Repercussions of Reporting on Apple 'Sweatshops' 120
PRC Banker writes "Following the media attention over Apple using 'sweatshop' tactics to manufacture iPods, facts were disseminated making things seem not as bad as first reported. However, recent developments suggest that 'Apple Computer's iPod supplier FoxConn has decided to sue the media for mis-reporting on working conditions in their factories. Rather than sue the British tabloids, FoxConn sues a Shanghai newspaper. The reporter has a translated version of his personal experience and thoughts.' Powerful Chinese company threatens local media. Worrying indeed, especially given this company's track record. The president of Foxconn is the richest man in Taiwan, and the company has attempted to use coercion in the past."
No worries. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No worries. (Score:5, Informative)
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Transilvania is rumoured more appropriate for employee holidays, but it is in northern Romania (though Hungary claims Romania has annexed it unlawfully after WW-I).
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not richest (not even in the Eastern world) (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRX28Q.html ?passListId=10&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&u niqueId=X28Q&datatype=Person [forbes.com]
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Damning Comments About Foxconn by "Businessweek" (Score:2)
The Chinese (in both mainland China and Taiwan province) simply do not care about workers' rights. Foxconn is a Chinese company based in Taiwan.
To unde
Foxconn vs. Apple vs. Dell (Score:5, Informative)
Does this mean that corporate america is funding political terrorists?
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Sueing for libel doesnt exactly count. (valid claim or not)
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Well, they're funding themselves, so....yeah.
And if some people think "terrorism" is too strong a word to use for these type of people, I ask you to look up the definition of the word. Those who run "corporate america" definitely use their influence to threaten and instill fear in others.
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Hey, can you show me the deal for that on fatwallet? I searched all day and couldn't find the coupon code.. Maybe I missed the hot deal?
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And we all know that Microsoft has never ever screwed people over.
Er, who mentioned Microsoft? I guess your point is that if one can find someone worse than Apple, then Apple must be all right.
But since you bring up Microsoft, at least MS doesn't sue people left and right. At least MS doesn't charge $129 for minor updates (note that updates for the last three years have been FREE). At least MS doesn't make bullshit claims in their advertising (e.g., "twice as fast"). At least MS and Bill Gates (separa
Re:Yet more evidence QWZX (Score:4, Insightful)
First, "updates" like Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger are not "minor". They are "major upgrades". They introduce new features. Jaguar introduced bayesian filtering, Quartz Extreme, system-wide accessible Address Book, Bonjour (né Rendezvous), iChat, Inkwell, CUPS, etc., etc. Panther introduced Exposé, Fast User Switching, FileVault, iChat video-conferencing, Font Book, system-wide faxing, etc., etc. Tiger introduced Jaguar, Spotlight, Automator, VoiceOver, RSS in Safari, etc., etc. Leopard is going to introduce Time Machine, Spaces, new versions of Front Row and Photo Booth, system-wide To Do service, etc., etc. Are you really calling these MINOR updates?
Let's see, in contrast, what are Microsoft's service packs? Pure bug fixes. No, the addition of a firewall and additional security aren't new features -- they're there because people were getting fed up with the viruses and worms that were (and still are) attacking Windows. That's bug fixing. Windows XP SP1 and SP2 are comparable to incremental updates like 10.4 --> 10.4.1, or 10.3.8 --> 10.3.9, not major updates like 10.3 --> 10.4 which Apple charges for.
Then you say that MS doesn't make bullshit claims in their advertising. That's a good one! Let's just take their latest "people_ready" advertising. If Windows were really "people_ready", then it wouldn't have all the viruses and trojans plaguing the platform.
Then you say, in an off-hand comment, that Apple gives discounts to schools to cynically "lock them in" as future customers. That's another good one! Microsoft doesn't offer any discounts to schools whatsoever? (Bullshit!) If you want to talk about cynical lock-ins, look at Microsoft's class-action settlements in California, where they attempted to foist Windows software on the claimants rather than giving them money. And that's not cynically locking people in? You've got a really short memory, it seems.
As for whether MS or Apple are great companies for which to work, I can't really comment on that because I've never worked for either. But I doubt you have either.
So let's tally up the points. 4 bullshit arguments. Oh.. *sniff* do you smell that? Oh, yes, I know that smell -- it's a Windows troll!
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Zero-configuration networking doesn't fix a bug that shouldn't have been there in the fi
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Who have they tried to "destroy"?
How do they lie in there advertising?
In my experience, they have always had good customer service. What are you referring to?
Apple isn't evil.
Microsoft isn't evil.
Google isn't evil.
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Pretty poor troll, although the lack of any real facts is good.
Da Trut (Score:2, Insightful)
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Try telling that to china!
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This is a common trend in China (Score:2, Interesting)
My guess is that this company figures they have a better chance of exacting revenge on a newspaper in China than on British tabloids.
-Parallax
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Parent NOT a troll (Score:2)
ANY Google News search with terms like, say, "china company defamation" will turn up dozens of stories with this subtext.
China is writing its legal system even as we speak, and making great strides towards the rule of law, but the results so far have been patchy. From 6,000 years of imperial rule to rule of law in under a decade? Unprecedented, but China's trying it.
This story is another example of this parti
Boo Hoo (Score:3, Interesting)
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When bad things happen to the press it's a step forward for everyone getting the full story on what's going on instead of just the bits that feed the reporter's biases (even if the reporter has to make them up). The news in the newspaper has become less true and less balanced than the advertisements.
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I think almost all newspapers will go out of business in the next 15 years either way.
Newspapers will be even less likely to report on anything that might piss anyone off.
Maybe they'll have to double-check their facts. Maybe they'll have to get both sides of the story. Perhaps they'll have to take a skeptical look at the authenticity of their documents and photographs.
Why work hard and risk getting sued by reporting on corporate wr
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Has it ever occured to you that perhaps advertisers may very well have an agenda they funnel through the press, via which stories they tell? Imbalance is not due to bias; it is due to corporate greed.
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And your evidence for this is
It doesn't really matter why the press does a bad job. It matters how often and how long and what damage it does.
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Or... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or possibly they were aware that the British gutter press have some seriously heavyweight libel lawyers on their side.
Except for the Private Eye, of course, which can't ever get hold of a decent libel lawyer for love or money...
At Apple... (Score:1, Funny)
Actually, we just keep most of it for ourselves.
Price, Profit, Stock (Score:3, Insightful)
So mostly we benefit from these sweat shops. The low income have an opportunity to buy products. Everyone who has investment feels rich because companies can keep costs low, so the stock market isup and investors will buy more expensive things, like houses. People with houses feels better off than they are because they can leverage paper gains into real cash. The economy appears to be doing better than it is because in addition to the fake house cash, we also get loans from Asia so that we can afford to pay them for manufacturing in their swear shops.
But at the end of the day, it is the average persons desire for cheap stuff that drives the cycle. I wonder if Apple produced the 68K Powerbooks in sweatshops? I wonder if Dell could survive without sweatshops. Would we tolerate, would the american economy survive, the lack of sweat shops?
I certainly would want Apple to have a bit more dignity than say, Nike, but I don't hold my breath. As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down. But think of this. I saw a documentary last year in which a european cell phone manufacturer audited their asian manufacturing facility. Overall it was not terrible. Many safety issues, but not unlike what one would see in the US. Most girls, cramped housing, but again not unlike the way young people live in the US. These workers were there earning a living and saving money, which, if you believe that a hard days work imbues dignity, could be a good thing. One interesting thing was that since the employees were living in company dorm, the company was officially much more responsible for their workers, like being liable if a girl got pregnant.
Which is simply to say that the simplifications made by most are simply useless. I believe we are in much more trouble than most will admit, and the solutions will require much broader adjustments in behavior, which will either be done voluntarily or by necessity. While much of this simplification is done to make it accessible to the common person, and the bias may often be unintentional, the fact that so often the blame lies elsewhere than the writer seem disingenuous.
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Sounds like an oxymoron. Everybody benefits from the sweatshops except the sweatshop workers. Same apply to slavery.
"would the american economy survive, the lack of sweat shops?"
That's not the right question to ask. You do not build a society optimised for economy, you build an economy that can sustain your society. ( you say "USA has been built based on value of Freedom" And not: "In order to maximise investment return, the USA should accept Freedom as a good st
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On a similar note, would the Chinese economy survive the lack of sweat shops?
Manufacturing costs versus retail prices (Score:3, Insightful)
As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down.
Branded products do not cost a lot to buy, yet have to be made astonishlingly cheaply, because they are better. They cost a lot, and have to be made cheaply, because much more money is spent on advertising the product than making the product. This is the simple reason why unbranded products can be rediculously cheaper than branded ones - partly because the corporation that makes the cheap product doesn't want to insinuate its produc
yeah (Score:1)
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See how that works? You sleep better by trusting people to live their own lives and make their own decisions. They can do that because they have more information about their lives than you do.
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Like, instead of being a heavily underpaid sweatshop slave who might very well be underage, he or she could also choose to be free, hungry and soon to be dead from starvation. Not every person on this planet has the same scope of choices available.
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But among the choices he does have, I trust him to make the best one. He'll do a better job than you or me at choosing, because he has more information than we do about his life.
Gosh Darn! Why can't we all be Middle Class? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you mod me flamebait please realize that no one here has attempted to define what a "sweatshop" is,
or how these jobs compare to others in the Chinese economy.
I own a company that manufactures in China. We pay well above average, and there is always (and when I say always I mean 24/7)
a line of people at the gate looking for work.
None of this changes the fact that most people on this board would call the factory a sweatshop, because the hours are long,
the pay is low by US Standards and the working conditions are below ours in America.
But we're not talking about the US. We're talking about the entire rest of the world which is poorer than we are.
Yes, we have a moral obligation to provide clean, safe working conditions. But we do not have an obligation to elevate those
we employ abroad to US standards of living. And to wealthy Americans (if you're reading this you are comparitively wealthy)
those standards would seem terrifying.
Right now you are sitting in front of a computer surrounded by the products of cheap (and arguably exploitative) labor. Everything you own. Everything
you've eaten today. Everything you're wearing.
By what amazing gift of self-denial do people here condemn the system which makes them so wealthy?
The difference between American capitalists and those who would condemn them that the latter make weak protestations as they consume with the same gusto.
Flame away kids.
Re:Gosh Darn! Why can't we all be Middle Class? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this proves that the excuse to exploit people is to make more money and is based on greed. THe middle class is suffering while the upper middle class is getting rich and the gap is widening. Gas prices and rent more than doubled in 3 or 4 years yet our salaries have not and more and more factories are closing and heading to China for cheap labor.
Money trickles back with demand side economics.
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Re:Gosh Darn! Why can't we all be Middle Class? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, it is hard to introduce worker's rights into an anti-worker environment. However, you don't have to have your shop in China. You could set up shop somewhere else, where the laws allow you to respect the workers. Don't blame the consumer when you haven't even tried everything you can to solve the problem.
Now hold on there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the price of having a union worth it? The answer, like all things, is SOMETIMES! If your working conditions suck, joining a union may be worthwhile. If your working conditions are pretty good, joining a union may just increase the costs of labor t
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You are right on the money, pal. I would also elaborate more, but then the REAL flame will start.
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However, you exagerate. The west is rich *partly* because of the large supply of cheap labor in other countries, but not *only* because of that.
In actual fact, your claims are wrong.
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Try pulling your head out of your ass long enough to read _The Jungle_ by Upton Sinclair. Then follow it up with _The Bitter Cry of the Children_ by John Spargo, and _How the Other Half Lives_ by Jacob Riis. The defining characteristic of a sweat-shop is its lack of even the most basic health and safety considerations. We're talking 'arms ripped off in ma
Just sell two versions of the ipod (Score:4, Funny)
Folks who don't want to support "sweatshops" can buy the "made in USA" version (for around $900 probably), and others can buy the $300 (sweatshop) version.
And they should make it visually easy to distinguish which version you have just by looking at it (just to keep us all honest).
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Oh, you ment illegals, on yea, $900 for the illegals easy, but then the business owner will mark it up, so you're right back to $3,000.
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I live in a 19th century house on five acres of land. I am within a mile of a small town that has one of the better private colleges in this midwestern state. I paid $120K for this property. Life is, uh, pretty good.
I live in the USA. The 'Bay Area' is some freak economic zone that definitely is NOT America.
no need to deliberately design a different look (Score:1)
One of these days, the world will change, and people will be motivated by things other than immediate gain and loss. I don't want to advocate bad working conditions, but the worker motivated to get rewarded for putting out a good product does a better job than the worker who is guaranteed good enough conditions, whatever he thinks are good enough.
(Of course, a worker paid enough to keep self and dependents at least in good health is go
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One of these days the practice of moving manufacturing to China and other countries will not depend on being big enough to do it efficiently. That is when all these artificial margins these companies (like Apple) are getting will instantly shrink and and guess what? Time to go bankrupt.
Current business models which depend on Chinese (or other offshore) manufacturing to cut costs have no lasting ability. I give them another 3-5 years.
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A generally accurate summation, but I would suggest longer, say as much as ten years.
As I currently live and work as part of the 'current business model' we speak, I too have posed the same problem, and it seems the Chinese at the higher levels are aware of this issue, and are at least attempting to plan for it now.
One method of defense is the pract
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This is a bit bizarre (Score:1)
Claimant's don't even have to prove actual harm, only that a story would *tend* to cause harm in the eyes of right thinking people. That four letter word is what makes the UK's defamation law the most pernicious in the free world.
And there's the rub: I suspect this has more to do with Asian politics than libel.
they get vacation (Score:1)
But a third of American working women are given no paid leave, and a quarter of men get no pay from their employer if they take a week or more off for rest and recreation.
At least thats what the media is telling me to think this week.
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Check out Apple's other wrongdoing (Score:1)
FoxConn is suing the REPORTERS! (Score:1)
The original reporter is not accurate enough. It is not "Powerful Chinese company threatens local media". It is "Powerful Taiwanese company in China threatens local reporters"! The translated content in the first link is correct. FoxConn wants RMB30,000,000 (US$3,750,000) of compensation from two reporters. It is simply ridiculous.
Side comment: The worst labour conditions can occur in the Taiwan, Hong Kong, or foreign invested factories in South-East China. It is really the "blood and dirt" period of capi
Update: lawsuit seeking less (Score:2)
The lawsuit has been amended so now the company is only seeking, like ten cents from the reporters.
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