Four-year probe finds Foxconn's Apple 11 factory 'routinely' flouts Chinese labour laws An investigation by China Labor Watch has found Foxconn's Apple 11 factory is "routinely" and "repeatedly" breaking Chinese labour laws which limit employment of temporary staff. The exhaustive investigation saw several people working in the factory to uncover abuses, with one individual placed there for more than four years …
"And they always lie to us." Do they? You must be very paranoid if you think that is true.
That ad was based on a truth that there were two opposing views of computing 1) computers were there to control people and a workforce 2) computers are the servants of people.
IBM was there to control people. Silicon Valley took view 2, and this was the philosophy behind the Macintosh – it was no lie.
Even IBM's PC were still about controlling the office environment, and I still see that in Windows today.
"When the Communist Party of China thinks your labour camps are inhumane..."
If I understood, it's China Labour Watch complaining... some sort of NGO?
The communist party of China doesn't seem to care. If they did care, I'm sure they would put a stop to it before you could say 'Tienanmen'
The Chinese are much more laid back, when it comes to Health and Safety.. but things have been improving over the recent 10-15 years - But never compare them to the UK, even most of Europe looks at the UK and says WTF?!
The communist party of China doesn't seem to care.
Why should they? They have more people than they know what to do with. Looking at some of the failed policies in the past such as 1 child per family, it's not's going to get any better. The people are under the watchful eye of the government and any behavior not the norm is punished.
It does seem though that they have changed in one area... profit is now king but at the expense of everyone else.
The one child policy was not a failure. It was in fact so successful that China became worried about the demographic shift with too few working age people if it continued that they had to end it. It was a great success for its stated purpose of stopping China's population from growing out of control.
@DougS: mainly needed One Child policy because of early 1960s baby boom encouraged by central gov. Given the Chinese empty city phenomenon and the shrinking labour pool in coming decades baby bonuses will probably appear soon. I suspect that China will follow Japan, Singapore and South Korea into population crash over the next 100 years.
A shrinking labor pool may be a good thing for them when automation starts taking over most of the manufacturing work Foxconn and other companies in China do, and spreads to fast food, retail and other low skill jobs. And of course all the jobs driving cabs and trucks go away as well.
Could they possibly find jobs for 1.3 billion people in 30 years? Other than taking care of the 4 grandparents per "one child", that is.
> Trendy shiny shiny hipster smartphone on one side
> Slave Labour Pain Machine on the other...
I don't disagree -- but at the same time I have no illusions about the other brands being any better... Next time I'm up for a new device I'm looking into FairPhone. Anyone tried that?
"Trendy shiny shiny hipster smartphone on one side
Slave Labour Pain Machine on the other..."
Unfortunately pretty much all technology, clothing and food (and their disposal) in the Western world has it's costs kept down by said SLPM.
There are more slaves now than at any time in history. Convicts are paid a few quid a day for real work.
No wonder Donald President wants Tim Apple to repatriate manufacturing to the US. Build the onshored factory in Colorado or Nevada and he'll be able to offer the migrant children he's got locked up in the camps a way to simultaneously work off the cost of their keep and learn all they need to know about late-stage capitalism.
Farmers are companies too, and most of these small enterprises got seriously screwed over by the side effects of Trump's trade war to the point where they had to sack staff or even simply close the shop because they were not able to recover their investment in crops and thus ended up with unresolvable debt.
If you were watching properly instead of finding snide comments you would have noticed that the market in farming equipment has tanked. Nobody is buying because they don't see a future, and those who still can are now buying up the equipment from farmers that had to stop.
The smart ones know that Trump's handouts will only last until the election - after voting, they are no longer worth paying attention to for Trump.
So, back to the question: does that 4% include the people who are
'Unemployment' rate excludes those who aren't looking for a job, and it's increasingly a bad indicator when a not so small share of the population is not working nor looking for a job, While in the past almost all of those without a job were looking for one, it's no longer so in many countries.
When you have not a few people who have issues to get a job because drug addiction, previous convictions, etc. they may simple give up and live out of subsidies and the like.
Plus people in the gig economy and/or forced to work two-three jobs to meet ends my almost prefer to work in a Chinese factory....
As awareness of the abusive labor practices taking place inside the sweat shops that churn out apple branded products grows so do apple's efforts to pivot towards services and away from hardware.
Apple is fully aware of the abusive labor practices hence the mild rebuttal.
Still complain to everyone else how they are inhuman and should be destroyed. Biggest hypocrites in history, flailing on about the environment while changing their phones every 2 years, talk about abuse and misogyny and let's not forget toxic masculinity while pointing at the evil that is called the white man, even worst old white men and even the ultimate evil old Anglo Saxon white men.
History is not on their side, 100 years from now they will look back at them the same way we look back 100 years ago when everyone and their dog were playing with radium (home x-ray, radium tonics, radium science kits for kids...) idiots.
Well, my iPhone is almost 4 years old (it's a lovely iPhone 6s), and I'm sure I'm far from alone in not feeling the need to "upgrade" every 1 or 2 years.
At least Apple supports hardware for a fairly reasonable period of time with software and security updates, how many Android churners can say that? If anything, they are more environmentally wasteful. And that's even before we consider Google's data slurping kleptomania.
Possibly I might be in the mood (and have enough saved up, it's certainly not an impulse purchase) to be looking for a newer iPhone next year, and, sadly, I rather suspect I might have to, as Apple's sweeper wagon is starting to get rather closer as of the next iOS version.
It would be good if there were a viable third player in the market, without Google's innate evil and without Apple's rather too excessive desire for profit (I don't begrudge Apple making a reasonable profit, but not at the expense of the people ultimately working for them).
As an iPhone user I certainly have never called the users of any other device inhuman and demanded they be destroyed. That said, I'm under no illusions that switching to another brand would be more ethical. If it says made in China then it's almost certainly falling under the same work conditions. And not just China, many other places are the same. India is a hub of jewellery making, where children often make jewellery for pennies. Indonesia makes your trainers for pennies. Your shirts are made in Bangladesh for pennies. I want everything I buy to be ethically sourced, but I'm also acutely aware that in order to do so I'd have to buy everything locally made to ensure it at a much higher price.
You say that all other stuff manufactured in China is like Foxcon but I disagree. The fact that year after year the same old story of Apple using under aged forced child labour has gone on since...iPhone
You would think that such claims would have been made about every other vendor but they are not... maybe it's because Apple owners are hypocrites that waive their "better than though" BS all day long while being the cause of the problems they profess to be against.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there is abuse in other foundries but no way near the system problem that Foxcon has demonstrated for the last 15 years... Remember they are the company that had instituted the suicide nets right... wonder why that happens.
Let's face it iPhone's are built on sorrow... that is it, yet you claim the higher ground, nothing is more hypocritical as that.
Foxconn are the issue, and Foxconn make a lot more than just iPhones. Even Samsung has been listed as using child labour in China. It's just trendy to bash Apple because they're popular. That's not to diminish the report on the conditions iPhone producers work under, it's just saying that it's a lot more widespread than you seem to be able to comprehend. Foxconn are the primary manufacturer of everything electronic in China, supplying Apple, Samsung, Dell, HP, to name just a few. They're a leading supplier to Amazon. The issue is that they have a monopoly on production so can ignore any demands from their customers to improve conditions. It's not like they can just switch to another factory overnight. The entire western world is built on Foxconn's labour. They own Sharp, Linksys, Belkin. You cannot avoid using their products.
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/reports
Foxconn builds electronics for many companies, not just Apple. Maybe people attack Apple because they are the most influential and they do care about their image. But remember many other companies are complicit as well.
In fact the whole issue of widespread almost-slave labour is what gives the west so many cheap products, especially clothing and shoes which we might get cheaply, or pay $100s for when the labour costs a few dollars.
This. This is the point I've been trying to get across to the AC above who seems to think if Apple just stopped making iPhones child labour in China would simply disappear. Apple is just the most visible customer of Foxconn, but are by far not the only one. And as I stated, this is a much bigger issue than just phones and electronics made in China, it affects the entire supply chain for pretty much everything that's not made in the Western world. It's the clothes you wear, the shoes on your feet, the jewels in your rings and necklaces, the tea and coffee you drink, the chocolate you eat. China is just the most visible offender. You absolutely cannot avoid buying unethically.
"We have contacted Apple and will update this story if it responds," should read "We have contacted Apple and will update this story if they respond."
Apple Computer Corp is not some alien, faceless non-human sentient entity, it is a group of people. People are responsible for this. People.
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