Outsourcing the Outsourcers

Apple outsourcing company Foxconn has announced plans to open a plant in Wisconsin. How far does this go? Will Foxconn’s Wisconsin operation re-outsource back to Asia? Globalization is confusing for workers.

21 Comments. Leave new

  • Hullo, Ted ! I tried to post a detailed response to your cartoon above, but it does not appear on the site. What gives ?…

    Henri

    • PS : it contained two links – could that be the problem ?…

      Henri

      • Even after I modified the links to URLs in parentheses, my post didn’t appear. ?…

        Henri

      • Exactly, the presence of 2 links forces moderator approval and the moderator has been otherwise engaged recently 😉

        Even masking URLs might not be enough – the spam/anti-spam bot arms race has led to quite some feats of machine intelligence…

        Try splitting your post into multiple, shorter ones, with only one link at most or provide links separately in a reply to your own post?

      • Once upon a time, most comments allowed links, so hackers put in links to sites that installed spambots on any computer that linked to them (sometimes stopped by an antivirus, which most people don’t bother installing).

        So now Ted’s site sometimes allows links, and sometimes blocks them, depending on which anti-spam algorithm they’re running. Sometimes xxx dot yyy works, but sometimes it doesn’t.

      • Something (un)funny is going on here – even after removing both links and URLs, the post I attempted to send on the war on organised labour in Wisconsin and the fact that wages in manufacturing in Mexico are lower than those in China was not published on the site. Nor have I received a response from Ted to the letter I posted to his aol.com address on this matter….

        Henri

      • My apologies, never saw either one. Sometimes posts get sucked into various spam filters, emails too. But I do try to keep things working right around here so please do keep trying.

      • @ mhenriday –

        I remember that a number of months ago, comments were delayed by several days (if not weeks) before they were posted to the site. (I saved all of those.)

        I noticed only because I choose to be notified of new comments, and those few appeared in my inbox long after they had been submitted by the member. Perhaps this is what’s happening?

        If you like, you may email me those links and I will attempt to post them for you.

      • Mein verehrter Leher, thank you so very much for your kind offer ! I’ve sent you my original text, which, despite modifications designed to avoid certain pesky algorithms, I’ve not been able to get published on this thread. Let us see if you can do better (the content is, I believe, still relevant for the discussion here) !…

        Henri

      • On behalf of mhenriday (should we both be so fortunate):
        «Will Foxconn’s Wisconsin operation re-outsource back to Asia? » Perhaps Ted, the real question to ask is rather why Foxconn CEO Guo Taiming aka «Terry Gou» (nice portrait by the way, save that he wears a suit and tie, never a Zhongshan jacket), chose Wisconsin, of all places, to locate a US factory (the reason for building a factory in the US in the first place is obvious – with the «transactional» Trump administration in power, such a quid might elicit a quo evading the sanctions or tariffs that Mr Trump has promised – ignoring his own outsourcing – on products manufactured outside the United States) ? I suggest that the a major part of the answer can be found in Scott Kevin Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans hitherto successful war on organised labour in the state….

        One of the main reasons why US workers managed to attain decent wages and working conditions under a brief historical period dating several decades after WW II was the power of their industrial unions ; now that the counter-attack which began in large scale under sainted Ronald Wilson Reagan and has nearly destroyed organised labour in the US, plus the globalisation of manufacturing and assembly, has reached its fruition, the wage differential between manufacturing in China (where, nota bene, wages in manufacturing are significantly higher than they are in, e g, Mexico – or, for that matter, Bulgaria) and in the US has declined drastically. Even aside from the political advantages accruing to the claim that a product is «made in USA», given such factors as nearness to markets, etc, it makes economic sense for corporate leaders to locate at least some new facilities to the US. But if workers i these plants believe that their wages will suffice to purchase a home and send their offspring to college, they are likely to be very disappointed….

        Henri

      • @ Ted Rall –

        Ted,
        Working together mhenriday & I managed to get his message posted with my submission on July 29, 2017 at 10:11 AM. The links made it after mine was moderated.

      • My thanks to unser verehrter Lehrer for his kind intervention here, and to Ted for his kind reply. I hope that other readers here consider the information contained in my post, which finally made it through to publication, worth waiting for…. 😉

        Why could our dear teacher get it published while I failed ? The issue was not, as I and others first suspected, the fact that it contained two links – generally speaking such content only gives rise to a «waiting for moderation» warning. Rather it seems to have been the fact that I included the Chinese glyphs for Mr Guo’s name in my message ; for some reason these glyphs, while included in Unicode, didn’t pass the muster exerted by Ted’s algorithms. I tested that conclusion by posting the first couple of a certain Chinese poem, and it, too, fell by the wayside….

        Readers interested in this particular example of outsourcing outsourcing may find this WaPo article worth perusing (no Chinese glyphs included)….

        Henri

      • I hate that my anti spam plugin appears to be a sinophobe.

      • It’s all part of the game, Ted – after all, we have it on good (?) authority, that China hasn’t helped «us» with North Korea (where, according to Curtis Emerson Lemay’s estimate, the US killed some 20 % of the civilian population in that country the last time around), so the Chinese are just getting what they deserve…. 😉

        Henri

      • True, Henri. Besides, North Korea is obviously a more delicate matter for China, with which it shares a border.

      • Here the link to the Wikiquote entry for Mr Lemay that I inadvertently omitted in my reply to Ted above….

        Henri

      • Obviously not my day – hope this link will work !…

        Henri

  • Lovin’ it

    If Bigbiz, Inc, really wants to improve the bottom line they should outsource the CEO’s job. Rather than pay an eight-figure salary and nine-figure bonus, there is someone in India willing to do it for a dollar a day.

  • American labor law and worker protections are so weak and ineffective that the world’s worst companies might as well open here, enslave Americans, and save transportation costs.

    On the bright side: The companies that will be installing the suicide nets around the plant, pay a little more per hour!

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