Ca7

Can you tell us some about the conditions for the workers in China? Hours, wages, working conditions, policies on breaks, etc. I hear some horror stories about factory conditions but some experienced input would be nice.

Do the workers seem happy or grateful for their jobs, or are they overworked and miserable? Do they make enough money to live a halfway-decent life? I'm just curious since I've heard the work culture is so different from over here in the US.

Great response, that's exactly what I wanted to hear!

I figured that the stories I've heard were the worst examples people could come up with, so it's nice to get a response that doesn't have a hidden agenda behind it. The working conditions sound odd to me, but liveable (living literally in the shadow of my workplace would drive me crazy, though). It's such a different culture that I'm not surprised that I find it odd. I was pleasantly surprised by how much break time they get. Granted, those were the ethically-sound factories you visited, but it's a lot better than I had expected.

I think I meet more westerners who complain about their working hours than Chinese people.

It's amazing how much we take for granted, isn't it? I'm guilty of this too, and I basically set my own hours, and I work a desk-job for fuck's sake. I'm at work right now, even. We've got it pretty damn good over here. Good to know that it's not all death-march sweatshops over there, though.

Thanks for the awesome response! Sorry about your charger! If it makes you feel better, one time my younger neighbor peed on my foot while I wasn't looking.

Shame. I saw a documentary about Wal-Mart where they interviewed a few workers whose stories were really sad. They got like 1 day off a year. There was a couple who lived together, but worked the opposite shift, so the only time they could spend together on days they worked (read: 364 days of the year) was for like an hour at night in between shifts, where they would cook noodles together and try and enjoy the little bit of time they get to spend with the person they love. Many feels were felt by me when I saw that.

They had QC people come, but the workers were instructed to lie to them, telling them they only work 6 days a week, only 12 hours a day, etc. Just wondering if OP had any personal experiences regarding factory conditions, good or bad.

Awesome info, thanks! Those long workdays with long breaks in between sound so foreign to me (ugh, no pun intended), but I'm the type who wants out of work as soon as I can.

Thanks for the added info! I suppose if the whole country gets a pretty-much guaranteed 2 week vacation, they can make up for it by working a little more. Different cultures and such.

It's sad that sometimes people are stuck in awful working conditions, but that happens all over the world, and increasingly in the US. Good to know that my initial impression of Chinese factory labor was pretty wrong, though.