I was out with a couple of friends last night who supply hardware to many of the PVC fabricators in the UK.
We’d had a few to drink, and we got talking about the factories in China supplying the hardware that the vast majority of the double glazing industry in the UK are using. They were describing to me the quite appalling conditions Chinese workers have to endure, even in the better factories. It seems life over there is less valuable than in the UK, with an abundance of cheap labour and poor health and safety conditions.
Although I have never been it was implied that people are actually dying producing hardware for the PVCu window industry. Obviously, it’s not just factories producing for our consumption – the problem is widespread for many products manufactured for global consumption.
The problem is consumers mostly want the cheapest deal they can get, forcing fabricators to buy cheap products, and this includes fighting hard to buy window handles as cheap as possible. I have been as guilty as the next man and haven’t until last night understood that my tough negotiations with hardware suppliers, could have the knock on consequence of forcing people at the other side of the world into a kind of slavery.
I was also with a few guys from outside of our industry last night, and asked whether when purchasing a house full of windows would they consider paying another £50 or £100 to ensure that all the products that make up their windows had been produced in an ethical way. The result was a unanimous ‘No’.
Maybe, I’m looking at things too deeply, and I accept that I know very little about the working conditions in China. However, surely this is something we should all be concerned about.
And, my question is:
Is there room in the market place for a ‘Fair Trade Hardware’ range, which costs a little bit more than normal but ensures good working conditions for the staff in the Far East?
Tags: chinese factories, double glazing hardware, window handles, Window Hardware
On my last post I argued that Britain should be bringing industry back. This is a perfect example of why we should be doing that. Producing window and door hardware in the UK would mean we create more jobs and make sure that no one is suffering in China while producing them.
It wouldn’t be a massive difference in cost to the overall price we would buy a window for so I can’t see why not. I know of at least two manufacturing plants lying empty in South Wales so if you want to start it Matthew the Welsh Assembly will greet you with open arms..
As someone from outside the industry (and without a massive bank balance), I would be happy to pay £50/100 more on a whole house for fair trade products, providing the quality is high and the “fair trade” bit can be substantiated.
It would be very easy for cowboys to jump on the fair trade band waggon.
On different note, I feel it should be law for replaced UPVC units to be recycled and not just skipped.
Finally – the sooner the government introduce UPVC units to Warm Front and similar schemes the better- and yes I have signed the No10 petition!
Ideally everything should be fair trade. But how do we guarantee it? There are lots of places it can go wrong: can i belive my installer who i don’t know personally, can the importer be trusted, can the manufacturer be trusted etc. It takes a lot of effort to make sure fair trade really is fair.
And, a few months ago i read about an african leader complaining that the west always tries to put conditions on investment whereas China invests without conditions which actually has a far better long term benefit. Western ideas of equality and conditions are not always understood and can lead to greater corruption and even stop projects working at all.
It’s a complex subject but that should not stop us caring and doing our best.
Well done for caring and i support any efforts in this direction.
I have a factory in China which manufactures a wide range of window handles for the PVCu industry. I constantly check on the health and safety issues within the organisation and as far as i’m aware all the conditions are above standard requirements, each person has 30sq ft of space,they only work 39 hours per week, they are paid 3 X National average and all get generous holidays. So if anyone would like to support my “Fair Trade Hardware” factory in China, my prices for a cranked espag handle starts at £14.95 per handle…
Maybe it’s difficult to believe……but then again, ask yourselves the same question when buying your next designer outfit,. I’m sure the major chainstores will tell you they source their goods the same as me and exercise fair trade practices, but does it really happen or more the fact, will it ever happen ? ….I doubt it ! And I doubt if anyone will buy my handles.
Many industries take the simplest option of offering a separate ‘ethical’ range (which almost always costs more) and allowing the consumer to choose.
That’s fine for coffee and bananas, but I’m not convinced that the same strategy will work for us. Ideally all products would be ethically produced anyway, but when they’re not us going to a customer and saying, effectively, “do you want the standard bad stuff or the expensive stuff where Chinese workers aren’t exploited?” is unlikely to work very well. As with everything, highlighting the negatives rather than the positives is a bad sales approach.
Handles are a tiny part of the overall cost of a typical job. Offering the option of adding a couple of hundred quid for something which – frankly – everyone should be offering as standard anyway looks petty. Consumers rarely understand just how tight the margins can be in our industry, so asking them for an extra percent or two to cover ethical handles will be tough.
Of course, if there was a competitively priced ethical alternative which had a real benefit, that could make a difference. Off the top of my head for instance, if chrome furniture was ethical while standard white was not, we could sell the aesthetics AND ethics of premium handle, all for – say – an extra tenner per handle.
Hi RCG,
an interesting post.
The link below shows typically draconian conditions:
http://boingboing.net/2009/02/09/ghastly-working-cond.html
Given the current economic conditions there is perhaps a better way to avoid supporting the abuse of Chinese workers….
How about buy British?
There are a number of UK hardware companies who manufacure in house and who have brought production back to the UK for economic reasons. Hey, the UK economy will benefit and as the majority (if not all of us) has spent most of our lives living off the back of abused asian slaves without giving them a first or second thought (cheap white goods, cheap computers, cheap everything), we don’t even have to pretend that we suddenly care about them!
Support your own economy – win:win
Ian
One problem you will have is that if it isn’t made in China then it probably comes from Germany or Belgium (who have some of it made in China!). There are few handle/lock manufacturers that are UK based: albeit the cost of Sterling and transport, along with the payment schedule, is making it more affordable to make here. The main problem is we have stopped making nearly everything here! If people were willing to wait twelve weeks for PVC-u windows we would lose that too.
Second thought is, albeit the standard of living in China is improving, if you suddenly make it all here then the guy on a slave wage is then out of work (if he views himself as a slave that is). They don’t have the benefit of the UK paying for your house, food, bills etc etc if they are out of work.
I would make everything we could here (like they still do in Germany) but the reality is we are just no longer manufacturers anymore, we’ve grown too fat on those in china doing the nasty smelting and forging, cheap steels and recycled plastic. Half the jobs we will not do anymore and the enviromentalists if not health and safety would make life hell trying to do it.
Nice thought, like buying Fair trade coffee, but when we still sell windows at a loss can’t see anyone wanting to increase the selling price to feel better, we’re just not that nice.
Neil Donaldson.
Hi Matthew, I feel a big can of worms opening on this question!
I like to buy as much as possible from local suppliers, food for example is relatively simple to trace. It appears that the higher the value of your purchase the more difficult it becomes, changing a TV for example do you go for an ‘on-line’, ‘out of town superstore’ or ‘local electrical supplier’ purchase? My choice would be local for the service, but how do you trace that all the steps in the process of your purchase suits your views?
Back to our industry, I stumbled upon it in 1983 when I joined Cego Engineering who at the time produced a vast range of ironmongery products at their Essex factory with around 800 employees, the product range expanded with the introduction of PVCu windows & doors. This site is now flattern, most jobs lost and the hardware now made in the far east.
Whilst I believe a lot more people are prepared to pay more for their goods to ensure better working conditions etc, lets hope this brings back hardware products to be made in the UK.
I have considered this when paying £6.00 for work jeans from Tesco, would it be better to pay £60.00 for the jeans and know a sweat shop in Leicester is turning them out, paying minimum wage to illegal immigrants whilst our Chinese friends no longer have a job, because I am sure no matter how much we pay the ruthless bosses will still pay the same.
It would be great top see them get more but I think China needs to address its problems, we can not. There was recently a program showing young kids, in India, chipping patio slabs for sale in the sheds in this country, big uproar, B & Q and Focus etc decided to no longer offer these items and I ask, who did this help? The Indian family may well starve.
Lots to consider here, me thinks.
See, Ian sees where I’m coming from!
Its clear from the response to this article that a lot of people care about the demise of British Industry.
Like Keith Pacey,we have all been witness to the wholesale destruction of vast swathes of manufacturing.
Its a telling reflection of how unimportant industry has become when the subject hardly gets a mention in the day-to-day political jousting leading up to this years election.Politicians of all parties have believed in the the big lie that the old metal bashing industries could be painlessly replaced with high technology and service jobs.
We now live in the me me society obsessed with celebrity,where obscene amounts of money are shamelessly made by a relative handful of traders and bankers,who exploit the timidity of Government together with the apathy of a dwindling electorate.
As others have pointed out other countries have a rather different approach.
Many thanks for all the comments. It seems that I have touched a nerve as I very much thought aloud, without really planning the post.
I do understand the various comments about the decline of British manufacturing and simpathise entirely with the Buy British philosophy.
I realise I often think differently to the vast majority of people in the UK, in that I see the suffering experienced overseas as far more important problem than the equivalent in the UK. This is why I’m involved with Heal, as the degree of poverty I witness in India is on a completely different scale to any poverty I witness in the UK. This doesn’t mean I don’t care when a factory closes down in the UK and people lose their jobs. But at least those individuals have the state to fall back on.
I feel I need to go to China and tour some of these factories to fully understand the problem. In fact, if any of the hardware companies reading this would allow me access to their factories, I would be very interested in talking to them on this subject.
In simple terms if a white espag handle shipped into the UK is sold for £1 to fabricators at present, but by paying 10% more we could force the owners of these factories into improving conditions. So, the handle is £1.10 now. If the same quality of handle produced in the UK would be £2, then to me it is preferable as an industry that we continue to use Chinese factories and labour, but try to make things better for those who are being exploited.
There is a marketing advantage here to be considered, as Anna Marie has suggested she would consider paying a bit more, and I’m sure others would feel the same. I have to be careful what I say here, as no doubt it could sound like trying to profiteer through the unfortunate position of others. But if a scheme was put in place that genuinely delivered better working conditions to workers in the Far East, and at the same time educated British society of the problem, then I can see potential.
I really should stop thinking aloud.
Quite right Mathew, A few pence more for the guys on the ground would be easy to sustain but as you know, being able to get the money there is tough, perhaps we all need to buy in to this. We have yet to solve this problem in this country though, the cockle pickers were Chinese but not in China.
I would support your efforts.
Looking at this issue I have a question for you Mathew. Given that you posted this yesterday at 9:26am and have already had 14 long responses to your comments one thing seem clear to me, sevral people from within the industry have a lot of spare time on their hands due to lack of sales or they feel very stongly about this point. Which is it?
To expect to go to China and change them in some neo-political way or to get them to alter working conditions and pay is completely daft. Not only would you be unable to discuss it they would find it quite strange for you to even bring it up, even if the goverment allowed you to broach it. I have been to factories throughout China and even if you get good translation the amount of product you purchase will be a fraction of what these companies turn out. You’ll drink tea and they will answer yes to everthing and change nothing becasue there is no way for you or I to police it anyway. Nor would the local political people allow any interference (look at the back lash the yanks are getting and they buy billions!).
Perhaps a better idea would be that the British manufacturers hold a conference/show where we can all go and buy – but it will still come down to price I’ll bet.
Neil – I wasn’t suggesting I would be purchasing any products, just observing to formulate my own opinion. But, I do take on board what you are saying.