The state [Karnataka] passed an amendment to its application of the factories act, which now allows for 12-hour shifts [up from 9], and the easing of rules for night-time work for women. The legislation increases the number of allowable overtime hours to 145 over a three-month period, up from 75, and caps maximum working hours at 48 per week [this is toothless].
Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn were involved in lobbying for a significant liberalisation of labour laws...There are “a lot of inputs" from industry lobby groups and foreign companies, including Foxconn and Apple, in the decision to amend Karnataka’s labour law.
"China-Like"
Mother fucker that shit happens in every capitalist country. Don't pretend this is uniquely Chinese.
remember when the chinese province of seoul legalized 69 hour weeks i remember
All those poor overworked hard drinking Chinese salarymen in Japan
An Indian state will allow 12 hour shifts, South Korea wants to increase the maximum working week to 69 hours (not nice) after increasing it to 52 just five years ago, and states in the United States are revoking child labor protections. How positively Chinese! :agony-soviet:
If the Foxconn and Apple factories in China have 12 hour shifts, what makes this framing bad?
Because the comparison makes bad working conditions sound like a foreign concept - something uniquely Chinese. These policies are being reintroduced by these bourgeois nations on their own accord. There's nothing Chinese about it. Also, the annual working time of China, India, and South Korea were pretty close in 2017 , so there's nothing uniquely Chinese about working long hours. There's also the fact that people love to use the worst examples of Chinese labor conditions to describe the whole country. Finally, journalists love to shoehorn China into everything to make their country look less bad. You can call it "saving face". :xicko:
Kinda off topic but whoa, I knew Germany has it better than we do in America but that's sort of a huge difference. Literally working ~75% as much as us. That's the difference between a 30 and 40 hour work week on average, although vacation days probably play a huge role
It might be coming to an end eventually. Back in November, the Minister of Labor of Bavaria proposed increasing the maximum allowed working hours to 10h/day, the CDU is led by a hardcore monetarist neoliberal and they are going to win the next election in a few years, likely allying with the classical liberal/Libertarian FDP and/or the Green Party, which is basically indistinguishable from the American Democrats nowadays.
Also, the working week in Germany is 40h, except for any industry involving metalworking. There the union IG Metall won the 35h working week in the 1980s.
Legally the maximum is 48h / week with 6 working days. That's fairly uncommon on paper though. As per how it plays out realistically, eh, who fucking knows, they axed literally everyone who's job it would be to check 30 years ago
increasing the maximum allowed working hours to 10h/day
That's bad, but compared to America I'm surprised because I didn't even know countries had limits to working hours in a day! And if they did, I assumed it'd be like 12 hours, goddamn my mom is working 14 shifts
Also, the working week in Germany is 40h
Ah I thought that might be standard too but I wasn't sure, I guess vacation days is really the only factor at play. I was mainly speaking hypothetically, like if Germany had as little leave days as America then 1750 v 1350 hours a year would be the difference between a 40 and 30 hour work week
I didn’t even know countries had limits to working hours in a day
There's enforcement problems, of course.
I don't think this is trying to make China look bad though. This looks like a business website that calls this a "liberalization" of labor laws so they seem in support of this move.
Indian working culture is fucked and there is a lot of overtim for offices, I'm not sure what the factory scene is like. But it seems the specific factory rules are coming about since companies want to operate in India they have operated in China. The companies expect this because they've operated like that before
:porky-happy: Hey kids, wouldn't it be freakin' epic to have a 69-hour work week? And how about a $4.20 hourly wage? Now that's "poggers"!
The whole "sweatshop factory that makes the world's technology" is pretty much geographically limited to South Asia (obviously the multinationals responsible for this are all over the world), due to the unique situation of having incredible industry that even other heavily industrialised countries do not have (especially in China and Taiwan), with a much lower cost of living than other industrialised countries, and a large rural population to exploit, weather they be local or migrant workers.
Even if chip manufacturing comes back to the US or something I don't see how 85+ hour work weeks for millions of factory workers on less than minimum wage (in India the floor minimum wage is 2.16 US dollars a day, average minimum wage is 3.16 a day, even if you take purchasing power difference between the US and India into account it's still extremely low) will be accepted, unless conditions massively deteriorate in the next decade. Even Amazon maxes out at five 12 hour shifts a week from what I've read on the news.
Don't worry, bro. We Americans will willingly accept higher prices as long as it's made in America!
starts ranting about why fast food workers deserve pennies because otherwise big macs will increase by 35 cents
as long as it’s made in America!
The Freedom Phone exists and it was made in China.
Holy shit look at the new homepage
The Freedom Phone will come pre-installed with both Tesla and Twitter apps out of respect for what Mr. Musk has done for freespeach [sic] for the world!
Thank you Elon! We look forward to helping you build a new decentralized system for humanity together!
lol this looks so stupid. oh and a nice update https://www.thedailybeast.com/conservative-freedom-phone-backers-turn-on-each-other
In court, Finman reflected on how Freedom Phone’s collapse hurt its customers, who had each spent $500 on the idea that the supposed tech wunderkind could give them a phone for conservatives free from the Silicon Valley giants. Instead, Finman said, the Freedom Phone debacle “soils” his reputation.
“A lot of these are elderly customers,” Finman testified in August. “I mean, it’s horrible. It’s heartbreaking.”
Actually it's kind of funny. I don't feel bad about it at all.
I mean even if they somehow manage to get the prices to a level most people would accept by screwing US workers over during the future invasion of Taiwan or whatever happens, America simply does not have the industrial capacity. Look at how Tesla is going, a niche car brand where the steering wheels come off and batteries explode, not even mentioning build quality/QC issues. Imagine trying to build computer chips.
China is cracking down on this shit, South Korea and Japan are the countries that do this kind of thing consistently.
Yes but this is Apple and Foxconn telling India to adopt the rules they are used to operating under in China. If that wasn't the manufacturing status quo then it would be different
and the easing of rules for night-time work for women
Commies like to nitpick and ignore that India is getting more progressive :liberalism:
Idk shit about India labor really besides seeing some of the atrocious working conditions but damn I hope they start pumping up their union numbers. Just a quick google shows there are only 9.18m unionized workers in india with a population of 1.4B people. For reference the US has 14M unionized workers with a pop of 332M people. And we've had a huge decrease in memberships and intentional union busting for so long. Obviously every place could use more unions but it seems like India might benefit from it incredibly well. They have so many people they could grind so much of the economy to a halt. This shit is fucked, nobody should be working 12hr shifts period.
The farmer's strike a few years back involved tens of thousands of people led by communist parties and unions. There were entire streets filled with the hammer and sickle flag. They got some of their main demands met, so that's inspiring to me.
I mean this is how it is in the third world. And countries with established unions usually have massive corruption problems within the unions itself. And people will gladly take these jobs because it's better than nothing. Conditions are not good.
For sure, I also wonder how much of this is also related to the caste system. I mean it's already clearly classist as is and it's probably just another layer to it i'd reckon
Did the US government force Apple to manufacture in India?
I think Apple is just looking longterm to when that happens probably next election cycle.
India taxes imported electronics heavily so that's why they are looking to produce domestically
Oh yeah great. Let’s have women out at night more often in India. This won’t end poorly. FUCK, why is everything always bad WHY is everything always getting WORSE. I hate this planet so fucking much sometimes. YES LETS MAXIMIZE SUFFERING
Because "there's a class war, but it's my class that's winning" - Warren Buffett
Worse is how (at least in the countries I'm familiar with) way too few people are fighting back.
As a personal anecdote, I spoke with a boomer comrade recently and he agreed with my assessment that the political situation is very similar to how it was in the early 80s... but with a huge manpower difference. Back in 1982/3 you had 10 rented busses full of people drive to Bonn to participate in an Anti-NATO protest in Bonn with 1.5M other protesters. Now it's a very good result if 100 people show up.
Such a country in decline in every way. Like all the neoliberal hellholes. Its not going to do anything, industrial growth in India stagnated a decade ago.
Keep in mind most of the labor is in "informal" sector (90%) where even these basic labor laws aren't enforced.
Also the rejection rates for iPhone parts manufacturered in India are straight up unsustainable. No one has the manufacturing capabilities that China possesses here, not even highly industrialised countries, yet alone India. It's one of the big reasons Steve Jobs chose China in the first place back in the 2000s, sure other countries would do it cheaper, but not with the quality China did it. And if he wanted to build them in the west, he'd pay more, due to labour laws and a higher cost of living, for a worse product.
I always found the "made in china = bad" argument funny. Like iPhones are overpriced shits much of the time, but the physical quality is alright like 95% of the time. It's the companies which set the standards and China follows whatever are given. There's also the cope of "ummm it's designed in california" lmao. It's still assembled thousands of miles away, man. They make iPhones with higher standards because that's what Apple wants, and they make cheap junk that falls apart in 2 weeks because that's what Amazon and Walmart wants
Yeah it's pretty much a you get what you pay for deal with multinationals doing business in China. And with how fucked neoliberal global capitalism is, you don't need to pay that much to get high quality
And they rip off shit, improve it (to somewhere in between) and sell it to Chinese consumers cause it's what Chinese companies want (and now those companies have improved their designs just about up to par). Apple will have them make the good shit and ship it over to you, they can't compete with that so they're just going to sell their version of the good shit to themselves ofc, has nothing to do with competence, as you say.
Also the rejection rates for iPhone parts manufacturered in India are straight up unsustainable.
What I'm hearing is that the only way India will be able to take some of the manufacturing out of China is if they have their own communist revolution and industrial reforms. :galaxy-brain:
India with their caste system will forever held them back. When you exclude the majority in favor of minority, many of them gonna fled, combine that India govt doesn't really heavily invest in infrastructure, and more invest on fake news.
I wish the workers of Karnataka a very radicalize and seize the new factory.
