When President Obama asked Steve Jobs why iPhones can't be made in America, he replied: "Those Jobs aren't coming back."
Companies no longer feel an obligation to support American's workers. Apple feels that to design one of their products with the highest quality - that it has to be manufactured in China. There is no other place in the world that can scale up (millions in weeks) while maintaining a very healthy profit margin. The fact of the matter is that the supply chain for high-end and low-end electronics does not touch America in a significant way - it is mostly in Europe and Asia. Even Corning's much touted Gorilla Glass is manufactured in new factories in Asia because that is where the action is.
Even though once Apple marketed about being made in America, that is no longer the reality.
In America, you cannot wake up workers for an emergency production shift at midnight. In China, that is business as usual.
As the pace of innovation quickens (five iPhones in four years), American businesses must rely more on China to compete globally.
> In America, you cannot wake up workers for an emergency production shift at midnight.
This part is not completely true.
There are no workers in dorms that you can just round up, no. But a supervisor can call up a bunch of people and tell them to report in, or they can ask people to stay for another shift after their first one finishes.
It is by no means impossible for people to work 18 hour shifts in America.
It's close enough to true, though, in the context of manufacturing. Extended shifts at overtime rates are not cost effective. And there are no good alternatives. I ran a manufacturing company (granted in California, a very employee friendly state) where everyone wanted to run 4 days of 10 hour shifts, called the 'alternative work week', instead of the usual 5 - 8 hour days. There is a regulatory means for doing this without it resulting in overtime pay. The problem is, the regulations are onerous and full of potential pitfalls and the consequence of screwing it up is that an employee sues 2 years later and all those 2 hours logged over the usual 8 hour max are retroactively deemed overtime and must be paid to the employees. So even though everyone wanted to put in an extra 2 hours each day to get the fifth day off, we couldn't do it because of the risk. In other words, it's not always just about what people are willing to do.
We don't have that in Arizona. They can work the guys 40 hours in two days and not have to pay overtime (they've come rather close to doing this). Also, only working hours count towards the 40: vacation does not. Work through Thanksgiving? Well, that just sucks. Like you say, CA is a lot more employee friendly.
That said, you're right that they avoid OT like the plague. That's what made me speculate that they were already running at maximum capacity and had to do something to boost that for a while. But yeah, it does happen. I've been there to support an 18 hour shift. Not fun.
To be fair, it sounded like Foxconn was at capacity and the 18 hour shifts were more common, but I don't really know for sure. And make no mistake: a shift like that is brutal for anyone who has to stand the whole day.
But yeah, things like that happen in America, too. It usually leads to high burnout unless the workers are desperate. Things like 15% turnover per month are pretty average.
When President Obama asked Steve Jobs why iPhones can't be made in America, he replied: "Those Jobs aren't coming back."
Companies no longer feel an obligation to support American's workers. Apple feels that to design one of their products with the highest quality - that it has to be manufactured in China. There is no other place in the world that can scale up (millions in weeks) while maintaining a very healthy profit margin. The fact of the matter is that the supply chain for high-end and low-end electronics does not touch America in a significant way - it is mostly in Europe and Asia. Even Corning's much touted Gorilla Glass is manufactured in new factories in Asia because that is where the action is.
Even though once Apple marketed about being made in America, that is no longer the reality.
In America, you cannot wake up workers for an emergency production shift at midnight. In China, that is business as usual.
As the pace of innovation quickens (five iPhones in four years), American businesses must rely more on China to compete globally.