The Forbidden City of Terry Gou 253
ElvaWSJ writes "Hon Hai churns out iPhones and Wiis, and provides a window into China's secretive world of outsourcing and manufacturing. With a work force of some 270,000 — about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. — the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou. In an era when manufacturing has been defined by outsourcing, no one has done more to shift global electronics production to China. Little noticed by the wider world, Mr. Gou has turned his company into China's biggest exporter and the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics."
Photos and another viewpoint (Score:5, Informative)
And here is a write-up [bunniestudios.com] about someone from Chumby Industries [chumby.com] visiting Shenzhen to get their production line up-to-date. It's more about the area than anything about the factory.
Re:Interesting Plant Layout... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And unlike so many other Chinese Manufacturers (Score:5, Informative)
They get paid $0.60 an hour (a lot in China), but they also get to live rent free, their food is subsidized, and they have free health care. They also get overtime pay and actually do get raises. I wouldn't mind that deal, if I were just starting out of high school and needed to work.
Re:Interesting Plant Layout... (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town [wikipedia.org]
Although here, they were more traditionally mining and refining businesses, not outright manufacturing.
Re:And unlike so many other Chinese Manufacturers (Score:5, Informative)
Hon Hai is known for paying above the regional average and maintaining safer than average working environments. A far cry from living in a comfortable bungalow in California, but it's certainly much better than the average treatment employees get in China.
Re:Is the work week same in China for overtime ? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about Shenzhen or most of the rest of China, but where I came from in Asia the work day is 6 days a week, 8-10 hours a day. Overtime is paid at par (i.e. there is no bonus), but people love it anyway. Workers in these factory-cities don't have much of a life besides making money and sending most of it back home - so an opportunity to make even more cash with time they wouldn't spent doing diddly squat anyways seems appealing.
Some companies pay out mid-year bonuses based on company performance. This can sometimes be worth up to 4 months of normal wages. It's a cultural thing that simply doesn't exist in North America, and it's like a little Christmas in the middle of the fiscal year.
your history teacher was wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The people had already flocked to the city because they had been evicted from their pastoral livelihood by the Enclosure Laws. The industrial revolution happened substantially due to the critical mass of effectively starved humans ready to make the toil economically and emotionally feasible.
And there were no machines on the farms until the late nineteenth century.
Bread only becomes critical on the farm when the cities find it necessary to keep their machine-minder's bellies full. I am not saying the expropriation of labor by capital is not essential. There is no interpretive value in pretending that it is something other than it is for the sake of whitewashing the motives of the haute bourgeoisie.
Re:Worker conditions (Score:4, Informative)
US union members DIED by the dozen for our 8 hour working days.
In fact, May 1 as an international day for international labor demonstrations was a direct result of the US labor movements demonstrations for 8 hour working days and the resulting bloodshed.
I find it sad that so few Americans actually know anything about how the US used to be at the forefront of the fights for workers rights, and the large number of lives lost in fighting your government and industry to get the protections you have now. It is one of the things you truly have to be proud of, as it had a significant impact on labor movements worldwide and so directly affected workers rights throughout the industrialized world.
Re:And unlike so many other Chinese Manufacturers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Total B.S. (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say that life expectancy here is due to a mostly healthy diet (low sugar, saturated fat, plenty of vegetables) and lots of exercise. I'm curious how the CIA got the life expectancy statistic, because you cannot really trust the government here regarding any such statistics.
That all said, I still love living here, but offer me another silly rebuttal that is too academic, and I will be happy to blow it out of the water.