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Old 12-10-2018, 04:36 PM   #10
BandB
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City: Fort Lauderdale. Florida, USA
Join Date: Jan 2014
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There was nothing at all in the video I found offensive. If there, I would ask questions regarding pay and hours worked per week and vacations and benefits but from what I've heard it's one of the nicer places to work. Calisthenics, lunch, naps are all good things to provide.

Cheoy Lee is interesting for one to look at as they have huge dormitories and provide meals and living facilities for all workers who want them. The vast majority of workers, including managers and supervisors live on the grounds. They have roughly 1200 employees. Note also solar arrays on the dorms. Here's a link to a photo of their facilities.

https://www.cheoylee.cn/?_page=facil...=main&_lang=en

Now it all takes us back to the days in the South and all the mill towns. Many of the major mills were into providing houses for employees which they would rent or sell to them. There were entire villages of nothing but mill employees. Results were mixed. In many cases the employees were treated well, were happy and felt fortunate. In other cases, they felt abused and taken advantage of. Most were around cotton mills or textile mills. Also known as factory towns in the NE. Everything was convenient and rows of basically identical homes plus community centers, baseball teams and more.

They began to be dismantled are transportation became easier. living in close proximity to the factory was no longer as important as more people owned cars. That's another benefit of working at a place like Cheoy Lee, not needing transportation. Now, can an employer take advantage? Yes. Because your lodging and meals and everything is tied to your job, you're far less likely and able to leave and they can use that to push you to do more or to get you not to complain or to pay you less.

I've seen the living conditions of employees in so many countries where the employer didn't provide anything and it's deplorable. I know in a couple of countries I've had manufacturing in the past, lunch was our most loved benefit. I even see the conditions of employees of factories we recently bought in SC. The floods highlighted it, with a huge amount of it being mobile homes but small and old ones. We've thought about how to help them into better housing with no answers surfacing yet, other than help them earn more. I definitely don't see dormitories as the answer there.

I suspect jobs at Nordhavn (and Cheoy Lee) are highly coveted by people who live near.

How intertwined into the lives of employees a company should be is debatable and I think has to be looked at on an individual basis. Certainly what we see in these China factories is nothing like you see in North Korea where it's complete indoctrination. In the US we see a few companies where religion is an overriding factor.
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