Chinese computer workers earn €80 per month

AN INTERESTING presentation by ASIG at the recent DisplayForum conference revealed that the average non-qualified worker earns between €50 and €80 a month, casting a stark light on why so many companies manufacture so much stuff in China.

ASIG is a German service company which performs quality assurance in labs in Taiwan and Germany, as well as production control, and acts as the bridge between its customers and Asian suppliers.

Customers include a number of big display name players including LG, Philips and Samsung.

Gunter Uhl, general manager of ASIG Quality Services, said in his presentation that typically, non qualified workers earning up to €80 ($99) don't speak English, is aged between 15-25 and his income supports the whole family, while he or she generally a rudimentary school education of between six to eight years.

Highly qualified workers, on the other hand, speak good English may earn between 30 to 60 times more than a non-qualified worker.

He showed several photographs that demonstrated that the goal of "lead free" components as required by WEEE and RoHS directives might be quite some way off. Here's an interesting solder bath, for example.

The next shot is the "factory" of a large but unnamed supplier of tubes for office chairs, somewhere in China. µ