Posted on 12/18/2014 2:18:16 PM PST by WhiskeyX
A BBC investigation for Panorama has exposed poor working conditions in factories making Apple products in China.
The undercover team secretly filmed the iPhone production line and found Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken.
One undercover reporter - making parts for Apple computers - had to work 18 days without a day off.
Other workers were filmed falling asleep. Apple say they will investigate any concerns brought to them.
The BBC's Richard Bilton reports from Shanghai.
[VIDEO]
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Apple doesn’t care about the people in China. Apple only cares about the money they need to pay for their new headquarters.
How much better off would those workers be if they weren’t working for Apple?
18 days without a day off?
I once went 4 years without a day off.
Just proved Chinese don’t have what it takes.
More and more Americans are taking every day off, whether they can afford to or not.
No one is holding a gun to their heads, forcing them to work for Apple. They could go back to working in the rural rice paddies…where they would never get a day off.
Investigators should investigate companies that are ten times worse than this and not Apple, who is at the head of the pack in providing the best work environment possible in some of these other countries.
This is a schlock piece of hit journalism with an obvious agenda.
‘Apple doesn’t care about the people in China.’
Apple doesn’t care about Americans or anyone else for that matter. Their CEO only cares that he has a boy to sodomize and a money.
No one is holding a gun to Apple’s head to contract production with a company who blatantly abuse the rights of its laborers.
This kind of labor abuse is the hallmark of a totalitarian regime, whereas a healthy capitalist economy allows the laborers to take their labor services to a more responsible employer. Apple’s business is founded upon anti-capitalist and anti-competitive patent and copyright monopolies.
From an article that was published in September:
The raw materials mined in Congo are then sent to factories in China -- most notably, the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen. The factory has been described by local media as a "labor camp," in which teenage students are sought out for employment and are forced to work more than double or even triple the overtime limit (36 hours a month under China's labor laws), and workers are routinely uncompensated for injuries suffered on the job. Seventeen workers attempted suicide, and 14 died jumping from the roof of the building in 2010. The company responded by putting anti-suicide nets around the building, and forced employees to sign agreements stating that their employer would be exempt from lawsuits brought by family members in the event of their suicide. Foxconn claims to have raised workers' wages to $298 per month, but workers say those pay raises never came.
In all likelihood these people probably DO have a gun pointed at their heads.
No American company should be doing business with Red China; then again, are there any “American” companies anymore?
I’m going to tell you that I used to say well at least they have a job and they are not starving in the gutter. I am a hugh and series capitalist and what the ChiComs do to each other is their business but I sure hate to see American companies participating in this crap. Its really hard to see those pics of 2 year olds tied to a pillar in the hallway with a blanket and a bottle while Mom is in the sweatshop.
I would not take an Apple computer if you gave it to me free. But Mr GG2 says HP is doing the same thing. We have Toshiba but I think its made in China too so what to do?
“And where is this healthy Capitalist economy you speak of?”
So, one moment you extol Capitalism, and then the next moment you imply a denial of Capitalism.
Free market Capitalism, I absolutely extol. Crony Capitalism, no. 'Blended or mixed' Capitalism, no. So again, where is this healthy Capitalist economy you speak of? I consider the free market to be healthy but I have been accused of being a purist.
I recognize that Apple is doing what it has to do to make a profit in this environment. It obviously has workers here in the States for certain products but chose to utilize that sub in China for the 6. I cannot speculate why that decision was made. If we were truly a free-market economy, I'd bet those jobs would be here.
I worked 2 jobs for 10 years. Never had a full day off unless I was deathly ill. Didn’t kill me.
The bankruptcy judge found no improper conduct on Apple's part in the GT Advanced Technologies bankruptcy. . . and the bankruptcy is proceeding. Apple in fact bent over backwards to allow GT the breathing room to make their technology work. GT bit off more than they could chew, over promising and under delivering, yet still expected to get paid for product that they could not deliver and had no hope of delivering. They were producing only 5-10% of the quality they had promised. They gambled that their technology was scalable 200% when they contracted with Apple to turn out synthetic Sapphire, but it turned out the cooling process destroyed their boules.
Apple could have bailed even sooner under the terms of the contract, instead they made another $80 million payment to keep GT going.
Apple's contract with HonHai, specifies that workers on Apple's assembly lines get twice to three times the pay of other workers on other lines, are limited in overtime requirements and limited in the number of hours they are required to work each day. Worker conditions are monitored. They are far better than other companies' requirements for similar work.
Other documentaries like this have been shown and later been proved to show conditions at NON-Apple plants. . . I don't expect much different here. The Michael Daisey documentary was the last one where he faked worker interviews and dubbed translations in English that did not correctly translate what the workers were actually saying. Played on NPR and shown on a TV affiliate, it was the basis for his one man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" but his documentary was shown to be faked and NPR had to publish a retraction after it was proved he had fabricated much of what he reported. . . yet much of it is still reported as factual.
"In January 2012, portions of the monologue were aired on the radio program This American Life.[16] The episode, titled "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" quickly became the most downloaded episode in the show's history, with 888,000 downloads.[17] Two months later, This American Life officially retracted the episode, having discovered that some of the claims made by Daisey had been exaggerated or fabricated.[17] A follow up episode, entitled "Retraction", stood by the veracity of the claims Daisey had made about working conditions at Foxconn, but claimed Daisey had made up many of his professed first-hand details of his own experiences visiting China. Among other things, Daisey was justly accused of exaggerating the number of plants he visited and people he talked to, of claiming that the plant guards had guns, of exaggerating the number of underaged workers he talked to, and of falsely describing a worker with a crippled hand using an iPad for the first time as a Foxconn employee. This American Life also accused Daisey of purposefully misleading them by trying to prevent them from contacting the translator he used in order to fact check his story. In an interview with host Ira Glass, Daisey admitted to giving the producers of This American Life a false name for the translator and also admitted that he lied about her contact information being changed
The BBC has already announced they will be using source material from the same organization that Michael Daisey used. . . and they were instrumental in helping fabricate the stuff Daisey used. Garbage In, Garbage out. BBC revisiting the FoxConn assembly plants in China with accusations of inhuman conditions for Apple assembly workers — PING!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
The workers who committed suicide in FoxConn Plants when put into perspective pale in comparison to the suicide rate of the general population of the same age cohorts in China. In fact Megan, the suicide rate among the workers at FoxConn is ONE QUARTER that of the same age groups in the general population. 1/4. 25%. That is a rate of 0.000302222222% per 100,000. . . and it's even less because those 17 suicides occurred over an 18 month period, rather than the 1 year these statistics are usually compared. This is a rate equivalent to ONE PER MONTH! Think about it, how many people in a city of 750,000 people commit suicide in an average year? I used to live in a city of 500,000, and the newspaper usually reported one to three suicides per WEEK.
To put it even more into perspective, the FoxConn suicide rate is 1/2 the suicide rate of young people of the same age groups in Ivy League Colleges in the United States. It only made headlines because Apple was involved.
But why was Apple involved when only ONE of those suicides involved a worker associated with Apple products?. . . and he was not an assembly line worker but rather an engineer who was caught selling an iPhone prototype to a competitor in 2008. . . TWO YEARS before the epidemic of suicides. After he was confronted with his crime, he went home, which was several miles from the plant, went out on his balcony, and jumped to his death. (There is some question—read "possibility"—that he may have had some help in his "jump" by police investigators/interrogators.)
The other suicides worked at a plant assembling Microsoft xBoxes, HP Computers, Sony Playstations, Nokia Phones, and, if i recall correctly Pioneer head phones. No Apple products were involved. Three of the suicides left notes referring to homesickness, one to a love triangle, and others had monetary motives because the CEO of HonHai made the mistake of compensating the families of the previous suicides handsomely (giving them the equivalent of $25,000). . . and a few commented that they could help their families better by dying. That is the reason for the "agreements" your article mentions. FoxConn discontinued the death benefit for suicides. What do you know, the suicides STOPPED.
The age groups your article refers to as "teenagers" actually span ages from 18 to 34, with the average age being 24. The youngest attempted suicide was 18 (she survived), and the oldest was 28 (successful). By-the-way, those 17 suicides did NOT occur just at one building or at one plant but rather at ALL of FoxConn's wide spread manufacturing plants which employ 750,000 people.
FLA found only 12 underage workers in a survey of FoxConn's workers in 2012. Those workers had used relatives' IDs to get the jobs. FoxConn does NOT want to hire underage workers because under Chinese child labor laws, if an underage worker is found at an employer, the EMPLOYER is required to pay for the child's schooling through age 24. A very expensive price for using underage, unskilled workers. Unfortunately, that law is quite an incentive for underage workers to try and get in. LOL!
The claim that pay was not raised is false. Prior to 2010, average factory wages in China was approximately $180 - $220 per month minus Room and Board charges of about $15 a month. Many workers opted to live outside the dormitory buildings and pay their own rents. After the unrest, FoxConn raised basic starting pay to the quoted $285 per month minus the same Room and Board. Apple workers were getting twice that. Office workers and store clerks outside of FoxConn were getting $130 to $160 and had to pay their own subsidized rents. When openings on Apple assembly lines become available, thousands of applicants would vie for the positions because Apple assembly lines obviously paid far better than the other manufacturers' lines. Do you seriously think they are mobbing the hiring offices for transfers because they will have a "gun pointed at their heads?" Losing a job on an Apple line is something to really avoid. That could be construed as a "gun" at their head, but it is economic, not literal.
Apple enforced the pay for its assembly line workers. It has PULLED contracts from companies that did not toe the line on such contracts. . . and did not meet safety standards.
As you may be able to tell, I have researched this. I am educated as an economist. I know what I am talking about. I even read the case reports on the individual suicides. . .
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