Tag Archives: Thailand

The Labor Honeypot

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Plexus, annually among the highest-ranking performers in the CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Top 50 EMS Companies list, yesterday announced a new plant to be built in Thailand.

In its press release, the company touted the facility as an example of “Plexus’ commitment to Environment, Social & Governance (ESG) best practices.” And on the surface, much of this sounds great: green building initiatives, an exterior green zone for employees, and other features.

But the Plexus Code of Conduct goes further than just green initiatives. There’s talk — lots of talk — about corporate and individual ethics, core values and leadership behaviors. And ESG criteria are more than green initiatives: the “social” component is tied to standards for managing relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and the communities where a company operates.

From the Plexus website: plexus.com/en-us/corporate-social-responsibility

Plexus specifically cites its adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, which in its preamble notes history’s uncomfortable past with free speech:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people

And commits its signers to the following:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

– Universal Declaration of human rights, Article 18

And Thailand is complex. It routinely jails citizens, including minors, for speaking out. Defaming the monarchy is punishable by up to 15 years in prison per incident. God save the king, but don’t badmouth him.

This is going to sound like I’m picking on Plexus. In fact, this is a problem facing numerous multinationals. One thing they have in common is membership in an official sounding organization called the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA). Formerly the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), RBA is a group of companies that “share a commitment to ensure working conditions in the electronics supply chain are safe, that workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that business operations are environmentally responsible.”

Fancy words aside, the RBA is a crock. The companies that make up its membership include Apple, Amazon, Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and other OEMs and ODMs that are routinely singled out by NGOs, in social media and the mainstream media for disregarding worker health and local labor laws. In my view, the RBA is used as a shield: listen to what we say, don’t look at what we do.

I can’t argue with Plexus’ decision to locate factories where the labor is skilled and generally cheap. But I can’t rationalize how Plexus’ lofty goals of good corporate citizenship fit with Thailand’s pattern of state-sponsored oppression.

Just as we thought the bloom was off the rose in China. Will the EMS industry trade one labor honeypot for another?

Does Rising Nationalism Pose Threat to Electronics Supply Chain?

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The amount of geopolitical discord around the world at present is stunning: Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and other major electronics manufacturing hubs are seeing a rise in nationalism and severe internal tension over how to address foreign pressure.

Thailand in May endured yet another military coup — its 19th since declaring independence from its monarchy in 1932. Some observers feel the military wants a permanent seat in the national parliament, a move that could hinder its democratic movement.

In Vietnam, citizens are outraged at what it feels is Chinese strong-arm tactics. Its Northern neighbor has provoked many Southeastern nations over the past few years, often by occupying seaborne territory that others had staked claims to in the past. (The Philippines have a similar complaint dating to 2012, when China evicted Philippine fishermen from their long-held fishing grounds.) Lately, Chinese oil rigs took up in Vietnamese waters, leading to riots at Fittec, Foxconn and elsewhere, where domestic workers took aim at their Chinese* employers.

Korea is losing business to Vietnam, aided in part by its own OEMs: Korea is now the largest investor there, pumping in nearly 23% of all outside investments in the first quarter this year. As Samsung relocates its cellphone manufacturing there, Vietnam is on track to produce 250 million handsets this year, versus 200 million in China and just 30 million in South Korea. As the linked article indicates, as of March 2014, Samsung Electronics subcontractors had invested an aggregate $2 billion in Vietnam. Meanwhile, while Samsung buys a reported 53% of its parts from Japan, South Koreans now view Japan as their second-leading military threat, next to North Korea, and resentment from World War II is rising once again.

Indonesia is suffering through a contested presidential election, one that involves an ex-general and the possibility of an overturned ballot result.

Japan, my friend Dr. Hayao Nakahara tells me, has essentially stopped investing in new manufacturing sites in China, with the only new developments minor capacity add-ons to existing plants. The two nations have been at odds over everything from possession of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea to a rehashing of wartime atrocities.

Southeast Asia is home to the bulk of the world’s electronics production, and holds the majority share of products built for the consumer, industrial/instrumentation, telecommunications, PC and peripherals end-markets (not to mention the vast majority of the raw materials and components supply). We’ve absorbed several of nature’s bullets of late — flooding in Thailand, the typhoon in Malaysia and of course the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. I am told that the media reports have exaggerated what’s happening on the ground in Southeast Asia, and that on a day-to-day basis little dissent is noticeable. That may be true, and to be sure, the self-inflicted disruptions have thus far been held to a minimum. Given the number of countries involved — unprecedented in recent times — and the enormity of what’s at stake, we can’t help but feel it will take some luck if the next supply-chain breakdown is only as bad than the last.

*Fittec is based in Hong Kong, Foxconn in Taiwan, but most employees and manufacturing for both companies are in China.

Flood Pains

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Bangkok is responsible for 40% of Thailand GDP.

Which makes it all the more painful to recall this World Bank report from last year, in which the agency said rising temperatures and sea levels will increase risk of floods in Bangkok fourfold by 2050.

Most of the Top 10 EMS companies have operations in Thailand, and Cal-Comp (no. 6) and Fabrinet (no. 19) have most of their production there. It’s a major center for automotive production and, of course, a leading site for hard disk drives.

It’s also yet another reminder that access to cheap labor is only one component in the decision on  where to locate supply chains.

Thai Wage Rate Offers Financial Food for Thought

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China isn’t the only Southeast Asia nation struggling to come to grips with rapidly increasing wages.

Thailand’s government is considering a 21% hike in the minimum wage, leading several executives to warn that the move could push labor-intensive jobs elsewhere.

Thailand is home to several of the world’s largest EMS firms, including Cal-Comp (no. 8 on the CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Top 50), Team Precision (n0. 19), Delta Electronics, Hana Microelectronics ( no. 29) and SVI Public Co., not to mention Fabrinet, which is based in San Francisco but whose factories are in Thailand.

We will hear more and more of this as Asia faces the same, inevitable swell of worker pushback. Thailand suffers through massive worker strikes each year, and its government may finally be capitulating. With higher wages come increased overhead, although it would take far more study and space than allowed here to examine whether the expenses related to training, turnover and (lower) end-product quality exceed those of a higher minimum wage.

What we do know, however, is that much of the world’s economic model balances on the import economies of the US and Europe. Over time, this will have to change, lest we continue to endure sharp boom-bust cycles every few years.

EMS, On the Move

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InForum analyst Eric Miscoll today asks, Is the migration of electronics manufacturing to Asia slowing?

An excellent question.

And Eric points out some compelling data for why manufacturers might be reconsidering their choice of geography, including substantial hikes over the past 30-plus months in the average, non-weighted cost of fully burdened labor in China: over 50% for board assemblies and over 100% for box-build. Eric also correctly points out that OEMs have taken a certain amount of builds back in-house. (Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia are two widely noted examples.)

But it’s his next comment – almost a throwaway line – that caught my attention: “[T]he pursuit of the next low-cost region continues, with countries like India, Vietnam, Ukraine, Tunisia, and Macedonia garnering the attention of the industry.”

That’s frightful. The Ukraine has a host of roadblocks, not the least of which its much-publicized battles with Russia and general political instability. Vietnam has been oversold; after nearly a decade of temptation, it has simply failed to take hold as an EMS hub. And while the CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY EMS Directory finds that two major EMS companies – Zollner, the world’s 12th largest EMS company (and largest privately held one), and LaCroix have factories in Tunisia – the nation’s population is just 10.3 million, not enough to accommodate a wave of production. Macedonia is even smaller: 2.1 million. Moreover, it is surrounded by mountains that make it difficult to move product to other locales.

Thailand, on the other hand, doesn’t garner much ink, but in my opinion stands as a far more attractive area, with a population of 63 million, relative political stability, the experience of major EMS companies (Cal-Comp and Fabrinet, among others), a cadre of local English speakers, and the attraction of Bangkok.

And, it says here, the food’s darn good too. For some reason, that’s always ignored.