Apple: Yes there are horrendous accidents, but we CARE Tim Cook has sent a letter to all Apple employees stressing how much the company cares about industrial accidents in its Chinese factories. It comes a day after a graphic story in the New York Times about an explosion in a Chinese iPad factory and two weeks after Apple released a new Supplier Code of Conduct that goes into …
What's the difference between a code of conduct and a contractual obligation. Well with a code of conduct Apple can say that it's not their fault if the factory owners choose to breach it. A contractual obligation would mean that Apple's suppliers would almost certainly have to put their prices to Apple up in order to meet that obligation.
Who said they use the same plants? The use the same supplier. Big difference there. So why would the other companies want to come in to the rescue about a different plant and force better ductwork in a plant their products are not produced? Would Foxconn even do anything as customer X doesnt have anything made in Plant Y anyway.
To put it a different way, Foxconn has more than one plant. Why don't we hear about these issues at the other plants? Even Foxconn city consists of 15 factories.
"Those costs obviously don't include software, advertising, design, transport, packaging, but give an indication of the high profit margins that Apple gets off each handset."
That's a whole lot of stupid packed into such a short paragraph. The figures you quote "obviously" don't include some of the largest cost centres (software, design) and yet you're still willing to punt them around as though they mean anything? Anyone still quoting iSupply teardown figures as anything other than a bill of materials, while failing to acknowledge just how much Apple ploughs into the product design and experience, needs to be relieved of their posting privileges.
Is there any danger of some actual, you know, journalism around here? Rather than just helping the ignorance in the echo chamber get a little louder? Did you happen to read the responses from Chinese citizens to the NYT article? Factories that make Apple products are basically *the* place to work, because conditions are so much better than those at factories that produce domestic brand products. Clearly that fact doesn't support the author's agenda, so no surprise it got omitted.
Amateurish.
"Did you happen to read the responses from Chinese citizens to the NYT article? Factories that make Apple products are basically *the* place to work, because conditions are so much better than those at factories that produce domestic brand products"
Still doesn't make them good or safe places to work - it's all relative. The sad fact is the workers just don't know how bad they're getting it in the "good" plant because all they have to compare it against is the even worse domestic plants. Put those Chinese workers in a Nissan plant in Japan / UK and they'd keel over in surprise at how different things are when safety is a consideration.
Even the "good" Apple plants are evidently run like C19 mills - instead of flour / cotton floating freely ready to explode / cause terminal lung damage they have aluminium. They could take measures to remove the risk, but Apple (like everyone) are looking for min costs. Why increase your costs by filtering the air when you can just pluck another 20 souls from the labour queue?
Don't fall for the "we take safety" seriously line from *anyone* using Chinese labour. It's cheap for a reason, and I don't mean it's not very good.
Interesting you mention Nissan plant safety since in today's news:
"One Killed In Accident At Smyrna Nissan Plant"
http://www.newschannel5.com/story/16614383/one-killed-in-accident-at-smyrna-nissan-plant
Must be a shock to you that accidents happen at Nissan even in the US of A...
"you quote "obviously" don't include some of the largest cost centres (software, design)"
Really? Design, how hard is it to design rounded corners? What about advertising and legal? Especially legal....
"Factories that make Apple products are basically *the* place to work"
As you point out, these things are relative, however that does not necessarily make these places "good" places to work, maybe they are, but only if the other choice is quarrying slate with your teeth.
At no point did I say that the conditions at the factories which make Apple products were "good", merely that they were better. They *could* be good for all I know, but I simply don't and I suspect no-one else likely to comment on here really knows either. The author certainly doesn't.
How hard is it to design rounded corners? Well for people like Samsung, easy, once companies like Apple have done all the real work. It's easy for a lazy eye to think everything is obvious after the fact, but if that's the case why weren't any of these other companies producing phones that looked like the iPhone before the iPhone?
It's pretty obvious that Cook isn't satisfied with how things are, but Apple is a convenient whipping post for every sloppy hack with an axe to grind or a point to score who can't be bothered to do any research.
"How hard is it to design rounded corners? Well for people like Samsung, easy, once companies like Apple have done all the real work."
Good $DEITY, are you actually saying that rounded corners didn't exist before crApple used them, oh! I see, posted Friday @18:14, did you go to the pub early this Friday?
As for prior art, how about this, the iPhoney is a copy of a 4,500 year old design
http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/2011/08/apple-iphone-as-design-copy-of-first.html
What part of Apple's financials, where they say they made $43.82B in gross profit on $108.2B in revenue do you not understand? Or do you not allow the financial facts that Apple files with the SEC about itself affect your judgement? The cost of "software, advertising, design, transport, packaging" doesn't change things enough to alter this issue for Apple.
Because of their famed reluctance to respond to journalists/hacks.
They could be making a bog song and dance over this but they are not. I am sure that there are plenty of other companies who would be making sure that if they did this, the world would notice. Their PR Depts would make sure of that.
Whilst I don't like their current stance of trying to sue the likes of Samsung etc, I have to applaud this stance by their senior management.
Now where's my tinfoil hat. I'd expect the 'I hate everything Apple' fanbois will be along soon.
Most companies while saying they care about the people employ do not, complain and get a "if you do not like it here you can always leave". So they are going to care even less about ones working for one they have do work for them, price is all they care about and how it looks not how it is.
The whole point of outsourcing is to cut costs by producing your kit in factories that can do it cheaper. Cheaper usually means cheaper workers and less regulation. This has been happening for years, in fact back in the 70's and 80's Amstrad were using companies such as Orion to produce their computers in factories in South Korea. Orion produced kit for everyone and their dog and I suspect the iPad factory does as well.
Nearly every piece of electronics in your home or office is made in this way. So if people start beating themselves up over their iPhone they had also better start thinking how their DVD player was made, or their kettle. The only difference is Apple are high profile and are perceived to be a bunch of hippies and not the greedy bunch of capitalist pig dogs they really are.
off-shoring weakens the domestic economy by sending jobs and income abroad.
The Big Pile of Stupid is the fact that the domestic production costs would be only very slightly higher - probably no more than a grand total of $30 - but there would be more money floating around in the US or Euro economies from taxes and discretionary worker spending.
Demand and final profits would be higher still without off-shoring.
But this doesn't suit the neanderthal Harvard management mind-set, which is as much about politics and power differentials as it is about prosperity.
So Chinese workers will keep being killed, and US and Euro workers will keep being unemployed and/or poor.
Here's the experience of someone who DID try to manufacture electronics domestically. It would take 4x as long, was substantially more expensive (primarily due to taxes), and would have made the entire project non-viable.
"I’d like to draw attention to one cost in particular that really created problems for us in Britain. Simply put, if we build the Raspberry Pi in Britain, we have to pay a lot more tax. If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all. This means that it’s really, really tax inefficient for an electronics company to do its manufacturing in Britain, and it’s one of the reasons that so much of our manufacturing goes overseas. Right now, the way things stand means that a company doing its manufacturing abroad, depriving the UK economy, gets a tax break. It’s an absolutely mad way for the Inland Revenue to be running things, and it’s an issue we’ve taken up with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills."
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509
There's history as to why everything went offshore. Because the Japanese had a head start on solid state kit, all the British stuff suddenly looked unreliable and overpriced. Remember when you couldn't move for TV's made by companies such as Bush, ITT, Fidelity, etc? Made In The UK stickers proudly stuck on the back.
Then Sony and Panasonic came along with kit everyone wanted and was reliable. Remember the first time you saw the picture on a Sony Trinitron? The British manufacturers died out or just got the likes of Orion to make their TV's for them.
Once it's gone the cat is out the bag. Ironically the Japanese kit were were all falling over ourselves to buy in the 80's is now made in China. And in 20 years it'll probably be India instead.
"...it’s an issue we’ve taken up with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills."
A classic exercise in futility. What is and is not dutiable / taxable on import into the EU is decided by the EU and HMRC is bound by the EU TARIC database in this matter. The only place this goes is (assuming that they can be arsed) the British Government raising it with the EU and getting told to fuck off by whichever Commissioners are getting their lunches paid for by the Far Eastern tech industries.
"The Big Pile of Stupid is the fact that the domestic production costs would be only very slightly higher - probably no more than a grand total of $30 - but there would be more money floating around in the US or Euro economies from taxes and discretionary worker spending."
While I don't disagree with the last statement, $30 x 10 million iPhones == $300 million. That's not exactly chump change.
See the Raspberry Pi article from a few days ago, the skills are there, it could be made but for some ridiculous reason ourlords and masters have decided that even UK designed silicon has a swingeing tax penalty applied to it when it's imported*, this makes it prohibitively expensive to manufacture hi-tech here. Oh and we have those pesk health and safety laws as well as environmental rergulations that have to be obeyed too.
*Of course, the answer is to fab the silicon here too but again, that's expensive here too, see above for reasons.
"That's a whole lot of stupid packed into such a short paragraph. The figures you quote "obviously" don't include some of the largest cost centres (software, design) and yet you're still willing to punt them around as though they mean anything? Anyone still quoting iSupply teardown figures as anything other than a bill of materials, while failing to acknowledge just how much Apple ploughs into the product design and experience, needs to be relieved of their posting privileges."
This BOM profit also ignores the 30% revenue from iTunes/App Store stuff, so I'd say it all works out roughly fairly.
Matt Piechota, I think the logic was, that we'd pay $30 more for our shiny, shiny. That way the difference wouldn't matter.
What I think, TheOtherHobbbes meant, was that if there were all these extra people employed domestically making iPhones etc, there would be more disposable income per capita and therefore the extra $30 on the price of an iPhone wouldn't matter.
The point RaspberryPi make is a very sober and depressing one and one the policy makers should be addressing.
If we keep outsourcing and letting global megacorps avoid paying due taxes, sooner or later, all we'll have done is move the money and power from the West to the East.
"The May 2011 explosion in a Foxconn factory in Chengdu was blamed on aluminum dust and took place in a unit where workers polished iPads; it left four dead and 18 severely injured.
HP, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Nokia use exactly the same manufacturers, as Cook points out."
HOWEVER, what were the chinese polishing which contributed to the dust which exploded? iPADS! Not a plastic-framed HP, IBM computer or Nokia phone. So far, most of the accidents seem to be related to Apple parts. Maybe other corps don't use certain materials due to inherent dangers in their manufacture or refining?
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202539803677
"Han praised Apple for agreeing to random inspections. “Oftentimes, the company knows when an inspection is coming and they plan for it by constructing a new plan to circumvent the inspection or reducing the number of employees,” she says.
Still, there is much progress for Foxconn to make, says Han. She notes that China has passed relatively robust wage-and-hour and employee-safety laws, but Foxconn and other suppliers routinely ignore such laws, while the government looks the other way. “It sounds basic, but actual compliance with these laws would be a big step in the right direction,” she says.
“The problem is that in China, the unions are government sponsored, not independent. So if there is strong support in the government for a particular industry, the union is not going to come in and demand new things for workers,” says Han.
Despite the setbacks, Chinese workers are already making progress in improving their lot, with our without Apple, says Han. “There’s an awaking that to the fact that they can assert their rights.”"
More at the URL
We would all gain if the cost of labour would rise in China. Demanding better working conditions would certainly help.
I remember when "MAD" had a sticker with the text "Made by slave labour in the USSR" to be stuck on, for instance, cars made in the USSR.
Now they could provide us with ones with the text "Made by slave labour in China" to be stuck on iThings.
Well, Apple is, of course, the only company, exploiting cheep labour in China.
Great comment by @Ian, but I would add a couple things that's been mentioned elsewhere.
The NYT know how to report on important news, but also how to propagandize like Pravda did, let's be honest. (We all know how reliable anonymous sources have been these last 10 years, though they do have a place when used responsibly per Glenn Greenwald).
If you read the NYT article closely, Apple's 40% margin is not really the deciding factor to be in China, it's the flexibility and massive engineering manpower that's available 24 hours/day on 6 hours notice when a component needs to be changed after a product mgmt decision...that is absolutely NOT possible in the US now.
Also, I love that while we've been saving billions on Chinese products since Nixon set the table for us with Mao in China in 1973-ish, all of a sudden, there's indignation? Come on. (Anyone hear about the China supply-chain mafia kingpin, known as Walmart? Duh.)
Every country is going to go through their Industrial Age exploitation phase like the US did 110 years ago with the Triangle Fire and the UK with the London "black fog" earlier. We can speed it up a bit now, but everybody: Please, get off your high horses...
And China, India, Brasil may have a tougher time, because of the fine mess that Wall Street/City created for us...along with their humungo populations that need to get off an agricultural, non-modern economy and raise their standards-of-living.
Tough decisions, all around.
(Though, let's all keep wasting time taking potshots at an innovative gadget company with a 5% global PC share, 8% phone share & 58% tablet share, while all the other Fortune 500 firms get a pass in China. Makes sense.)
"HOWEVER, what were the chinese polishing which contributed to the dust which exploded? iPADS! Not a plastic-framed HP, IBM computer or Nokia phone. So far, most of the accidents seem to be related to Apple parts. Maybe other corps don't use certain materials due to inherent dangers in their manufacture or refining?"
What baloney - better turn off all the electricity to your house and go and live in a cave as people die mining the coal, oil and gas used to generate power. Then you better walk to work as cars are dangerous as is the petrol. Then consume nothing as whatever you do there is a human 'life' cost somewhere.
so is yours
big difference between as many as 5000 miners dying per year in China from accidents and the current US average since the 1990s of well under 100 per year ...
we have around 20,000 injuries per year in mining .. if the death to injury ratio is about the same in China, that's about a million mining injuries per year for the *Peoples* Republic
I'll agree their is risk (which our miners are well aware of), however, I think it wrong to have allowed China in the WTO considering that country's horrible record on basic human rights
it is NOT fair trade .. and there are many more important issues in the world today than whether you can have a shiny new vanity smartphone for 10% less or a coffee maker for $20 at Walmart, all resulting in decreasing real wages and profitability of companies that manufacture in their western homes
that being said, western governments need to make the business environment more friendly and less expensive tax-wise .. a good example is Canada in North America, and despite high wages and very good working conditions, Germany, who are the 2nd largest net exporters of goods ( 2nd largest trade surplus ) in the world
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"Matt Piechota, I think the logic was, that we'd pay $30 more for our shiny, shiny. That way the difference wouldn't matter."
No - the manufacturers and the jobs would go elsewhere. Manufacturers make products in China as the cost of labour is relatively cheap - if it were to get more expensive they would lose those jobs. You are not in the real world if you think people would just pay $30 extra to have it made in the US rather than in China.
How many people buy Fairtrade fruit - the answer is very little. You go in the supermarket and see Fairtrade bananas and normal ones - most people but the normal ones as they are a bit cheaper.
"We would all gain if the cost of labour would rise in China. Demanding better working conditions would certainly help."
Oh really - no what would actually happen is those jobs would move to the Philippines / somewhere else and those Chinese workers would be out of a job (probably in a worse position).
Why are people not looking at Nokia or the other phone makers - Apple only have about 8% of the phone market - I'm sure the other 92% are using just the same factories.
Manufacturers are going to keep using China (or would move somewhere cheaper with just the same issues). A manufacturer could not afford to pay a lot more than their competitors do for labour in the long term - it's just not competitive.
...should be ostracized but consumers are dumb. They buy primarily on price and don't know or care about the slaves who produced the products so CEOs could get multi-million dollar annual bonuses. Most people are in serious denial about the FUBAR world we live in and financial greed.
And fortunately so for those "slaves" who would get even worse jobs if people stopped buying eg Chinese products.
What else would they do? Spray DDT on farms by hand? Look at how people lived in China before their "industrial revolution" (try 80s) and how they live now. Not many would want to go back to a small bowl of rice a day.
Such societies don't tradionality have things like pensions and retirement, so parents rely on their children to survive. No kids = life worse than death at old age.
They also can't go to the US because 1) their country doesn't let them (to this day most Chinese are still not eligible to have passports) 2) the US wouldn't let them anyway...
...we'll swap you for a Chinese slave. You get to move to China and live their life for 10 years and they come to the U.K. or go to the U.S. and live your previous life. Then in ten years you can tell us all again how lucky the folks in China are to be slaves so CEOs in the U.S. can reap fortunes annually in salary bonuses.
The stupidity that passes for knowledge is disgraceful.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, not US or Chinese either - but that starts getting complicated.
You'll also find many Chinese CEOs quite rich, look at ZTE or Huawei... Here's a list of Chinese billionaires to get you started: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/74/Worth_1.html
But more on topic I suggest you take a time machine (hopefully not made in China) and go back in time 15-20 years to China, before outside companies brought industry to China. Oh what joy their lives were back then without the "evil" US investment, what a great life it we working the pest infested rice paddies, no healthcare, no transport, and no salary other than a bowl of rice.
Muppet.
I hope people will realize that if you want to boycott because of working condition in China, you need to simply not buy phones or tablets at all because they are all made there. Foxconn is in fact one of the best of those factories where workers line up in hope to get a job.
If you're going to buy a Samsung phone instead you are shooting yourself in the foot twice, you're hurting a US company over a Corean one and you're not helping conditions in China at all...
Americans are completely disconnect from the dynamic of the situation in China. The factories may not be paradise, but the alternative is even worst. Its up to the Chine governement and the people of China to come up with solutions.
The problem is widespread across all industries. The electronics industry is actually not as bad as others, thtat's why they get so many applications for jobs whenever there's vacancies.
So if you want to start boycotting, boycott everything from China. Good luck with that.
You may want to start by throwing away your computer, broadband router, energy saving lightbulbs, car, man food items these days, clothes... All made in factories with worse conditions that phones...
"They need to boycott all phones and tablets if they are true to there convictions"
No. "They" don't need to do anything, if you mean consumers.
Apple, as well as the rest of Silicon Valley need to stop with the happy talk in the bubble. Slavery is a systemic result of Capitalism. This has never been addressed, only reinvented (going on 5.000 years now). There is no other end game to the Business Model - manufacturing industries get there eventually. Left all to themselves, Silicon Valley reinvented slavery in Asia and indentured servitude in the valley itself (lawsuit about "poaching employees"). Again - all by themselves!
Where is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when we need him ?
The crime of the Congo (soon to not be a Hollywood Movie, out of Copyright)
http://www.archive.org/details/crimeofcongo00doyliala
I'm shocked we don't have any volunteers from the UK or US that want to exchange places with those lucky bastard slaves in China that have it so good because scumbag CEOs feel the need to have goods produced in slavery in China. I would think UK and US citizens would be lined up to swap jobs with those lucky slaves in China.
Where are you folks... the ones that believe the slaves are so lucky thanks to big companies that export jobs for personal financial gain?
Are you a real moron or just talking out of your ass? Do you know what slavery is?
These employees joined these companies by their own choice and are free to leave their current jobs for other companies, plus they get paid - a lot more than the national average salary.
Maybe you should learn the true meaning of slaves by taking a work vacation in North Korea. I hear they do work for the west as well...
I hate Apple the entire idea of it from proprietary to slick to ego boo. Yet I see no resaon to give a darn if factory workers in ANY factory suffer. I did...when I got tired of it, on one occaission I organized a union, and on another, I got fired for trying to do so. This may be the one aspect of Apple that is dcecent and honest...straight up exploitation, much more pleasant than left loony baloney.
Those willing to swap their current job in the UK or US with a slave laborer in China helping CEOs to receive many million dollar annual bonuses for supporting slavery please sign up below so we can make arrangements for your trip to China for the next 10 years... Remember it's an honor to be a slave to a wealthy US CEO.
It's probably worth mentioning that the corporate responsibility consultant firm BSR, corrected some of the accusations made in the New York Times article, the main being that Apple knew and could act tougher against worker rights abuses but had purportedly chosen not to. Although the main thrust of the article isn't questioned, some of the more incendiary accusations are.
Ehm, Mr Tim Cook is quite far from telling the truth when he says that Nokia is doing the same. Actually Nokia has over 10 own factories, in all parts of the world, including few still in Europe, and alhough for sure they also use chinese subcontractors for some tasks, they made the phones by themselves. Apple doesn't have any own factories as far as I know? So, sorry, but it's quite different and cannot be put into same basket.
Listening to Apple's empty words of concern on this issue is starting to grow seriously tiring.
They can quote audit's and inspections all they want, because like every type of audit, a complete fraud of best behaviour will be put on for show. I know it, you know it, they know it.
Apple can tell us they care until the world ends, they obviously don't, or else they wouldn't be doing business with these factories in the first place. How about Apple pull back the manufacturing to the west, and make only say $350 profit per handset instead of $400. With a $100bn in the bank, I imagine they could afford to.
(those figures were from a recent news item suggesting a $650 iphone 4s costs $196 to make)
"Most people are in serious denial about the FUBAR world we live in and financial greed."
Blissfully unaware, more like, given the sort of newspapers they read, and which rely heavily on advertising for the products of said FUBAR world.
As has already been noted, how many, faced with Fairtrade bananas at £1.20/kg or unfair-trade ones at £1 choose the former?
Apple CEO Tim Cook : «We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain».
Hon Hai (owner of subsidiary Foxconn) chairman Guo Taiming (aka Terry Gou) : «Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache».
The difference between the caring Mr Cook, on the one hand, and the rather less caring Mr Guo, on the other ? What the latter really thinks gets by his PR consultants to a higher degree than in the former case....
Henri
"An explosion at the Ri-Teng (a subsidiary of Pegatron) factory in Shanghai injured 59"
If my memory serves, isn't Pegatron the manufacturer of HP's laptop motherboards for their I7 chips? The motherboards that had the overheating and BSOD problems because they packed the hot motherboard components too closely?
When are we gonna learn that China makes CRAP. Lead painted children's toys - poisonous dog food - drywall impregnated with volitile chemicals that made houses rebuilt after hurricane Katrina unfit for human habitation. All built in factories that use humans as replaceable parts. Injured workers that can no longer work can still serve the State - as fertilizer on China's state run farms. Even in death, China's subjects still serve the State. STOP BUYING FROM CHINA - make it yourselves at a decent wage. Their cheap labor is not worth the price Apple just paid.
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