Foxconn Invests $210 Million To Build New Production Line For Apple 178
redletterdave writes "On Monday, Foxconn agreed to invest $210 million to help Apple build out a new production line for 'unspecified components.' The 40,000-square-meter plant plans to hire roughly 35,800 new employees to help assemble parts for either desktop and laptop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, or possibly even new products or devices. Apple projects the plant's annual output between $949 million to $1.1 billion, and also estimates the import and export value at roughly $55.8 million."
Like what? Buying Apple more ethnically sound. (Score:2, Interesting)
I buy locally (or at least nationally) produced products when possible.
With electronics, that's pretty much NOT possible, with some small exceptions.
At least with Apple, they are making some efforts for transparency, and improvement in the conditions of factory workers. Currently there is NO other major electronics consumer that I have the same degree of assurances from, not within an order of magnitude...
To that end, I have stopped buying NON-Apple products when possible. Normally in the past I bought non-appel wireless routers, because cheap.
But the last time I went looking I bought an Airport because I knew the chances of the people who assembled it being treated better were higher.
In the USA? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that this plant is not in the USA and won't provide any jobs in the USA.
Too bad that one of America's top companies outsources most of its production. Their profit margins could support USA jobs.
Re:Like what? Buying Apple more ethnically sound. (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh please STOP with the typical fanboi elevating yourself on a lofty pedestal
I'm not elevating myself. I'm showing others how they can climb.
I don't own one single Apple product
And some decide to stay in the gutter. That is your choice, but don't pretend you are better than me because of it.
If I'm completely honest, I actually don't care very much because ultimately this is about capitalism and supply and demand
That's fine, but again don't label me with a term like "fanboi" because I seek to become a little more enlightened.
And if they don't like those conditions then they can go through the same processes as happened in Europe and the USA around a century ago when workers formed unions and fought for proper employment rights and better pay.
And get shot and/or fired and replaced by the MILLIONS of other people who would literally kill for those jobs.
I respect a free market myself, and they do have the ability to leave any time if they don't like the conditions. But that doesn't mean it's not better to throw a little support behind those that try to help the workers even before they make moves to help themselves. You are waiting for some event that may never come, living high atop the conditions of the moment until that happens.
I choose to make things better in whatever way is possible NOW, so that change may come gradually and peacefully instead of rapidly and with destruction and mayhem as the mother.
Would you accept Chinese wages in US of A? (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad that one of America's top companies outsources most of its production
Well ... there is one very simple way of stop companies from outsourcing anything - work in America while accepting Chinese wages
Are you willing to work in America while receiving wages equal to what the Chinese workers are receiving?
Re:Would you accept Chinese wages in US of A? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's another way. Stop this suicidal race to the bottom. It would be nice if we had CEOs that weren't a bunch of Randist supermen, who might actually consider helping the society that let them reach their current heights. Since that doesn't seem likely to happen, I'd settle for raising their taxes. They always complain that increasing taxes will drive away the job creators. From where I sit, those people aren't creating any American jobs, so their argument falls flat.
Re:Conditions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever the conditions in a Mexican factory might be, the workers are there by choice. Communism is dead in that country, and folks there aren't generally told what jobs they must do. It might have been different a long time ago (when I lived there as a kid, the mountain overlooking our house featured a giant hammer-and-sickle formed from boulders, which I'm told has since been destroyed).
Life is full of choices. If I have the choice to buy products made in a country who has a history of treating their workers respectfully, I do so. Even little things: I like fasteners made by company called Spax, for instance. Their manufacturing happens either in Germany or not so far from me in Bryan, Ohio (also home of the Etch-a-Sketch), and either one is perfectly fine with me and -vastly- preferable over anything which might be Chinese in origin because I can be reasonably certain that their workers are well-paid.
But given a choice between China and Mexico, I prefer Mexico, just because anything I can do to support my neighbors to the south is far preferable to supporting a country on the other side of the world. Put simply: I'd rather see Mexico's economy do well, than see China's do the same, since the former will have a greater positive influence on the economy of my own country.
And it's just the neighborly thing to do.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)