Saturday, August 19, 2006

No wonder the Chinese are kicking our butts

From BBC NEWS:

"Apple Computer has said a report of labour conditions at its iPod plant in China found workers did more than 60 hours a week a third of the time.

Staff making the world's most popular MP3 player also worked more than six consecutive days 25% of the time.

Apple said the hours were 'excessive' and said its supplier would now be enforcing a 'normal' 60-hour week."


I also had occasion to spend the evening with someone who works at the port of Los Angeles who told me that freight container traffic has increased 40% over the last two years. That's a mind-boggling rate of growth, but what he told me next really made my jaw hit the floor: once a container enters the U.S. it never leaves! It's cheaper for the Chinese to manufacture a new container than it is to ship an empty container back!

I wonder where all the containers end up. There must be quite a stack of them now. At least a few of them are being made into buildings. Maybe this is the answer to our homeless problem?

1 comment:

asdf said...

wow. i was talking to some indian people recently who were saying that china can undercut even india; so even india imports lots of stuff from china.