Spaces & Exchanges 5
Displaced in China Today we read the last document of the sequence. It was about a Mr. Saragoza, an American Apple employee displaced in China to supervise work in a Foxconn plant. He decided to quit his job because of the long work hours and because he couldn't see his children much. The text also summed up what a Foxconn plant looks like in China, and the magnitude of the numbers involved: 230.000 employees, guided by 300 foot guides, fed with 3 tons of pork and 13 tons or rice a day, working 12 hour work shifts, and producing 40% of the world's consumer electronics ( electronic devices ). This is what globalization is about, and many economists tend to forget that it has a price to pay (. ..that it has a flipside ): to "sacrifice living standard gains made [in] the 20th century [...] that have come to define American middle class." Vocab overnight -> du jour au lendemain to sump up -> résumer ( to sum it all up, pour résum...