[weezer]

I don't condone conditions like this, but everyone should be able to put this in the context of the general standard of living in China. I've been to dorms in Chinese Universities and they don't look much different from the dorms these workers live in.

The average income per person is $6,600, but still 10% of China's population, mostly rural people, live on less than $1 a day. (There are some very rich people in the cities bringing the mean up) The people working in these factories are mostly rural youth, not well educated, doing the best to provide for their families and earn more than what they can doing small scale farming.

I'm not convinced that how our western eyes view things is the same as how locals view this. Even taking home $.50 an hour like the article says means $2000 a year. If you used to be making a dollar a day, this factory job is much better than a dead end job as a farmer. Just keep that in mind.

[BoppreH]

Exactly. People on first world countries (especially Americans, for some reason, but I won't go into that) seem to forget that the same dollar buys different things around the world.

For example, the workers in that factory pay ~$1.50 a day for factory food. I don't think you can get food for a day with that amount in a place that accepts dollar as the main currency.

[krschultz]

No, but I can certainly get equal food for less than $10 a day in NYC where I live now. Hell I basically buy whatever food I want when I go through the grocery store without looking at price tags (it's food, why skimp on the basics?) and Mint.com is telling me my average food in a month - including liquor and restaurants, is about $450 or $15 a day. (I cook at home almost every day, so for me eating out/liquor is about $150 and groceries about 300).

In contrast - minimum wage is $7.50. So making the absolute bare minimum I could pay for food in 2 hours in the US, and roughly 3 in China. In exchange I eat chicken, fish, steak, or ground beef for every single dinner with some vegatebles and something else. I have eggs a lot of days for breakfast, and a real lunch every day. I have dessert, fresh fruit, coffee, juice, milk.

That's everything I could possibly want. And you can pay for it in 2 hours a day in the US. What would it cost these kids to pay for that kind of food? More than their whole day's salary.

[BoppreH]

Minimum wage is not a consistent measure and doesn't even have the same meaning everywhere.

And food availability varies too. I would probably have to make twice my current salary to eat Chinese food everyday.

But if you went further in your comparison you would probably conclude that you would make many times more money than them at the same job in the US. But that's because its two different countries, not because Microsoft is underpaying employees overseas, which is the point.

Though your calculations were way better than the author's simple currency conversions.

[eru]

And we don't even have a minimum wage in Germany. (I don't know why Americans are so fond of it.)

[huherto]

Very good comment. They are better off with these jobs than without them. Still, they should have some basic working conditions. Such as max 45hrs a week. 2 week vacation a year, etc.

[roel_v]

Right, because working more than 45 hours a week is a crime against humanity and here in the civilized West nobody ever works more than that rollseyes

I have a cushy office job but the friends from my adolescent years are now mostly blue collar.workers. Those who have their own businesses (one-man shops: plumbing, construction contractors, painters, those type of jobs) work 50 to 60 hours a week, plus client meetings and paperwork in the evenings and on Sundays. Those who work in factories work regular weeks of 40 hours and they put "Yay! I'm getting overtime!" statuses on their facebook pages when they get to work another 10 or so hours, either during the week (evenings) or on Saturdays. Of course sometimes they complain too when their boss asks them to work on the day after a big soccer game or whatever and when they had rather slept in, but in general the overtime is what makes the pay quite good - so it is mostly considered a perk to get to work overtime.

That is in Belgium, if that matters.

[astine]

When I was in highschool, my summer job was as a lifeguard. My coworkers would fight for overtime because the time-and-a-half was a good perk. This included both teenagers who need no job and adults who worked for a living. This is in the United States. Granted lifeguarding is a rather easy job, but laws against overtime are silly.

[huherto]

These people are working 15 hour shifts and they work 6.25 days a week. That means they are working over 90 hours a week; every week. I can't believe you actually compare that with the conditions in the west. The marginal cost for the employee of each additional hour is huge. Big difference between working 40 hours with frequent overtime and 90 hours a week.

[roel_v]

Hey, you are the one proposing a limit of 45 hours - which is HALF of what you cite here, and which would take away the fat from many people's incomes not only in China but in Europe & the US as well. I guess that the next thing you're going to say will be that the limit should be at 50 or 60 or 70 or whatever - I say, let people make their own damn choices. If these people are being whipped into working 90 hours weeks, I'd be all against it; in fact I think that a democratic regime overthrowing a dictatorship that oppresses its citizens like that is morally perfectly fine. But as long as nobody is made to do anything, I don't see the problem. In fact if you give this guy the choice between working 90 hours in a factory for a few years and subsistance farming for the same amount of time and still being afraid that you'll starve because of a drought, too much rain, locust plague or whatever, he wouldn't have to think too hard or long.

[eru]

I propose a hard limit of 168 hours of work per week.

[ibsulon]

Factory workers here would revolt if you limited them to 45 hours. Many regularly work 60.

[weezer]

The Chinese government has three (approximately) week long holiday periods around the lunar new year, labor day, and national day. For factories like the one described in the article, they can expect up to about 30% of their workers to leave on vacation and not come back.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm sure I've read that the 40 hour week was created because someone did some measurements and realized that if you worked people for longer than that on a regular basis, then they got tired and started messing up. That is, the limit is for the benefit of the business, not the employee.