Who built your new iPhone 5? It wasn’t apple; they’ll tell you that on the box. Foxconn is one of the builders, but even they need companies to make the supplies.
They need companies like FLEX, Flextronics International. They own 28 million sq. ft.worth of factory all around the world. So now they need countless manpower to manage the plants and hire the workers needed to make and distribute these supplies. This is where it gets dicey. In Malaysia, recruiters go into an unregulated network of getting laborers. They go into the rural improvised farms of Malaysia and neighboring countries. These factory jobs are so in demand that these laborers aren’t hired: the jobs are sold! Think of the tenant farming system of the early 20th century in the US. To prepare for the iPhone 5 rollout, brokers had to get 1,500 men to make cameras in one day! Brokers say so many men so quickly were needed that they had to go to the most remote parts of the Himalayas…by foot.
What’s to make of this? At best, better planning needs to be in order. Heck, a better system needs to be in order. I don’t know how, but something needs to be put in place to select the right amount of workers for the jobs. That way, those laborers who are chosen can get a decent wage and feed their families. And they should have known that many hands were needed ahead of time to build those cameras, so why didn’t they plan better? Recruiters shouldn’t have to walk to all over everywhere in that short of time. But something has to be done. What though?