Subcontracts

Résumé du document

Today, subcontracting is a common thing in business, especially in the secondary sector. Also, there is a lot of chance that objects we have in our hands are products produce partly or totally by subcontractors. This permit to have cheapest products: a dream for companies.

But is subcontracting a dream for subcontractor, and more precisely, a dream for subcontractors' workers ? Indeed, today it is common to read something about Foxconn in newspapers and about its workers suicides. This example proposes us to ask this question : is subcontracting a danger? We can distinguish two important periods concerning the development of the subcontracts. First, there is the sixties and seventies period. In this one, the watchword is « competition by the price ».

Extraits

[...] To be brief : the subcontract has to respect rules and laws in where the subcontractor is. To conclude the legislation part, we can say that this latest is very opaque : there is no real international legislation, no convention about that. Maybe the reason of some slips-up B / The advantages and the disadvantages I. The advantages - A work force skilled and specialized Indeed, the outsourcing provides access to cheap and skilled labor and specialized as it focuses on the task at hand and becomes more efficient because it doesn't bother with anything else. [...]

[...] Some companies still resist in because of the caracter of low quality, cheapness and national though, but this is a minority. In this exemple, we're going to speak about the problem of Apple Inc. whose subcontracting with the biggest manufacturers companie, Foxconn. Foxconn International Holdings Ltd. is a Taiwanese company that is the world's largest maker of electronic components. Foxconn has 12 mainland factories in nine cities. Planned factories include sites at Chengdu in Sichuan province, Wuhan in Hubei province and the biggest one Zhengzhou in Henan province. [...]

[...] In 2006, an UK newspaper accused Foxconn of abusive employment practices. Although Foxconn was found to be compliant in the majority of areas when Apple audited the maker of its famous products, the audit did substantiate a few of the allegations The Hong Kong-based non-profit organisation students and scholars against corporate misbehaviour also produced a report on Foxconn employee mistreatment. Thus, an 83 page report on the Foxconn labor conditions was produced by 20 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. [...]

[...] Moreover, the workers have not the possibility to have a medical control at work. There is also the company which are created the ipad that is to say Foxconn where they had a lot of suicides due to the bad working conditions, or Adidas which is represented as the leader of the sport wear Every month,we have to know that a worker in Asia can work between 80 months to 200 months extra while the law authorized 36 hours!Several newspapers deal with this big issue. [...]

[...] These stories are still too quiet but if its growing up, someday Apple Inc and the other name can be put in the ground. General Conclusion We can conclude by saying that, today, subcontracting can clearly be seen as a danger. Indeed, there is, first, no real legislation about this type of contract, so companies can do what they want, and it is a danger when a company takes advantage of its position. In spite of the advantages, there is, like we saw, disadvantages which can be transformed in limits (also like we saw). [...]