sorry if you find a discussion about working conditions in china or elsewhere 'racist'....but that is certainly not the intention behind it. Rather it was to add another dimension to the debate, namely the moral one concerning how workers are treated. There is a reason why euro/US companies outsourse there - to decrease  the costs of labour.

you are perfectly right to say that many people do not work in sweat shops in china. Millions dont...but millions do. You are also perfectly right that Chinese people are highly skilled, intelligent and hard-working.

 I have been there often and know only too well the extraordinary wealth in cities like Shanghai , Beijing an nanjing. But racism aside,  there IS a real problem in china with poor working conditions in US/Euro multinationals based there. When Apple had to intervene in one of their own outsourced facilities after a spate of worker suicides, then clearly there was a problem. But at least they intervevned.

Also, I have many chinese friends who share my view on the working conditions in some parts of china. To ignore this element of outsourcing is simply to bury ones head in the sand.  Outsourcing is simply a part/fact of share-price driven capitalism where  the sole aim is  to maximize profits. Nothing wrong with that, provided (1) workers are treated justly and (2) the quality of goods  you pay for is not seroiusly compromised.

 When you can buy an entire childs  school uniform in Tesco for  £20 or £30, surely you have to ask how this can be done in a manner that treats the manufacturing staff in China, Malasia or Philippines fairly?  There is ample evidence that workers in these industries are poorly paid and work in conditions we would refuse to work in.   

 I have little doubt that  chinese workers are quite capable of making B&O to the same standard of Danish manufacturing. I recently travelled on a superspeed train from Shangai to Nanging that reached 317 KPH and was as smooth as a mercedes!!! So I no no concerns about their technological abilities.

 But I am less certain that these same  workers who do the manufacturing will be treated fairly.

I remain to be convinced that outsourcing to China is anything other than opportunistic.  I could be wrong - but if i am, id like to see photos of the B&O chinese  facility and interviews with the workers.

paul

Dkatz wrote:

Bayerische – You have to remember that Norway is perhaps the most expensive country in the world and because the living costs are so high, so is the minimum wage. I have a friend who just works at a bar and he gets something like 20 euros an hour... It's not just manufacturing wage, but wages in general that are higher there exactly because cost of living is higher. Although you do get more social benefits such as free medical, paid university, etc... The same goes for Denmark, things you don't get in America and other countries.

Thanks for telling me, I didn't know this living in Scandinavia and all... 😁

Sure Norway is expensive, so is Finland, all of Scandinavia. 

I pay my bartenders close to 20 euros an hour. 

I have to agree with Dkatz, you are spot on. I don't know what you studied, but you probably studied something similar to me, industrial design. I couldn't have said it better myself

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with the skill of the Chinese workers, but there's a point all of you have forgotten. Would you for example be assembling top notch products if you had to assemble 1000's of them in a day, just to meet your quota and avoid being verbally abused? Would you feel awake enough if you only had a few hours of sleep, much like these workers, working day in and day out? Assembling products in intense heat in dirty and unsafe conditions?

Terry Gou the owner of the Foxconn factory which manufactures for Apple did have a spate of suicides, said they 'all had personal issues'. Make of that what you will. 

I agree with you Dkatz about Miele, the company I would love to go to work for. Top quality products, designed to last and perform. 

Adam

MartinW – I never said that every Chinese person works in a sweatshop but just look at the facts. The human rights violations are appalling, the working conditions are far from decent and the wages are horrible. The factory owners make millions, along with the corporations that outsource to them, whilst the workers get paid pennies. It creates perhaps the biggest separation between rich and poor in the world both in the developing and developed world.

Many economists are actually saying exactly the things I mentioned. There are right wing economists and left wing economists so it really depends who you ask. The Neoliberal right wing ones that probably helped make suggestions to the likes of Thatcher and Reagan probably wouldn't suggest mass-producing in Denmark, but economists like Keynes, Marx, etc... would probably suggest the opposite. During America's post-war boom years nearly everything was made in the US, there were in many ways better social programs (thanks to Roosevelt after the depression), the federal minimum wage in around 1967 was the highest America had ever had, in todays money it would be twice what it is today. American products were made in the USA yet they cost ½ or ¼ what they cost in today's money (calculating inflation) with the products being made in China. Nowadays, the economy is stagnant, people are out of work, manufacturing has lost millions of people thanks to Reagan. Companies are making billions instead of millions as it wasn't enough for them, the consumers are getting ripped off, the employees laid off, and the only ones to benefit are the CEOs and a few people at the company. How is this Racism? I never said Chinese people were incapable of creating good products, just that they usually don't, especially when rushed working in those kind of conditions. It's exactly the same reason why East German/Soviet products were inferior to West German products in many ways. A lot of them had the same pre-war “spec sheets” and manufactured the same camera's and lenses but the West German ones were always of a better build quality...

Tod Daniel – Completely agree with you. My Fujitsu Siemens laptop that I am using now for this posting I've used everyday for the past 4 years when I bought it used, it was already 2 years old when I bought it. Made in Germany (including the motherboard) I haven't had any problems with the computer (except for the fan and battery, both of which need to be replaced every few years on any computer). It has been the most reliable computer I have ever owned. This is truly what I call reliability thanks to QC of their own in their own factory, not leaving the QC to someone else who might have different standards, etc... I am friends with a couple of economists working for the Ministry of Economy of Japan at Embassies... They both say that the most important thing for QC is the final QC checks and usually the most reliable and well built products are those where the FINAL QC even if many of the components inside the electronic device/computer, etc... were outsourced. They actually criticized many Japanese companies for outsourcing their manufacture.

I have another friend who sources parts for airplane manufacturers, he used to work for Japan Airlines. He would go to various factories like Recaro in Stuttgart, Germany to source seats for the first class cabins. Now he is in the aircraft part business, he has visited factories around the world and even lived in Vietnam for a couple of years. He still believes that products made in developed countries are superior, he was in charge of sourcing these parts and just couldn't find ones that were high enough quality from China so he sourced from other places where he could get the best quality.

Paul – I agree with most of what you said. The thing with Apple is they intervened only because they were getting unwanted media attention on this issue. The factory where Apple products are made is shared with other companies that outsource there as Foxconn is one of the biggest factories in China for electronics manufacture. So if Apple says “workers stop committing suicide, improve conditions” it is up to Foxconn to do this by reorganizing the work structure, perhaps increasing pay, this is not worth it to them, so they might make a show and it happens again. If we had a factory like that anywhere in the developed world it would have probably closed down by now.

On another note I think that the quality of B&O or any outsourced product will not be the same until: 1. Workers are treated well and given the same space and working environment and decent pay that they can live off of and totally focus on their work (this doesn't have to be as high as Danish wages but simply something closer to Taiwanese wages). 2. Apprenticeship schemes of learning the craft of manufacturing B&O products specifically (as in Struer) is initiated and after a few years of learning I believe that a Chinese person may be able to make a product on the same level as a Danish person given that level of training and knowledge. 3. Plastics and Metals are either imported from the factory in Struer into China or China starts producing those materials at the same quality level. Remember people – there is a reason why B&O manufactures their own Aluminum and Plastics, rather than importing, they believe them to be the best quality available which is why they opened those factories in the first place!!! 4. B&O opens their own factory there and controls everything from labour division, to quality control checks, etc... it might only take a couple of skilled workers from Struer to oversee this for a couple of years... Looking at costs though, it would not be worth it to go to China in the first place if all of these levels would be met, they might as well manufacture in Struer by that point...

People forget that humans are not robots, nor are they monkeys. Most of the millions of Chinese people who are hired to these factories are not hired for their exceptional attention to detail or their skilled labour. That is why it is known as unskilled labour, I am sure some of these people are great at their craft but overall it is not the same as having people train for years to be a specialist at manufacturing a certain product line as is often the case in developed countries!

Adamhornsby – I actually studied for a Masters in International Studies and Diplomacy. My modules were: International Economics, General Diplomatic Studies and Practice, and Japanese. I wrote my dissertation on the ills of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries both in regards to the race to the bottom (growing separation between rich and poor in developed and developing world) including working conditions, etc... and the loss of quality which has been going on for many years now thanks to this.

I completely agree with you Adam and right on the spot about your point about working conditions and how many must be assembled in a day, etc... That is not what B&O were about, they always wanted to manufacture as much as possible but keeping with quality. If you start to manufacture the way China does you start to lose quality, especially so on an industrial scale like that of China combined with those working conditions, hours, pay, etc....

adamhornsby wrote:

I agree with you Dkatz about Miele, the company I would love to go to work for. Top quality products, designed to last and perform. 

Adam

Miele may still be the best for quality 'white goods',but I have just replaced an 18 year old Miele washing machine with a new Miele,the external build quality of which is noticeably inferior to that of the old machine.

Myself and the other "last of the Summer Wine"  Chris are both proud Miele Men. It's a shame Dyson moved from the Malmesbury factory but I guess the company has moved into a different league volume wise.

I once delivered some goods to the Tannoy building in north London, but am not sure if they make goods there still. Marshalls was another building I used to pass often and wonder. Their new earphones look good and arent bad, but are just another firms but with a Marshall label. Shame really.

moxxey wrote:

There are a couple of people on this board who are always complaining about the price of the BS8 - they say it needs to be even cheaper. Now, I'm not going to fully disagree I'd like to see it come in at £699, but you are getting a lot of £890. You receive speakers close to BL4000 quality.

 

BL4000 and BS8 are really in no way comparable imho.

Jonathan wrote:

I'm sorry, but for me this thread reeks of snobbery, racism and gross generalisation..

I agree, in some parts.

At the end of the day B&O is doing what is financially necessary, from what i can see. After all it's business.

The only sour thing to me is that they are moving closer to that awful high production consumerism model, which is not good for the earth. I love my B&O equipment for its longevity - i do not need to keep buying new things, over utilising the planets resources and creating more waste that can not be broken down.

I haven't been on BeoWorld for quite a while. Have missed alot by the looks of it!

bayerische wrote:

 

However, a fundamental problem in the Western world, especially in Europe and even more so in Scandinavia is the price of the work force. Your example of 55 euros/hour for a factory worker is probably correct, but at the same time it's absolutely mad!

 

That is dead right! It is crazy that people think such things as the BS8 would even exist if we could not find a source of cheap manufacturing - and the developed world it is not it! (hate all this idealist Marxist cr@p!) China will be out of the equation one day, as their workforce demand higher and higher pay they potentially need to outsource some of their manufacturing! This is a cyclic process I think we have seen a peak in the quality of living over the last 30 years and this is not sustainable, and has to be reset to some extent!

Anyway, I agree with above there are a lot of unrealistic expectations and unfortunately Jonathan's statement seems to ring some truth here too.

TerryM – My Leica M3 from 1967 is better built than a modern Leica M7 for example and you don't have to pay $5000 for a new M7 one but rather $1000 or less for a used M3. The point is many people think that build quality has gone down over the years. They were saying the same thing about build quality when mass production started in the 19^th century during the industrial revolution, there were news articles condemning it. I think in the past 50 years it's not so much the build quality of Leica, Miele, etc... that has gone down as the materials used, for example more plastics, cheap feeling versus heavy duty chromed steel, etc...

Dave – I agree that B&O is a business but not all businesses outsource, and many that don't have survived many decades or even centuries without doing so. As mentioned most high end audio manufacturers do not outsource, charge the same, sometimes less or more than B&O and still manage to make good money for the company, employees, and CEO/Owner. I do agree with you on the mass-market binge they are going on is going to make wasteful products.

Step1 – As mentioned most other really high end audio manufacturers don't outsource so it is sustainable for them. They also don't usually make cheap plastic iPod docks. In fact I wish that B&O didn't even make this product in China or Denmark or anywhere. You are right that it is not viable to make it in Denmark but I would argue it should not have been made.

Why do people need one of these things? I don't like the whole world going into iPod integration. Why not save up and buy some BL4000 or BL3 speakers that will last you a couple of decades and just buy a connector to hook it up to your iPod which you can put on your desk? Then you will have real B&O build and sound quality with your iPod or computer or Mp3 device or even CD player... It's products like the BS8 that ruin B&Os image not only because they outsource but mostly because those products are mass-market consumer products of the likes of Bose and other such companies not high end audio manufacturers!

In regards to peoples posts on Racism. I have met more Chinese people who think they produce bad quality products compared to Europe than Europeans or Americans. I lived with many Chinese flatmates and most of them were proud of their Chinese heritage but they all still thought that European made products were much much better quality. There is in fact an image among Chinese that their own products are inferior. This is why most rich Chinese will buy Lattanzi italian handmade shoes for $5000-$10000, or real LV, Hermes, leather products made in France, and even B&O made in Denmark. Perhaps this is another reason they haven't ruined Volvo's image. Some rich Chinese I've heard will go as far as to buy Japanese Rice as they think it's superior to their own cheaper Chinese rice. It's quite amazing how well the ultra high end luxury goods companies are doing SELLING NOT OUTSOURCING to China! The reason why I say rich Chinese is because there is hardly a middle class there and only rich people can afford to buy those types of foreign products where as in Europe, Japan and America it is the middle class who can afford it. Hence why you get wages for $1.68 an hour, they've only been going up pennies so will be a while before companies move somewhere else, especially with China's industrial infrastructure in place. Africa and other places are not viable because they don't have factories and infrastructure built up there and companies won't invest in that if they can still be in Asia for cheap. By supporting Chinese made products you are supporting the system they have in place, factory owners in China and foreign companies getting rich off of workers getting paid some of the lowest wages in the world whilst the rich get richer off of them instead of giving them decent wages. I would rather support companies and countires that pay their employees well enough to have a nice middle class life!