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RUSH: I love this next story. It\u2019s about Foxconn. Foxconn is this massive manufacturing company. They are headquartered in Taiwan, but they have factories throughout China. They employ in one factory 120,000 people. It\u2019s just overwhelming. They make iPhones and iPads and iPods and Macintosh computers and they make electronic gadgets for a lot of other companies as well. They\u2019re huge. Well, it\u2019s also China. And they employ all these people, but by our standards, they don\u2019t pay them very much, and by our standards, they work too much. By our standards, Foxconn is a slave labor camp. At least as far as human rights groups are concerned. <\/p>\n
Now, there was this guy — I had never heard of this guy, and I don\u2019t know that you have, either. His name is Mike Daisey. He\u2019s a monologuist. He\u2019s an artist. He does a stage show where he sits down and basically lies about things he didn\u2019t see at these factories in China, about how cruel people are treated, and how they die in explosions and so forth, all the time building your iPhone and your iPad and so forth. He fabricates things, he makes \u2019em up, and he\u2019s had to apologize and all that.<\/p>\n
These factories employ 120,000 people, and there are 20,000 in line hoping to go to work there. People in China want to work at these places. Well, the latest audit found that some of these employees are being forced to work 60 hours a week. (gasping) You talk to your average entrepreneur in America who\u2019s ever made anything of himself and that\u2019s chump change. Your average entrepreneur works 24\/7. The job\u2019s never off of his mind. “But, Mr. Limbaugh, we\u2019re not talking entrepreneurs here. We\u2019re talking about slave labor employees being forced to work all of these long arduous hours for peanuts, Mr. Limbaugh.” <\/p>\n
Sir, Mr. New Castrati, they\u2019re young people. It\u2019s China. The president, Hu Jintao, loves this because these factories are not in his biggest cities. Some of them are, but most of these factories are out in the country where he wants to keep the people. Hu Jintao knows that if the population of his country floods Beijing, Shanghai, all these other places, he\u2019s got major problems because the jobs aren\u2019t there for \u2019em so he loves Foxconn, he loves Apple, providing jobs for ChiCom people out in the hinterlands. It\u2019s wonderful. They\u2019ve got hospitals inside the factories, restaurants. Some of the employees live there. Look, there\u2019s nothing comparable to it here. But the attempt to apply our standards has resulted in Foxconn saying, “Okay, we\u2019re gonna reduce their hours. Nobody\u2019s gonna work any longer than 49 hours.” And guess who\u2019s unhappy? Who do you think is unhappy? The Foxconn employees. <\/p>\n
“Foxconn workers question why hours are being cut after FLA review — Workers at Apple supplier Foxconn are reportedly worried after it has been announced that their hours will be cut following an audit of its facilities. Twenty-three-year-old Wu Jun is used to working long overtime hours to earn the bulk of her income. But after Foxconn announced it will cut hours for its employees, she and other employees expressed concern to Reuters that they won\u2019t make enough money to support their families. Foxconn announced on Thursday that it would reduce employee working hours to 49 per week, including overtime,” in response to these demands being made by people that don\u2019t live in China. <\/p>\n
Responding to demands made by good old mind-everybody\u2019s-business-but-their-own liberals. Gotta put their noses under every tent in the world. There wasn\u2019t really an overwhelming problem here. It was just we gotta get Apple, we gotta get Foxconn, everybody\u2019s making too much money there. And we got this guy out there doing this stage show that\u2019s filled with lies about all the atrocities taking place, which are not taking place at nearly the scale that everybody was led to believe. I mean the place is not a panacea, don\u2019t misunderstand. These are jobs the American people wouldn\u2019t do anymore, but to these people, this is their ticket out. It\u2019s the equivalent to your starter job. It\u2019s the equivalent to a hamburger flipper job when you\u2019re a teenager to get yourself in the market, to learn how it all works, get paid for doing something. It\u2019s all good. <\/p>\n
Now, granted, not every boss is an angel. The real world is the real world. Employees get mistreated sometimes. But now, because all these do-gooders know how to do it better than anybody else, no more than 49 hours. And the Foxconn employees are the ones who are unhappy. Management doesn\u2019t care. They\u2019ll just hire more people. Now, some of you may ask, “Well, why doesn\u2019t Foxconn just pay them more so they don\u2019t have to?” Well, they have done that. Apple secured raises. There was an ongoing process to improve conditions. And they\u2019re not ideal. I don\u2019t want to be misunderstood here. It\u2019s not a panacea, it\u2019s not nirvana, but nothing is. Hard work happens all over the world. Hard work still happens here. I know we\u2019re trying to shield our children from hard work. But it still happens in other parts of the world and it\u2019s beneficial. <\/p>\n
Sometimes I think back — I\u2019m 61, and I think back to when I was a teenager and my first job in radio. You couldn\u2019t kick me out of that station. I would have lived there. I was making 75 cents an hour, didn\u2019t matter. I lived at home, gave the money to my father. He put it in a savings account for me unbeknownst to me, presented it to me two years later when I was 18 years old. I was able to buy a car. But the point is, I look back on it, I remember one day the transmitter at the station, tube blew. And so we\u2019re off the air. That\u2019s unacceptable. And the owner, “We\u2019ll take care of it tomorrow.” Tomorrow? We\u2019re off the air! I drove to St. Louis to get the tube, to put in the transmitter. And we went back on the air. It took two hours. So we\u2019re on the air five hours after I left. But I think back on it all the time and I don\u2019t have the energy now that I had then. I mean I\u2019ve got it, but in different ways. <\/p>\n
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<\/a>I think back to some of the things that happened and some of the garbage that I had to put up with, and you\u2019re the same, we\u2019re all the same, and I read stories like this, and what do people expect happens when you\u2019re working? It\u2019s not utopia out there. We\u2019re talking about a communist country. I don\u2019t care whatever else advancements are being made, we\u2019re still talking about a communist country. This is a place that provides an opportunity for people to work, and they can take care of their families by working there, which is the objective, and now the opportunity to do that\u2019s being taken away from \u2019em by reducing their hours because some outsiders think it\u2019s unfair that\u2019s what going on there. So all these people who think they\u2019re doing wonderful things in the area of human rights end up causing more harm than they intended. It\u2019s always these unintended consequences. <\/p>\n