overseas manufacturing in developing countries

oh, hm. I'm misremembering

maybe some kind of shift-juggling where they don't get overtime

I find it amusing when people consider Taiwan, Singapore or South Korea "developing countries".

esp when their cost of living is > the USA's.

I think some of that willingness to work what we consider inhumane hours is that people don't do these factory jobs for a long time, typically. They work for 6 mos or 12 mos or a couple of years, max, and then as jon said, travel back to the country for Chinese New Years (a month-long holiday for some factories) and don't come back.

shasta you're the first person to mention those countries itt

to me what's hilarious is that even luxury companies manufacture their things in china - as if their profit margins weren't big enough already

laurel I think notions of amount of hours considered to be inhumane is going to be informed as much by culture and necessity and willingness as much as by some objective limit of what we consider humane.

some of these workers make far more than they would otherwise at home by working in these factories, and want to maximize their pay as much as possible, maybe working 12, 14, 16 hours a day. in this respect, they are not very different than investment bankers or biglaw lawyers.

others, however, are not willing and maybe be compelled to. that is abuse.

Laurel OTM... for the workers on the factory floor I think it's kind of like those insane fishing boats ppl work on for a summer (except minus the adventure, plus ping pong, and for 11 months instead of one season...)

re: 'even' luxury companies manufacturing in china- can't have 'too much' profit. the place i quit sold upmarket geegaws and knicknacks in posh homeware stores, has a big share of the outdoor pursuits clothing & equipment market, not low-margin stuff

xpost yeah compulsory overtime is a whole different thing and of course there are different ways in which it can be 'compelled'.

another interesting wrinkle-- Chinese govt labor laws state that workers should be compensated by time worked whereas a lot of workers prefer to be compensated per finished piece.

i've worked on insane fishing boats for the summer too!

whereas a lot of workers prefer to be compensated per finished piece

Wasn't this how Stalin did it?

laurel I think notions of amount of hours considered to be inhumane is going to be informed as much by culture and necessity and willingness as much as by some objective limit of what we consider humane.

otm I consider 40 hour weeks inhumane considering how much money this country has

laurel I think notions of amount of hours considered to be inhumane is going to be informed as much by culture and necessity and willingness as much as by some objective limit of what we consider humane.

The complaint I have heard is that the regs our plants are required to follow limit the work-day to a Western-standard value, ie 8 hours or no more than 10-hr shifts, 4 days a week, or something, and the workers are frustrated by not being allowed to put in more time. NB I have not spoken to the mainland China employees personally in Chinese without mgmt present so I cannot promise that this is their true opinion, but that's what I hear.

If fuel costs end up making container ships a relatively expensive way to ship things, the world is going to change in a massive, massive way.

that is the underlying concern of the suburbs thread and the energy thread and like a million other threads

I'm also wondering how much of it is actual worker feedback and how much of that is predatory bosses - "oh yeah, our workers want to work MORE!" *pockets money* xxp

A one-dollar rise in world oil prices leads to a 1 percent rise in trade transport costs. In terms of the marine and inland transport movement of a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Columbus, Ohio, the total transport cost was $3,000 when oil prices were $20 per barrel in the year 2000. Today at $140 per barrel, the cost is $8,000, and should oil prices rise to $200 per barrel transport cost would rise to $15,000 per FEU

http://www.marad.dot.gov/documents/Modal_Shift_Study_-_Technical_Report.pdf

!!

We may get our industry back, people!!

it's a definite possibility, though it's such a huge concept and so diametric to trends over the past 20+ years that it's hard to get your head around it.

Village blacksmith ftw

or what you said upthread, dayo, i.e. peak oil will save us

i.e. mommy will take the candy away

30 years ago you could ship a 40-foot container across the pacific for $3000

hmm can i say 'diametric' like that? To the grammar fiends thread

that report says that even in 2000 you could get a 40-foot container all the way across the pacific and up to columbus OH for $3000.

would be an interesting study imo- what effect, if any, has the ability to kick a ball in the street had on the cost of transoceanic goods transportation ?

oh sorry i didn't realize we were doing this

brb

(think "diametrical" would be better in that context, not sure why)

'diametrically opposed' yeah.

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo/_new/080827-girl-vmed-645a.widec.jpg

I find this photo really touching - behind every strong iphone stands an even stronger chinese worker working 12 hours a day

Ford, GE and Otis Elevator are among companies that have all just recently announced moves of labor back to the US.

Trying to find good articles that are not WSJ-paywalled.

Supposedly some of it is rising labor costs in China (I had a feeling eventually this would happen) and rising transportation/warehousing costs, but there's some speculation it's partly an image thing, especially with a company like Ford.

I guess an assume-a-can-opener economist would argue that this is what's supposed to happen -- the same free market that drives manufacturing overseas should also eventually drive the cost of manufacturing in other countries up and we should move toward some kind of equilibrium. In reality I find it hard to believe that things work that way for a number of reasons.

Well yeah, partly because rising standards of living in China usually just mean pushing things out to even poorer parts of the world.

If fuel goes up, wages gotta go down

assume-a-canopener would then posit that the increased competition for labour would eventually bring up wages, standards in those economies also, tho

A rising tide lifts all container ships!

ha!

Xpost - and yes I am skipping a zillion posts to make a point that has probably already been made loads of times upthread.

yes, it's incredibly exploitative of the workers who under any reasonable standard of fairness shouldn't have to work in what are, by all accounts, pretty horrific conditions.

Horrific conditions are not intirinsic to overseas manufacture. The problem is surely the horrific conditions, not the overseas manufacture. It is probably quite economically advantageous to have overseas manufacturing taking place in reasonable enough conditions, given the pay differentials between po' countries and the first world.

however, the harsh economic and social realities of the country they were born into make it so that these jobs are often their only alternative to an even harsher existence.

this is also a valid point - except in those countries that still have slavery and serfdom, people are free to decide whether working for peanuts in a maquiladora is a better or worse deal than loafing around as a landles agricultural labourer (or whatever); without Foxconn they do not even have that choice.

Campaigns drawning attention to factory conditions that we would consider unacceptable are useful as way of forcing some improvement in those conditions.

Well yeah, partly because rising standards of living in China usually just mean pushing things out to even poorer parts of the world.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 7, 2011 8:34 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Keep in mind there are vast regions of China where these industries have not even happened yet, so it may just mean pushing things to a different, poorer region of China. But that means more distance from those new manufacturing regions to the port and there's those fuel costs again...

Right..

I keep forgetting that maritime transport is probably as important as it's ever been in the history of the world. I guess it just seems like boats belong to the past, or something.

Step off about my boats, Tracer Hand, if that's even your real name.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

^will read that!

boats are kind of a thing iirc

Also. Boats crucially important = PIRATES super important.

i've seen them

haven't been good in years

I have that book! Did not finish. Should give it another go.

Container ships being unloaded every day practically across the street from my office, at the Port of Cleveland.

container ships use the lowest grade diesel fuel too, right? huge polluters

read that maersk was building a few more ships that are gonna break the world record for biggest container ships