The Making of a Motherboard at ECS 269
sheiky writes "Hardcoreware.net has posted a look at the manufacturing process of a motherboard at a new ECS factory in Shen Zhen. Unlike most factories, they build boards from the ground up at one location, starting with the PCB all the way to a finished product. They also talk a little bit about the working conditions they witnessed in China."
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:3, Insightful)
Was this article written by the Chinese? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, how dare those union workers try to get things like livable wages, child labor laws and health insurance. What were those silly Americans thinking?
X
Unions (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to get on too much of a rant... but we can thank unions for a lot of things... like weekends off and decent salaries. Without unions, we'd still be working seven days a week in sweatshops.
Sadly, China has no unions, so they do have sweatshops and low wages. I'd argue that China's workers would be better off if they did form unions.
(and... before everyone here starts moaning about their employers, yes, I know many of you do work very long work weeks in the tech business. I've worked for several startups myself)
Slanted? (Score:5, Insightful)
They make it sound like a good thing! Unions get little credit (even in China) for the 40 hour work week, paid time off, or time off at all.
Re:Was this article written by the Chinese? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scary... (Score:3, Insightful)
From the looks of it these are young adults very similar to the college students and part-time folks who used to do the work in the USA for about 2x minimum wage.
Assembly and manufacturing are not as glamorous as some seem to expect. A challenging QA task nonetheless. Odd to see little to no advancement over what was being done two decades ago. Just moved to a lower cost/lower net tax load locale.
TimJowers
P.S> There was no union in the plant where I worked. And, of course, the work eventually was offshored. I think the remnant now defines new processes when new products are to be run and then the bulk is done in Mexico, Tiawan, or such.
Cheap labor makes it all go (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's are pictures from a US manufacturer of PC boards. [qacincorporated.com] Notice how it's done. No long row of women putting in components; it's one guy standing around watching the machines do the work. Automated insertion machines put in the components, and transfer conveyors connect the machines. That's the way it should be.
Only the really low wages of China make labor-intensive manual assembly feasible. Even in Mexico, you'd use automated assembly. Assembly in Japan has been automated for decades. If the US imposed import duties on very-low-wage countries that equalized wage costs to even $1/hour, this excessive "offshoring" would stop.
Re:Scary... (Score:3, Insightful)
The success of walmart would imply a resounding "Yes!"
Re:Unions (Score:4, Insightful)
We have Unions to thank for 8 hour work day (although it seems to have dissapeared over the past few years), bathroom breaks, and realistic expectations on production (at least in factories). Once the pay scale went up in Ford's factories, the output jumped up, since there was a better pool available. However, Ford and Wall St. expected the output to continue to increase year over year, and so the line was sped up. At one point the workers were not permitted to leave the line for any reason. This led to the famous piss cans, and ultimately to a strike, a union, and some really disturbing communist artwork.
I'm really not suprised that people look at China and see "sweatshops" while totally ignoring the poverty level in the countryside. Perhaps they would like to see China have a second revolution to democracy, just like the former USSR? Yep, that would be much better than a measured attempt to introduce capitalist reforms to a broken system. At least Mexico might be better off.
Re:Was this article written by the Chinese? (Score:2, Insightful)
It still bothers me though.
Re:Unions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheap labor makes it all go (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
What are your sources? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your off-the-cuff claims and lack of cited references leads me to believe you have no idea what you are talking about..
Please prove me wrong, I hope you can..
Thanks
Re:Was this article written by the Chinese? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Unions, IMHO, is that they concentrate power, which in turn gets corrupted. Once a factory goes union, is there an option to "opt-out"? Do I have the "freedom" to not be union while my co-worker is? Since there isn't, that power tends to corruption. A classic example is teachers unions. The teachers are paid from property taxes (here in the US anyway), which they then pay Union dues. Then, if a lawsuit comes up, the state uses more tax money to handle a lawsuit which is being defended by money that came from taxes in the first place. The system just feeds itself.
As a final point, you said "Is it un-American to disclaim the class system, and ensure that one's neighbours do not starve or suffer ill-health?"
Well, the difference is we (speaking broadly here) would rather deal with a starving neighbor on a personal level through personal generosity and donations/gifts than to have the money taken by us through taxes, and then paid out to other people that might or might not deserve it or use it wisely. If I knew that an honest neighbor was starving to death, I would go to the store, by $100 worth of groceries for example, and give them to them. However, I would not do the same for a neighbor that is a drunk and is wasting his money on booze. What happens in socialized welfare is the government does not/can not make a distinction between the two and take $300 from me (the government programs are expensive to administer, right) and give $100 cash to each of my neighbors.
See the reports about the money that went to Hurricane Katrina victims. See this article for a quick example: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
Ultimately, it boils down to the individual being responsible for ones own actions, having both the ability to succeed (like Bill Gates) and the possiblity of failure. You can't have one without the other. In a Union (at a factory level) or socialism/communism (a national level), a safety net is erected to prevent failure. The same mechanism also stunts success.
Union bashing scab... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever try working 5,6, or 7 12-hour shifts in one week? That's 60-82 hours in one week. Sevceral weeks in a row? And thats not considered abuse? What am I supposed to call it? Opportunity?
And then there's this tidbit...
I'll take for granted that the reward system is voluntary by the employer so as to keep the workers "motivated" and "guessing" about what their work is actually "worth". I am also sure that the quality of housing is not in line with that of an American Union worker who puts in a 60-82 hour workweek. And, I'll bet that the housing cost is figured in as part of their pay. We used to do this to coal miners in the USA, where they would go live in a house they rented from the company they worked for and bought their groceries at the company store. It's one of the reasons that Appalachia is so isolated from the rest of the USA culturally. Because the coal mines were in such remote places they had no other opportunities and as a result got locked into a cycle of employed poverty for generation after generation.
And finally, I live in Poughkeepsie NY. Right near the heart of traditional IBM hq. We have chip fabrication ALL OVER this region with NO UNIONS involved. Where are the bloated union electronics factories he speaks of?
Re:Was this article written by the Chinese? (Score:4, Insightful)
How come you don't mention Daimler-Chrysler in your condemnation of the unions? DC has the same union contracts that GM and Ford have. They have the same "lazy union workers" that Ford and GM have.
However, DC is making huge profits. Actually, the Daimler (Mercedes) end of the company is losing money and the Chrysler arm is keeping Mercedes alive.
How do they do it with all those lazy, overpaid union guys? Perhaps they have good designers, managers, marketeers and engineers?
If every GM car was as good as a new 'Vette or Cad, perhaps they'd be making more profit? Perhaps if they stopped making ugly, shitty cars that get bad mileage they'd sell a few more? No, it's easier to blame the unions.
One more thought about lazy union guys.
Bud, Miller and Coors make interchangeable products. Sure, there are slight differences between the three brands, but for the most part, the difference is the marketing, not the product.
Since Coors isn't unionized, it sells for much less monry than Bud and Miller, right? And Miller is a little cheaper than Bud, because theire union guys make less than Bud.
What? That's not the case? You mean that Coors makes more profit per can because they sell a product made for less labor cost for the same money and just keep the profit difference
Fucking lazy union guys.
I've worked union and non-union shops. Sure, there's some built in slop when you have a union. On the other hand, the non-union shops I've worked in are so dangerous it can be terrifying to work there. I've worked in education, IT and metal fabrication. I'm currently half owner of a family business, and we won't unionize because there's only an occasional employee. However, we treat them well, and pay them far more than prevailking wages.
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
And perhaps if companies saw their employees as assests instead of a cost expenditure aganist the bottom line, then maybe more people would care about the quality of their work. Back in the day when you went to work for a company at 18 and expected to work there until you retired, you did see a lot of pride in the work and company. But once companies shifted into that "you better thank us that you even HAVE a job" attitude, the workers attitudes shifted in response.
Remember the day when you bought stocks because the return on your investment was the dividends paid by holding that stock? That's when people had pride in their work. As the value of stocks became the price of the stock itself instead of the dividends, companies began to see anything that cost money as a bad thing, and that includes employee's salaries. That caused a shift in attitudes towards the work force (ie, they are expendable if it we can achieve a higher stock price), which resulted in a shift in attitude from employees.
Granted, I know that's an over simplification and leaves out a LOT of factors, but when you look at the big picture you can't deny the impact of this on the American workforce.
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
There has not been a comparable increase in output compared with the increase in wages and benefits
You're right, although not in the way you want to be. Productivity growth in America has vastly outpaced [cornell.edu] wage growth since the '70s. This applies across unionized and non-unionized industry alike. It doesn't see a rocket scientist to see that the extra money has wound up in the hands of either shareholders or management (depending on how honest management is). Irrespective of the wage question, the productivity growth is what has kept our economy so healthy over most of the last 30 years.
While economists can debate the question until they're blue in the face, there is a credible argument, which I believe, that wider distribution of productivity gains is better for the economy, because money distributed to poorer people is likely to get spent immediately. Beyond a minimum wage/tax subsidy floor, we clearly don't want to achieve that policy goal through regulation of salaries. The best way to distribute money from productivity gains fairly is by equalizing bargaining power and information between labor and investors. How do you accomplish that? Unions and collective bargaining.
Unions are more necessary than ever if we want all Americans to share in the prosperity that their hard work has created through productivity growth. Just because we're not fighting against a 72-hour workweek anymore doesn't mean the basic reason for the existence of unions, to create equal bargaining power for workers, is any less desirable.
With the theory out of the way, I'll address some of your bogus (and oft-repeated by people who have never belonged to a union) examples. I was a government-employed union transit bus driver from 2000 to 2005 (which was a job I loved, incidentally), so perhaps I can clear up some of the misconceptions.
For example, some government workers get paid 40 hours when they only do 37 hours of work.
It's true that some *salaried* government workers work only 35 or 37.5 hours. Their salaries reflect that; they are paid for 35 or 37.5 hours, not 40. As far as hourly workers go, there are some provisions in some contracts that allow a worker to pick up hours without working -- but those are there to guarantee the full-time worker an 8-hour day when it's administratively simpler (for instance, when a bus run happens to return to the garage after 7 hours and 45 minutes thanks to the schedule) for the government not to set up an eight-hour workday. The unions fought hard for that to prevent management from simply shrinking workers' days down to four hours or less. I don't know of any examples of employers otherwise regularly paying employees for more hours than they work -- why not just raise the hourly rate instead?
Toll-booth workers get upwards of $25 an hour to stand there and hand out tickets.
I can't find any toll-collector wage over $21 in the country. Most of them are closer to $16. It's dirty, repetitive, unrewarding, dangerous (people like to rob tollbooths) and potentially injurious (to hearing, especially) work. Most toll collectors don't hand out tickets (there are machines for that) but count money. Would you consider it progress if we paid them minimum wage, they couldn't afford decent housing anymore, and turnover in these high-accountability positions (lots of cash handled) were suddenly 200%?
Government construction workers get paid somewheres around that same rate to stand around all day (honestly - do you EVER see these guys working?)
Everyone whines about this. So why aren't you on a state road crew? The jobs aren't that hard to get. People complain, but when the chips are down they realize these guys have tough jobs.
If you see a worker standing, it's probably because he's acting as a safety spotter for someone else you can't see. When you're dealing with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals all day, it's worth
But what about the rest? (Score:3, Insightful)
page 5 shows it well... (Score:3, Insightful)
The surface mount components are installed by machine. Large components cannot be inserted by machine.
ECS is doing the same thing you see a picture of at that other site. They install some stuff by machine, some by hand.
The machines cost about $100,000 (I asked when viewing a line). But they can insert a lot of components the one in the pic is inserting at least 40 different components (you can see from the reels), probably 100+ total SM components in the same time as one of those women inserts their components. So, it replaces 100+ women, the women make $50 a month, two shifts a day. That's replacing $10,000 worth of people a month at chinese wages.
As you can see, they can't afford not to use these machines. And really, if you care about quality at all, you especially can't afford not to use these machines. These machines are far more accurate, so your yield goes way up.
It's true that the wages in China make labor-intensive assembly feasible. But you've picked a bad example of labor-intensive assembly. Any device that is sold with a tight-fitting case on it (like a cell phone) is going to have a lot more manual labor required, because attaching subassemblies, routing flexes and stuffing it in that case can't be done by machine. A motherboard is sold to you bare (not in a case), and thus can be automated a lot more.
BS! (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like this [hardcoreware.net]? Do you think these people [hardcoreware.net] make less than $1/hour? Do you think this kind of work [hardcoreware.net] is done by robots in the USA?
Why don't you try to learn something about a subject before posting? You have no idea of how electronic manufacturing is done, either in China or US or Mexico or anywhere. Placing SMDs is never done by hand, no human being, regardless of salary, can place them with the needed precision in an assembly line. OTOH, there are many types of tests and inspections that need to be done by humans. Current artificial vision systems, for instance, are too unreliable to locate many types of failures that people see at a glance.
Re:But what about the rest? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Chinese work conditions (Score:4, Insightful)
Relatively few Americans' hard work has created the productivity growth we've seen (I attribute most of that growth to the baby boomers). Some American's also don't deserve to share in those benefits.
I'd like to see some support for this. The data I've seen suggests the productivity gains have been extraordinarily broad-based. Managers deserve some of the credit, as IT and implementation of continually more efficient logistical procedures have helped workers get more done. But workers deserve credit as well. From the bottom to the top, we're working more hours, taking less vacation, and using more effective time-management techniques.
I don't know who you are referring to when you say "some Americans don't deserve to share," but I believe if a worker is more productive that worker should be rewarded accordingly. A perfectly working market would ensure that by offering the worker another job if he were not paid in accordance with his productivity. But when there are the sort of large-scale, systemic differences in bargaining power that you see between individuals and large corporations, the market doesn't work perfectly. Unions are the perfect tool to right that balance, since they allow the market to function with equal bargaining power and without regulation.
The laws are in place, they're not going anywhere, the workers have won...
Not so fast. We've seen steady erosion in the real minimum wage, repeated attempts to exclude more and more workers from overtime protections, weakening of ergonomic protections, shrinkage of worker's comp benefits, lackadaisical enforcement of basic things like lunch breaks and safety rules, and administration-sponsored attempts to replace entire classes of well-protected jobs with insecure, low-paying bottom-rung ones. It's not like the same forces that led to 72-hour workweeks in the bad old days have magically gone away. Preserving workplace sanity, like preserving freedom, requires constant vigilance.
1. Cough. The automobile industry. 'nuff said.
The union's job is not to respond to long-term trends in a product market. That's management's job. While perhaps a more perceptive group of unions would have structured the big health care and retirement programs differently, to allow for more flexibility, the real blame can be squarely laid on the lazy management that failed to see the Japanese carmakers right under its nose in the '60s and '70s.
2. Longshore union.
Say what? These guys are still killed at the rate of several a year. They are killed in the most gruesome imaginable ways: crushed by containers, sent flying a quarter mile by snapping cables, falling 100 feet from cranes, etc. It's probably the most dangerous union job there is, and one of the most dangerous in the country. Yes, machines are doing some work they used to do, but they put themselves in physical danger for the sake of a critical step in our economic process. They deserve every cent they get.
3 ... Why'd they strike? Cause "The Man" wanted them to pay a co-pay like the rest of us.
I can never quite get my head around this argument. What you are saying is "With my artificially low bargaining power I can't get a proper medical plan. Therefore no one else should get it either, even if they were smart enough to band together to negotiate as an equal with the company."
If the workers at the non-union stores were to organize, they could get that health plan as well. So could you. Protect your interests. Don't enable someone who's trying to ensure that you get a below-market outcome for their own benefit.
4 ... Thanks to this bullshit (read: pension plans) the City of San Diego is for all practical purposes bankrupt. Mmm. Fiscal 2007 budget: $2.6 billion. Pension fund deficit: $1.43 billion.
And this is the union's fault how? Again, it was bad fiscal management by the city that got it into this mess. The pension plan was
How do you think you get a DVD player for $100? (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Build the factory using itinerant workers. Pay as little as possible by using sub contractors who rip off their staff, run off with their wages, fine them for being 5 minutes late for work (never hear about people getting a proportionate bonus for 5 min OVERTIME do you?)
3) Staff factory with the people who lost their homes or businesses when the land was appropriated to build a new factory.
4) Institute demeaning, draconian work practices. Fine workers who turn up late. Offer them Housing and meals, but deduct that from their paypacket (even Nokia's factory was doing this) work them 12 hours a day. Turn the local police (who are now in your back pocket) onto anyone who makes trouble.
etc onward all the way to Walmart or wherever else you get a $100 DVD player. You people buying them (sipping your fairtrade coffee but snuggled up in your made in china Acrylic knitware) are placing yourselves at the end of a long chain of sufferring, exploitation and violence. www.theepochtimes.com and other people are risking their lives to try and inform the public in developed countries.
Don't worry when you're neutered by an exploding MBP battery - finding donors for replacement parts is no problem!
Ah - what the hell's the point? you people do care... but... $100... is just... so... damn... cheap.