
Lets get the inevitable comment out of the way
"how can the people who make the iPads afford them when they are slave labor?"
Apple will start selling fondleslabs in the Chinese cities where they are made, a job advert reveals. A job posting for "Store Leaders" on the Hong Kong branch of JobsDB reveals that Apple is looking to set up Apple stores in the southern Chinese cities of Shenzen and Chengdu, where Apple assemblers Foxconn and Pegatron have …
They aren't.
I'm no Apple fanboi, far from it, but many (not all) of the stories about so-called slave labour in the foxcon plants are incorrect.
If these plants were based in the US or UK, then yes, the level of remuneration would be unbelievably low, but over there it isn't.
And no one is /forcing/ these people to work. Far from it, the queue in the hundreds outside these plants for the opportunity to work there.
Comparatively speaking, prisoners in the US doing 'hard time' making license plates, and working with dangerous chemicals and getting paid just a couple of dollars a day are VASTLY more underpaid.
You blew it if you're using prisoner work as a reference.
Truth of the matter is that Foxconn is way above average in China. The real shit goes on at smaller companies outside the public's eye. You know those that make the other 90% of electronics.
Oh, I wasn't trying to compare Chinese workers to prison workers, nor was I knocking the use of prison labour. I actually think that we should be doing it in this country too. They should contribute to society rather than just being a further drain upon it, but that's another conversation...
What I was getting at is that US prison labour, is actually far closer to actual slavery than that which goes on in Foxconn.
I take your point though.
I guess the OP was trying to make the point that pretty well any story about Apple and hows its kits gets made will get a comment about using 'Slave Labour' somewhere along the line.
You will also get comments about 'Foxconn Suicides'.
This is despite the fact that the Foxconn workers get paid pretty well (comparitively) and that the suicide rate is lower than many US Cities. This does not deteer the Anti Apple birgade one jot.
As we are talking about Chinese workers etc, the BBC Documentary the other night made interesting watching. Chinese wages have risen so much in recent years that for a couple of companies (at least) it is now more commercial sense to actually do the manufacturing here in the UK and not in China.
Nearly Friday 'Beer O'Clock' time.
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"Shenzhen is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with a provincial GDP of US$42 billion -- that's more than some countries such as Guatemala and Lebanon, and four times more than Iceland.
Meanwhile, China's millionaires keep millionairing -- it won't be long before there are 1 million U.S. dollar millionaires in the country, guided by Shenzhen's philosophy: if you can't make a million, make a billion."
"Shenzhen is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with a provincial GDP of US$42 billion -- that's more than some countries such as Guatemala and Lebanon, and four times more than Iceland."
Shenzhen's GDP might be four times more than Iceland, but it's population is around 35 times more than Iceland's...
Especially for Mission Control, who'll be on the wrong side of relativity when Alpha-Centauri-bound ships are on the move... Wanna outlive other people? Find a way to travel at greater than .5C, hehehehe. Of course, a navigational error could mean there won't be even .1 cc of you left to find...