It's absolutely not optimal, it's inefficient. Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
For low-skill labor, there isn't much benefit in making employees lives overly comfortable, but it is worth it to invest in some basic amenities - easy access to clean restrooms, regular breaks, clean air, clean water, warmth. These are the basics.
In the case of these workers:
- Better dorms = good sleep/less sickness
- Decent food (without worms...) = less sickness/healthier employees
- Decent toilets = less sickness/reduced stress
All of these => happier, more energetic, and less distracted employees => more efficient work => more work gets done.
With the benefit of making your company look like a good place to work.
You assume they have to keep those workers here. Foxconn can just get new people when the old ones break. It isn't optimal on a country level, but for the company it is optimal. Which is why we make laws to prevent companies from abusing workers like this.
There would probably need to be a case study to see if overworking, booting, and hiring new workers is more cost effective than investing in better work conditions.
My money is on better work conditions being a better investment long term. It'd reduce turnover. Less time hiring/training new employees, and the employees you keep are happier, stick around longer, and become more efficient at their job through experience.
> My money is on better work conditions being a better investment long term. It'd reduce turnover. Less time hiring/training new employees, and the employees you keep are happier, stick around longer, and become more efficient at their job through experience.
You might have noticed that most companies don't care about these things, because it doesn't matter much for them. For software engineers or equivalent, sure it matters a lot, but for unskilled workers that needs minimal training? Then it doesn't matter much, as even today we see that basically no company cares about their minimum wage workers conditions.
> You might have noticed that most companies don't care about these things
I've noticed the opposite. Even when I worked retail jobs (minimum wage) in high-school and college, those employers considered morale the be an important aspect of a productive work environment.
We'd have company BBQs, random pizza days, birthday recognition (sometimes with cake), etc. They gave us the proper tools to do our jobs, including gloves/box cutters/shirts/etc. Typically if you told a manger you needed something (work related), they would get it for you. Things chugged along fairly well.
Reducing turnover was an active goal because it cost them time and money to hire and retrain new people, even for basic tasks.
Not sure how "read history" is a contribution to a discussion about the cost-effectiveness of abusing workers vs investing in better work conditions.
A history lesson on "we used to do things this way, but then we made a law that says we can't anymore" isn't an analysis. It just tells me that people got fed up with being overworked and lobbied for a law against it. Not that their employers were making informed decisions.
It's akin to the broken "butts-in-seats" culture that has been slowly dying. Many employers are realizing that more hours at a desk isn't always a net gain in the long term.
Perhaps study the history of the 10 hours laws in England like 100 years ago? Documented points where the factory knew of the dangers and did nothing, fought to do nothing, cause the worker was replaceable. And nearly endless supply of Irish to literally work themselves to death. It's depressing.
I have zero sympathy for Capital when they have to sacrifice Profit for Ethical/Moral treatment of Labour.
The problem is that Apple can require that, their sub-contractors can agree and then just pocket the additional cash for it and not do it. Apple must more closely verify the conditions of its Indian subcontractors just like they had to do in China a decade ago.
Definitely a problem. Bad-faith actors can screw up well intended policies making everyone look bad. Inspectors that verify the work-site conditions help, but can also potentially operate in bad faith. It's a hard problem to "solve", but still likely worth it for a company like Apple, both in regards to PR and ROI.
The title oddly enough is "Apple faces its 'Nike moment' over working conditions in Chinese factories" from 2012.
One challenge here is that the host government (local, provincial, or national) is often complicit and might not agree to allowing such inspections. In that case, you simply have to be ready to walk away.
Such a strange situation, where a company has to walk away from letting people work for them because they can't verify their working conditions are good enough. I suppose these are the tricky side-effects of being an international corporation though.
> Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
In countries like India, the supply of daily wage workers is almost limitless and companies don't have to care much about their retention as they can easily be replaced. What you're asking may be the efficient way of doing things for businesses in countries where there is a labour shortage and workers have more options than the employers.
> It's absolutely not optimal, it's inefficient. Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
You are very (very) wrong and need to read some history. I strongly suggest an economics primer like Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers[1]. It's the second-best selling economics book in history and well worth the price of admission.
Saying I'm "very very" wrong and need to read history/some book isn't a good counter argument. It is the opposite, and a lazy retort at best.
If I am wrong, I'm sure your history lessons should be able to provide good examples how I am incorrect, and I would be happy to hear if that's the case, but I can't see just saying "you're wrong, read history" as productive conversation.
> I can't see just saying "you're wrong, read history" as productive conversation
You're denying a very foundational economic fact which, as a society, we litigated over a century ago, so giving you a resource (I can cite chapter numbers if you'd like me to) seems appropriate. Capitalist forces will always tend towards optimality and working people to the bone (including children) is optimal. This is why we need to have governmental forces preempt this by making these kinds of things (e.g. child labor) illegal.
This isn't really a dig against capitalism, it's simply how the system works by design. In other words, you're denying the precise thing that corporations optimize for: worker productivity and shareholder value.
Perks are a hack to continue to overwork your employees. Feed them and they don't have to leave to get food. Give them yoga and they won't have to leave for yoga class. Give unlimited vacation and they'll think they can take a break whenever they want, so they won't take one.
General inefficiency in their company is completely fine as long as they continue to increase revenue, as revenue growth is the only "efficiency" that matters in capitalism.
It's absolutely not optimal, it's inefficient. Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
For low-skill labor, there isn't much benefit in making employees lives overly comfortable, but it is worth it to invest in some basic amenities - easy access to clean restrooms, regular breaks, clean air, clean water, warmth. These are the basics.
In the case of these workers:
- Better dorms = good sleep/less sickness
- Decent food (without worms...) = less sickness/healthier employees
- Decent toilets = less sickness/reduced stress
All of these => happier, more energetic, and less distracted employees => more efficient work => more work gets done.
With the benefit of making your company look like a good place to work.