an outsiders perspective. Maybe Apple could have or should have known about this before, maybe they did already know, maybe they did everything they realistically could and were deceived.
One thing is certain, this problem isn’t specific to Apple. The whole electronics manufacturing industry is rotten and the only ones capable of fixing it are the governments of these counties. Wistron should be crushed for this wage theft and serve as a warning for other companies.
If it is anything like the Cable TV Industry, Apple absolutely knows and is in on the game.
I've noticed a pattern where large companies use a -lot- of contractors, sometimes under many layers. When I worked in Telecom, we were usually the contractor for Comcast, but sometimes there was another contractor above us and we were the 'sub-contractor'.
But then, below us, were often 1 or 2 more layers of subcontractors.
1/3 of the time we had decent contractors and scope of work and everything worked out. The other 2/3 of the time, it would be one or more of the following:
- The contractor mis-bid the project in a way that would lead them to go bankrupt in a year or two
- The contractor did a cut-rate job to maximize their profits.
- The deadlines or work rate were unreasonable and led to mistakes.
But, the important thing about all of this, is that the number of layers involved in the transaction lets everyone point the finger at each other and never point out that maybe it's the system itself that is broken.
The fault lies with decisions taken by Wistron [local] management, but the incentives to ensure similar decisions aren't taken in future depend on decisions taken by Apple.
> Almost everybody here focuses on Apple instead on the Wistron.
Yeah... because how fucking stupid would someone have to be to work at one of the world's largest, most valuable companies and expect anyone in their right mind to believe them when they throw up their hands and say, "Oh my God guys, we had nOoOoOoOo ideeeea this was happening!"
It's a really interesting to read some of their blog posts and see their journey. It does prove that trying to do things in a better way in electronics is possible and that companies that have much more money than them have absolutly no excuse not to follow the same path.
I really liked the idea, then I checked out the prices. Bye bye. I understand the scale is different. I think privacy is/will be another luxury reserved for rich people.
As someone who remembers what the time before cell phones was like, having a hand held pocket phone is still miraculous. A slightly less aesthetically pleasing phone is not a big deal when it reduces the true ugliness in the production chain.
That said, I'm also trying to decide between a Fairphone or a Linux phone. There are options.
Kind of sad these companies are struggling to stay in business rather than struggling to keep up with demand.
Unfortunately that's not how most consumers think.
As far as phone manufacturing goes, anything that involves electronics will inevitably cause pollution in its life cycle. Even if you're creating the most eco-friendly product, no one will want to use it unless it looks pleasing too. The Pine Phone is that, Virtu is that, but the Fairphone isn't. Even then, Pine Phone and Virtu (maybe not so much) have an uphill battle.
Many of the comments, at the time of posting, aren't really grappling with what the article says.
It is about a company called Wistron, not a company called Apple. I would challenge the idea that Apple is doing something wrong in this given what I now about most of the supply chains producing goods in the advanced economies - everyone down to the consumer buys from the cheapest supplier. Apple is not fundamentally responsible for the labour relations of other companies, and this is a practice that literally everyone I know has engaged in to some degree. "Sweatshop labour" producing clothes isn't very concealing as euphemisms go. It is far more worrying that Apple does business in China period than that Apple has dodgy subcontractor arrangements in India. India is a democracy, they'll sort this stuff out in time.
There is also no need to express outrage on this one. Promising to pay one amount and then not paying it is an unpardonable sin in pretty much every value system anyone cares to name. Comparisons to slavery, however, are missing the point. This is fraud. Assuming an accurate article this is one of the few times that smashing someone else's stuff is justified.
> Apple is not fundamentally responsible for the labour relations of other companies
It's a funny world where everyday individual customers barely making a living are supposed to unite, educate themselves on the supply chains of everything they see on the market, and vote with their wallets to filter out unethically-produced products, but a single $2 trillion tech corporation ("person"?) who's a customer of another company with all the leverage in the world isn't responsible for caring if it's reaching the $2T market cap ethically.
For years, companies like Nike and Samsung have justifiably gone under fire for similar issues with their suppliers. I have never witnessed so many who found it more important to cleanse the name of these companies. It really says a lot about consumer cultism.
Are comparisons to slavery missing the point? I understand that companies are always going to go for the lowest bidder, but if the lowest bidder was mistreating it's workers and they know about it then it's socially irresponsible.
Companies like Apple have plausible deniability when it comes to things like this. That's one of the major reasons they outsource rather than building their own factory. Apple is built on vertical integration.
Apple lectures me on all kinds of things, from climate change to political correctness. Just give me a fucking device and stay out of my politics. They have earned the outrage.
The outrage is because we know Apple, and many other corporations, have facilities to be able to become aware of this and do things to stop it.
Apple can ask for independent verification of the conditions of the workers in its supply chain. This isn't some crazy new notion, companies do this all the time for quality control purposes. They can therefore do it for human rights purposes too.
They can also stop it, by having a contract that requires specific working conditions for all the suppliers, and if they are violated, the contract is voided and immediately goes to a competitor.
Apple has no responsibility to anybody but its shareholders. They can use literal slaves for work, they don't care. But we, the consumers and shareholders, can care. And we can express our displeasure by getting outraged, and demanding they not do business with a supply chain that abuses its workers.
This even happened back in the 17th century, when people boycotted companies who profited from slavery. People literally purchased items whose design advertised that "no slaves were used in the making of this product". A lot of people thought companies should not be held responsible for using the product of slave labor, but over time, the force of popular opinion was able to get them to change their business models and not use slavery.
Today we do the same things, with products advertising not using rBST or antibiotics or engineered crops, or having fair trade or rainforest alliance certifications. We demand products that are produced ethically, and over time that can force companies to do better.
This isn't always effective. There's still diamonds being sold that were mined basically using slavery, and most coffee farmers can barely scrape by and can starve from one bad season. We do need to get outraged, or they really will never change.
If Apple has any reason to believe they are benefiting from underpaid labour then they are responsible.
You don't just get to say "well technically the slaves work for that other company, sure we get the slaves to build our devices that we profit off of, but they're actually hired by someone else".
If they know about it and benefit from it it's their responsibility. If they have any reason to believe it might be true and don't do everything in their power to stop it, it's their responsibility.
Billionaire Apple shareholders simply chose increasing their wealth at the expense of poor people they took advantage of in developing countries. And this has to stop, and we have to stop saying it's acceptable.
Capitalism failed. It failed harder than any other experiment humans ever tried, and it and the wealth equality it creates has to be destroyed.
> Apple is not fundamentally responsible for the labour relations of other companies
As soon as Apple steps into politics and takes any kind of political/environmental/socio-political stance - yes, yes it is responsible. Otherwise it is hypocrisy at best.
Good for them. It's time for workers stand up for themselves again. I hope the authorities there do an audit to see where all those stolen wages have gone and recover them.
I know this wage sounds alien to many. I wholeheartedly disagree with Apple's wages but for context, Rs 50 - 80 is the price of a full, though street food, meal in many Indian cities.
India simply has cheap food and low costs. I know this personally as I live a fairly low-expense life. But I can not imagine a big co paying these ridiculously low wages. This is exactly why rich get and stay richer. Apple has the means to push partners to keep paying low.
Bullshit. Every single company in the US buys stuff from companies from foreign countries who promise to deliver things under contract. This is not an Apple owned company, or an Apple problem, or a U.S. problem, but a problem at a company in India (I believe owned by someone in Taiwan). Do you know who made the shirt you are wearing, the product you just bought from Amazon, who picked the grapes you have in your kitchen and who is reading your prescriptions, or how your company's security software supplier builds their software? No? Then you are no different than Apple, who at least tries to keep up with 1000's of suppliers and their treatment of employees. And sometimes those companies are determined to screw their employees over and cover it up. It happens in farmer's fields, giant suppliers or government agencies. Having fake outrage over someone else's occasional failure but ignoring your own. Are you eating food picked by some exploited farmhand? Wearing a cheap shirt made by a prisoner in some labor camp? Ordering some cheap crap on Amazon stolen from a real business? But sure blame Apple for missing the boat.
Yes, I do realise that happens with lots of bussinesses and Apple isn't the only one doing it. But let's be honest, the richest company in the world should be the example to follow in a good way.
The title is unfortunately incorrect, changed by the submitter for larger impact. According to the article, some people were hired for $100/mo., and some people received $7/mo. - not the same people.
edit: title has been subsequently changed. Thanks mods!
Other reports mention 60 m in damages and that the 6.80 USD per month for some was a 95% [gradual] decrease in salary. Imagine living on 1 USD per day. Now imagine living on much much less?
I read some excuses from people how Apple didn't know but they are not the only manufacturer (or brand) in the world using cheap labor. Plenty don't monitor work conditions but others (usually more fancy brands) keep a close eye on things.
Last time people got rid of slavery by not buying the products. You chose who you are.
"Wistron has been making iPhones in India for nearly four years and its operation has been seen as a success story for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that is looking to boost manufacturing."
One issue that always occurs to me in these situations is the intense research into automation and robotics. Obviously replacing these workers is not feasible now, but it seems like we should anticipate much more capable robots as the research progresses.
That will increase the problems that labour has dramatically.
With Apple's margins they could easily afford to do all payroll themselves in the US, if their partners are not trustworthy enough. They could also hire undercover agents to monitor the situation. Heck, they could even help organize and sponsor a union!
If the factory is not paying workers, it would be illegal in many countries, I hope it is the same in India, shouldn't the government and court deal with it?
As much as I sympathize with the workers, this situation is unavoidable for a company the size of apple. People here also assume that just because Apple is a giant they must be trying to exploit. Just because it hurts our sensibilities doesn't make it apple's problem. This could very well be the country's issues with labor and how they deal with it. We should at least be glad that they are rioting and causing a ruckus. If this were China they would be suppressed a long time ago.
It's like that fantasy about Uber and self driving cars. Exploiting humans will always be cheaper than maintaining robots in places where human life has very little value.
Apple wants a piece of the pie from EVERYONE downstream. They'll go to great lengths to make sure they're always at the door, collecting.
They can very well deal with and clean up the mess anyone makes upstream. "Apple and <some supplier that almost exclusively supplies to Apple> are not the same" line is pretty much trolling at this point.
Wistron isn't "some supplier that almost exclusively supplies to Apple". They also manufacture electronics for Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, Motorola. Originally, they were Acer's production arm. Lots of things about how workers in the supply chain are treated is very wrong, but if you accuse others of trolling, you'd better get your facts straight.
I can’t see what this has to do with Apple yet, other than Apple has hired them to contract out some of their work. Is Apple in charge of what all these Winstron employees get paid or do they interface with leaders of Wonstron who then turn around and write paychecks?
Apple has a strict set of supplier responsibility standards [1], but is even more strict in controlling PR and the Apple brand. So even if the conditions that led to this destruction were not within existing guidelines, I would imagine reporting or accounting audit requirements will become more strict as a result of this.
The massive profit margin of the iPhone makes situations like this sad. What is also sad is the misery that these people experience even assuming Apple didn’t exist in the world.
No one argues that capitalism hasn’t been amazingly effective at bringing people out of abject poverty. The next jump in quality of life is less clear...
They aren’t apple employees we don’t even know if these workers were working on apple products. They are Wistron employees, a company that works on everything from TVs to IoT devices. We just know that the factory was contracted to produce the iPhone SE 2 for Indian customers and that Apple did pay fairly and some management level at wistron pocketed it instead of paying the workers.
These structures exist so corps can engage in slavery without harming their brand. They use contactors that they pay so little, they know the working conditions will be terrible. It's a win-win for Apple, more $ and they don't tarnish their brand. When there is media like this, they blame the contractor and keep doing the same things.
This is absolutely how MBAs think. I had to misfortune of attending business school.
They are still Apple employees, just not on the books. This isn't any different from tax evasion through different shell companies across the world: these workers spend 100% of their labour producing things that Apple subsequently sells at gross markup, so for all intents and purposes -- they are Apple employees, just not according to the law.
I know what a state monopoly on violence means. The fact that you care about "India's image" as a business attraction rather than the plight of those workers who were paid a measly 7$ a month was what I was talking about.
1. India's image is what enhances its chances of gaining more business which improves livelihood of everyone.
2. Monopoly of violence requires working justice system where civil and criminal matters can be resolved.
The formula involves time, votes, and the 'busy-ness' of the comments. And, IIRC, the time component is tuned to prevent a story from being on the front page (and continuing to displace other stories) for a very long time. It certainly has no concept of moral outrage.
If admins think a story is worthy (and I suppose if enough folks contacted them expressing this viewpoint), they can certainly make adjustments to keep it around a bit longer.
The time and votes don't explain this, and "more comments = bad" doesn't either. Because [1] has 27 points with 8 comments from 3 hours ago, whereas [2] has 28 points with 7 comments from 1 hour ago, and yet [1] is ranked #8 and [2] is ranked #13. I don't see how any of those explain this. AFAIK this story never went above ~#10 either, so it's not like it's been hanging around forever. It really looks like something/someone has been either artificially boosting other stories or artificially penalizing this one to prevent it from going near the top.
Correct, time and votes aren't sufficient to explain story rank. This is in the FAQ:
Q: Why is A ranked below B even though A has more points and is newer?
A: You can't derive rank from votes and time alone. See "How are stories ranked?" above.
From "How are stories ranked?": Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
Right, thanks, that part I had figured out. The detailed weightings don't concern me, but could you let us know if this involved moderator action (vs. automatic), and whether the ranking was hard-capped?
I didn't say "more comments = bad", I said comment traffic affects the ranking. Actually, a busy comment section improves the ranking of a story (again IIRC.) I think time is the most aggressive part of the formula - it would take a fantastic number of votes and very busy comments to keep a story on the front page for a full 24hrs.
I mean either way I still can't use that to explain this. Can you? Again, we have 8-hour-old stories with fewer votes and comments ranking higher right now.
I can only say these things are variables. I have no idea what the weights are. For all I know (I'm sure they tune the thing without publishing details) it now involves some kind of sentiment analysis. But rather that attempting to reverse engineer the process, I recommend getting in touch with HN and expressing your concern - if enough folks feel strongly about this story, it'll be buttressed a bit.
What I'm saying is this is beyond a "weighting" thing. You don't need to know the precise algorithm, but you can make some reasonable inferences (e.g. more votes probably doesn't penalize). If you just watch this story on the front page, it's acting as if it's hard-capped at #10, and where it's happy to stay for a while (though occasionally going to #11 and then coming back). It really looks like someone has interfered with it rather than it being an algorithm thing, unless the algorithm imposes deliberate hard caps on some stories. And given that it seems to have had some manual interference, I'd rather they address this publicly; everyone is entitled to know.
(Update: And just as I finish writing this comment, it's at #13, whereas the following 3-hour-old story with 19 points and 1 comments is somehow at #9 now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25493577)
HN moderators love to drank what they seem "controversial" topics, aka whatever doesn't align with their political views which are deemed the default/neutral view. Basically, you're allowed to discuss the latest iphone release but not how it's made.
That's not true at all. HN has already had several threads on this topic, we do not demote articles based on their political position, and there was no moderator penalty on this thread.
What do you expect from a company that actually lobbies for slave labor? Hey, anything to keep that stock price up is a small price to pay, eh?
> Apple wants to water down key provisions of the bill, which would hold U.S. companies accountable for using Uighur forced labor, according to two congressional staffers
its no secret those electronic contractors make very little.
i read an article a couple years ago that say Foxconn make $3 per iphone. how much do you think that $3 get pass to the workers? while Apple pocketed in almost the entire profit.
its not just Apple. Dell is the same as well. why do you think they keep contracted to Wistron and Foxconn?
I understand the business model of these companies. Really.
I dont blame Apple or Foxconn or whoever that tries to squeeze as much as they can.
But we (as the western civilization) can make deals with most of these countries and set basic standards and minimum wage requirements that is both beneficial to them and to us. I dont want western workers try to compete with cheap labor from India or Vietnam but at the same time I dont want these people be exploited as much as they are now.
They can make a decent wage based on the economy of their country and still be treated like humans.
iPhones are the new blood diamonds. Digging in The Dirt [0] published by Harvard Law School states that daily wages for child miners in Sierra Leone range from US$0.15 to US$0.60 .
Before blaming Apple the important question is what is Apple paying? Are they paying $7 and ripping off the employees? Or are they paying $100 and Wistron is ripping off Apple?
That's the question I would have too. I assume apple pays for devices, not necessarily time.
Which means that we see the results, what motivated it, but we don't know what apple paid for.
People can be mad at apple for not having enough scrutiny into their supply chain. From similar articles, it seems foxconn doesn't pay very well, but it seems to match the promised levels here. Now I don't know what cost of living is between those parts of China and India, so that's a big caveat.
But it sort of torpedoes the outrage to me if the failure mode isn't actually known. You can lament the salaries, but the fact is we don't know what apple was paying for or what wistron's operations were. We just know there were riots.
Something like this is simply unacceptable.
Why is there no public outrage towards Apple? We are all so willing to publicly denounce Nike, Nestle and co., yet no one wants to raise a word against Apple?
This may be because of the 250 million strong general strike and the farmer strike that has hit India in the last weeks (https://www.deccanherald.com/national/at-least-25-crore-work...). There has been almost zero reporting in Western media about that one, the only thing that drew a tiny bit of attention were the Apple riots.
Under normal circumstances I guess there would be many reports about what's going on, but media conglomerates don't want to give the population the idea that general strikes and riots work.
We need decoupling of media ownership and society's rich/elites, fast.
AFAIK the 250 million figure is a very generous estimate given by the labor groups. 250 million works out to around half of india's workforce. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we haven't seen that so far. Yes, it's possible that the elites are suppressing the news and the lack of them is only more proof of their involvement, but that goes into conspiracy territory.
It’s pointless. The only thing that can fix this problem is governments. They have the power to crack down on these manufacturing companies and actually put a stop to it.
Tweeting about it won’t do a thing. Buying an alternative brand phone won’t do a thing either because they all come from the same places. This wasn’t an Apple factory, it was just a generic electronics factory that probably produces a large chunk of the stuff you have regardless of brand.
If I stood in front of an Apple store holding a sign that says "Note that workers in India's iPhone factories are paid less than 7$ PER MONTH!", would I be labeled a terrorist?
Apple isn't the only one doing this, but Apple is the company who makes 'think different' posters with Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, etc. on them. That, to me, makes it extra disgusting. It tries to sell itself as some company that is somehow different and not 'evil' and 'corporate' like all the others.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402999 (90 points/117 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408188 (27 points/20 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25411526 (125 points/15 comments)