Apple Goes On A Hiring Spree In China
Source: Fast Company
August 16, 2013 | 11:39 AM
Apple may be planning a major investment in infrastructure in China. Separate reports say the company is recruiting some 200 local experts. Positions advertised include both technical and support-level experts, like an environmental affairs manager, a "sensing system hardware engineer," and a store specialist.
The new efforts may be quite a departure from Apple's more typical habit of using local manufacturing expertise like that offered by Foxconn and Pegatron. Apple's CEO Tim Cook was recently in China and was said to have talked with China Mobile--the world's largest carrier--representing a huge growth opportunity for Apple in a place where Android seems to rule on locally branded hardware. China Mobile says its talks are going well with Apple, and that it wants to carry the iPhone once some technical wrinkles are ironed out.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad is expected to release a new cheaper version of the iPhone in September. China has long been tipped as perhaps Apple's biggest growth opportunity area. But the company's relationship with the country has been bumpy, suffering from a bizarre smear campaign and recent issues with third-party chargers that allegedly electrocuted customers.
Read more: http://www.fastcompany.com/3015874/where-are-they-now/apple-goes-on-a-hiring-spree-in-china
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AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)No apple products for me.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)
ChromeFoundry
(3,270 posts)but does any way.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)but at least the materials would be locally sourced.
I would not expect them to use human hands to build their gadgets.
By the way, the reason that volume manufacturers like locating in China is that the Chinese do NOT automate their processes. They use armies of people (slaves) to perform every step. There is an advantage to this approach - design changes can be phased in very quickly without having to retool a factory.
When I worked at Evergreen Solar, I was in awe of their robotic plant in Ayer, MA. The panels were almost 100% handled by automated stations. Even so, the plant employed 800 people to keep the machines running.
Yet even with such efficient processes and high throughput, they simply could not compete with Chinese factories staffed with 3,000 workers and no automation.
It sucks trying to compete with slave labor.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)The only human jobs of any skill were the people who inspected the printed circuit boards before the expensive components were soldered down. Everyone else was either loading or unloading something.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)compete with an army of low-wage, low-skill workers performing every minute step manually.
Evergreen's automation station used state-of-the-art vision systems to place and align the solar cells before soldering them together. The Wuhan factory used a sheet of plywood with grooves cut into it. And they had dozens of them operating in parallel, which was simply faster and cheaper than all the high tech stuff.
Egnever
(21,506 posts)Google just built a new manufacturing plant in Texas to make phones. Why cant apple do it?
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)the response from Steve Jobs was something like 'those jobs are never coming back here'.
Apple insiders claim that the US no longer has the manufacturing infrastructure or trained workers to make their products. They believe that their Asian factories have far outpaced our own capabilities. Entire cities spring up in China just to hold the factories to make the components that go into western gadgets.
Given that Apple makes about $400,000 profit per employee per year, wages are just a small part of their reasoning.
When I worked for Seagate, we were making 25,000,000 disk drives per quarter in the Far East.
That's a staggering number, but comparable to the scale of Apple's volumes. Every single atom in those drives was sourced in the Far East. To bring that work back here would have involved massive reconfiguration of the supply chain. There would have to be cities built to house the factories to make all those components. I remember seeing pictures of the factory that manufactured our actuator bodies. This is the structure that holds the recording heads, and it needs to be machined in a lathe. This factory had about 6,000 lathes manned by 6,000 operators. These were all new, state-of-the-art machines to hold the extremely tight tolerances required in hard drives. I've never seen an American factory that could even begin to approach that scale of production, (maybe we could have done that during WWII?) and I would guess that Apple is in the same position. If they're making 60,000,000 iPads per year, they've got thousands of injection moulding machines going 24/7 to keep that beast fed. Thousands.
I don't know what the projected volumes are for the new Google/Motorola phone, but I bet they're a very small fraction of the iPhone volumes. Remember, Android phones have slightly more than half the market share for smartphones, but that is being split among dozens or more makes and models. So I would expect that Google's task is much more manageable. I certainly wish them luck and a profitable venture, even if its a PR gimmick.
I could see the US being used for small volume, custom-made 'boutique' products, but I don't ever expect to see the extremely large-scale manufacturing that the Chinese have built.
Definitely a good question, tho'.
On edit: of course, the factories of all the Far East component suppliers that feed Apple's factories are low-wage operations. So there is a wage component that gets compounded in again and again as a widget makes its way thru the supply chain. Still, it is absolutely sickening the profit that that fucking company makes. $400,000 per employee. Most companies are happy to make 5% margin. Apple makes 1000%.
Egnever
(21,506 posts)But then google isnt making all of theirs here either, just the ones for the american market. Like you said demand probably wont be nearly as high given the competition.
Having said that, it is a positive step and one that apple could easily duplicate but more than likely wont.
Apple could sure use the PR, maybe it is just my perception but it seems the public is souring on them rather quickly at this point.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)but Apple is an easy target.
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)But Apple charges twice as much for the end product. Greed on top of greed.
alfredo
(60,071 posts)are using slaves to build their products?
It appears that when audits uncover abuses, Apple addresses the problem. See what happens when abuses are uncovered. http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/07/29/charges.include.bosses.withholding.pay/
"If our audits find that workers have been underpaid or denied compensation for any time they've worked, we will require that Pegatron reimburse them in full."
That stance is working at Foxconn.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/27/business/Improving-Working-Conditions-at-Foxconn.html?_r=0
I haven't heard of any other PC maker standing up for better working conditions in China. That doesn't mean there aren't.
If Apple has joined the Fair Labor Association, reforms they push will help workers throughout the plant, not just those building Apple products. It will also put pressure on other PC/electronics makers to improve working conditions.
We need to keep pressure on Apple and other US manufacturer to fight for fair treatment of workers in China and other third world nations.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)This story seems to make it clear. The Koch bros have nothing on people who would buy Apple products...
In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.
When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.
...
“If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company’s ignoring the issue rather than solving it,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear.”
...
“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.
“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”
Story here.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)better wages and working conditions, like our forefathers in the labor movement fought and died for.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)asses, and be replaced by people who will work for that? Just too bad for them if they don't?
Not being snarky, but the Chines don't exactly live in a country where they can demand much of anything, and we can't even guarantee our own workers a living wage. So that seems like something someone would have to yell down from atop a mighty high horse...
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)They'll have to live through a long nightmare before they start getting treated like human beings. The struggle between labor and management is eternal.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)And we could do that by not incentivizing Apple to underwrite this sort of treatment.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)I believe I real see labour rise again. We have all been getting kicked in the teeth for too long.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)people have come to that realization. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen a substantial piece of evidence that indicates even the faintest possibility.
And I don't think we really know what getting kicked in the teeth is, yet.
It's possible that millions, perhaps tens of millions of people could become politically astute enough to realize how they are being taken advantage of, and the workplace which has disappeared tens of millions of jobs along with the infrastructure in which they were performed could be rebuilt and everyone retrained, (that alone would be perhaps $20 or 40 trillion at least), and all the people who hold the power and wealth today might decide that there are other things more important than the single pursuit of which has consumed their entire lives (unless they were just given it all).
But I doubt it. Even if all the workers woke up tomorrow and stood together, there would be 20-30 years worth of rebuilding to do to even get near a starting point. A lot of people sacrificed much of their lives, working for very little to get us to the better place we were in by the 60's or so, but since that time we have just been burning up and selling off the largesse. I don't see the current crop of Americans being willing to make those sacrifices.
Along with all that we will have to change the things we are doing that contribute to global warming and cease our endless need to kill other people and their children in war, else none of the stuff above will happen.
Other than that, it's just a bunch of feel good stuff about some mythical future that isn't even possible, so how likely could that be?
The best chance is after the baby boomers mostly die out over the next 20-30 years, and with less people there might be some change. But that would take a powerful force which isn't apparent right now, or a trigger like severe climate change or a bloody revolution or attack from a stronger nation, any of which could just as easily push us into real fascism, some kind of fundie religious state, etc,, or simply destroy us.
But I'm probably too optimistic.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)As the baby boomers retire and/or die off, there may once again be a demand for workers. When there is a greater demand than supply, that will be the best time to demand fundamental change. But as long as the supply far exceeds the demand, labor has no advantage to press and the only tool available is a general strike.
On the other hand, maybe the nature of the employer-employee relationshipwill change forever. We're moving towards a contractor/temp worker economy, where the workforce is entirely flexible. But if we do go this route, we'll also have to fundamentally change the vehicle for delivering health care from the workplace to the general collective (taxes).
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)over the years is heath care they worked for, but were paid by employer funds that were not taxed. That is going to be over as the costs are shifted to the worker, and taxed.
And, so far at least, we still add a couple million people a year who will need training, etc.
But even if people strike, what do they strike for? McDonalds workers going from a wage that they can't live on to a wage that they can barely live on? The low-paid and service jobs are the only ones we can't really export. There will be some service workers unions, but it's very doubtful they will hold much political power, nothing like the unions of old.
Down the road the people and robots making the machines they work with are making 32 or 3 times that, but where there used to be 10,000 people in the factory, now there are 300. And the better paid ones have relatively decent working conditions and no "consciousness" of being oppressed.
But the labor pool is no longer just the United States - now we are competing with the world. Apple hires workers in China, the well-paid ones with a college degree to work on their phones to be sold in the stores here. Well-paid, college degree = $22 day. So if the better-paid knowledge workers become too much trouble, they will find themselves competing against workers in other countries. And while we could then raise tariffs and isolate ourselves, we are fooling ourselves if we think the world must do business with us. One just needs to look around and see the contracts China is creating with Brazil, Russia doing business with others. We still have a bit of a toehold in some areas, like airplanes, but even that has a point beyond which we become of less value.
And we can only get taxes from people that are working.
Interesting discussion. We shall see what happens...
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)At least not for many generations. When I was displaced in 2010, I was making $100,000 per year as a design engineer for Evergreen Solar. The Chinese engineer who replaced me (who was an incredibly decent guy, by the way, and felt terrible about taking my job) was making $13,000, which was considered a very good salary for an engineer. China is so damn big the wages vary quite a bit by location, but this was in Wuhan.
My last job was for Vestas Wind Systems, a large Danish conglomerate. They'd opened a few design centers in the US in anticipation of wind power taking off here, but it fizzled. So they closed up shop and moved much of their operations to China.
The point being that not only have good manufacturing jobs gone offshore, but highly skilled engineering and scientist types are following them.
To your point about the global workforce, I have to laugh when our politicians promise to create jobs here. It's utter bullshit. As long as your job can be done using the Internet and a computer, it will be going bye bye.
It was a good run, but we're in a death spiral from which I see no return.
Every day you see headlines that boggle the mind. Cisco posts a great quarter, beats Wall Street's estimates, and announces 4,000 layoffs the same day. CEO says they're 'too fat'.
Bah. I'm glad I'll be dead pretty soon.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)there was a large movement for workers to own the factories, the mines - actually have a stake in the decision making. But with the help of the governments, including federal, state, and local, and the AFL, business was successful in beating that back. When the reforms of the 1930's were enacted, many workers stopped pursuing self-determination and let others make their decisions for them, and that gave us what we have today.
Interestingly, business got a great boost from the Russians. As the movement toward the Revolution built, they sent people here to organize. But they were remarkably ineffective, because people didn't want socialism, they wanted self-determination. Business, however, was able to tie the socialists, and later communists, to the real labor movement, and with almost no effort being made to distinguish them from that, the Mother Jones, Haywoods, etc got crushed or killed.
The Mondragon Cooperatives aren't socialist, they own what they do, and I find it interesting that amid all this global strife and economic loss, their employment rates have stayed consistently better than that of Spain as a whole, and they have not had to lay off a single person in the past 8 years. They shift hours, move unproductive resources to productive uses, etc. They have their own colleges, hospitals, and an extremely profitable bank.
If people could organize in such a fashion, and push toward those things which they were working towards back then, we might have a chance. But even with examples like Mondragon, Americans seem more willing to starve than work with each other, with the reward that a pitiful few get the only real motivation not to..
I don't understand it, but I've watched it for nearly 60 years now. Incredible that we don't HAVE to live like this, but we do...
So I am working toward some network stuff, database, trying to work towards cloud-based things, but also keeping a hand in desktop networks,because, as you pointed out, knowing Cisco, etc, just isn't a way to secure a future any more, and I may have to have something that people will pay me to do for another who knows how many years
seabeckind
(1,957 posts)Even if we were to reduce the supply of labor, ie, the boomers, we are still left with the reduction in demand, ie, the availability of the midrange jobs. You see, that's where we are lacking.
The automation and robotics have made it possible for the job "givers" to reduce those midrange jobs to ones that can be outsourced. During the 80's and 90's the investment in the automated factories was done overseas, especially in the very cheap labor markets. We still have the very high end knowledge worker jobs (at least where the MBA types haven't come to believe that a knowledge worker with an American innovative mindset is equivalent to a 3rd world workers ability to follow orders) and the very lowend service jobs but the ones in the middle are gone.
The answer of course is to let the engineering types have more say in the decision making process. I, too, have worked alongside H1Bs and have found them lacking. Where someone raised where it's possible to fashion new solutions as necessary, the H1Bs tended to stay inside the box -- even when it became obvious that the problem wasn't in the task, it was in the definition of the box.
But now? The MBAs are pushing for more H1Bs. They are pushing to move the line further into the knowledge area. This article is an example. Recently Apple was downgraded in their innovative ranking. Boeing has lost much of its engineering and productivity (article couple days ago about the cost of their relocation to SC), Microsoft is withering in the boardroom, etc.
In order to correct the problem we need to seriously redefine our job roles and bring back that midrange. Just losing the boomers isn't a help...in fact, like some places where I worked that had a goal to reduce employee costs by getting rid of the more experienced (higher paid) they soon found that there was a lot of knowledge walking out that door and it wasn't replaced.
Flatulo
(5,005 posts)I worked for Data General, DEC, Quantum, Maxtor and Seagate. Other than the move from Data General to DEC, I never moved my desk in almost 30 years. Acquisitions and buyouts were the order of the day once the MBAs came in and took over from the engineer/entrepreneur founders.
With the exception of Seagate, the MBAs destroyed all of these great companies. Engineering became a nuisance, an expense to get rid of. Anything that could be sent overseas was, including entire design centers. But the innovation and engineering excellence just isn't there yet in China, possibly due to cultural factors (waiting to be told what to do). As a result, the storage business is stuck at an inflection point. For decades it followed Moore's Law, but now the only thing that's happening is the cost continues to plummet.
The US is graduating less than 100,000 engineers per yer compared to over 3m in China, so eventually we're just going to be an asterisk in the history of product development. The Chinese are learning to innovate, and they're learning statistical quality and process control (one of my last assignments was to teach six sigma techniques to them).
It's not looking too good for us.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Chinese dissident Han Dongfang, who was expelled from the country 20 years ago, told the Australian Workers' Union conference on the Gold Coast the new generation of Chinese workers were better educated and aspirational than their parents and no longer willing to accept exploitation.
Han Dongfang, who founded China's first independent trade union during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, said many people may ask themselves why the Chinese government had allowed the workers' movement to develop to the point where even state-owned enterprises had to listen to their employees.
But he said there were now simply too many strikes and worker protests to suppress.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/worker-strikes-in-china-too-common-to-suppress-20130221-2es8a.html
China as an Emerging Epicenter of Global Labor Unrest
http://soc.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SilverZhang2009.pdf
alfredo
(60,071 posts)"Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.
And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers." (2012)
China's labor relations can't be changed overnight. Workplace regulation is a new concept in China.
Pressure from foreign companies can plant the seed, but it comes down to the people of China to demand respect from their bosses.
Apple hiring more people to monitor environmental, and workplace conditions is a step in the right direction. They deserve praise not scorn when they try to do right by the workers.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)and Apple's response seems to be more for public relations, with a list of excuses like those above.
Chinese workers have not nearly the same protections as here, so saying they should just "stand up" ignores that, and makes talking about it a waste of time.
Your reading of it may be different.
alfredo
(60,071 posts)to China to reform themselves. Even with our labor laws we see worker abuse. We are still uncovering instances of slavery on US soil.
Have you held Hewlett Packard or Dell accountable for factory conditions? What about Microsoft? Don't just concentrate on one company, address all US companies who use third world labor. Only Apple has come under scrutiny and it appears they are responding appropriately. Apple can't do it by themselves.
Apple can only address abuses they know about. That is why they are hiring more monitors. The more eyes and ears they have on the ground, the better.
delrem
(9,688 posts)the blowback will continue. It'll continue until the world reaches an equilibrium of lowest wages possible, to the largest workforce, and with an elite totally oblivious of everything except the need to maintain the status quo.
n/t
Skittles
(153,150 posts)tofuandbeer
(1,314 posts)Am I mistaken, or wasn't Apple just talking about moving more manufacturing back to the U.S.?
Maybe I'm thinking of another company, but I thought it was Apple. :/
TM99
(8,352 posts)assembly. They will assemble certain products, including I believe the newer iMac's, here in America. The parts are still coming from China. I suspect that this is in relation to that.
tofuandbeer
(1,314 posts)Egnever
(21,506 posts)Fuck Crapple...
Motorola chief executive Dennis Woodside confirmed that the company’s next phone will be called the “Moto X” today at D11, a technology conference.
In addition, he said, “the Moto X will be the first smartphone to be built entirely in the United States.”
The company will be sourcing its phone’s 1,100 components from all around the world, including 12 states in the U.S. — the processor from Taiwan, the OLED screen from South Korea — but at least 70 percent of the components will be put together at a factory outside Fort Worth, Texas.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/29/motorolas-next-phone-the-moto-x-will-be-made-in-texas/#LCo3azt4qDBASVyg.99
hughee99
(16,113 posts)Flatulo
(5,005 posts)for labor, but as their primary markets. They really don't need the relatively small US market when there're over a billion Chinese clamoring for western products and services.
A major biomedical device firm, Boston Scientific, recently relocated a $2b division to China in protest over the new 2.2% medical device tax. Their rationale? That's where the customers were. Why should they pay crummy US taxes when they could grow the business exponentially offshore?
Remember this - if a firm can profit by relocating jobs, they will. There is absolutely no commitment to the US workforce. That's just a cold hard fact.
cprise
(8,445 posts)I think that is the reason they're hiring highly skilled staff in China. Its a move to help Apple get its market share back.