Apple Faces New China Worker Abuse Claims 158
AmiMoJo writes "Technology giant Apple is facing fresh allegations of worker rights violations at Chinese factories of one of its suppliers, the Pegatron Group. China Labor Watch has alleged that three factories of Pegatron violate a 'great number of international and Chinese laws and standards.' These include underage labour, contract violations and excessive working hours. Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, claimed that 'our investigations have shown that labour conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories.' The campaign group said that it had found that average weekly working hours in the three factories investigated by it were approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively."
Are you sure it was China? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure it was a Chinese company? It could be mine...
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:5, Informative)
The company (Pegatron) isn't Chinese. They're Taiwanese. The factories, however, are in China.
Pegatron used to be the manufacturing division of ASUS. They spun them off, but still do a lot of manufacturing for ASUS and just about everybody else. This isn't really an Apple problem: everybody uses these companies for manufacturing, it's an industry-wide problem.
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Isn't this always the case? Apple is a well-known and envied brand, so they get the blame for something that's a problem with the entire industry.
It does at least bring attention to the problem, but doing so honestly would be a lot better.
Disclosure: I own an iPod Touch, but my phone and multiple tablets are Android devices. Not an Apple Fanboi.
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:5, Informative)
>This isn't really an Apple problem: everybody uses these companies for manufacturing, it's an industry-wide problem.
Isn't this always the case? Apple is a well-known and envied brand, so they get the blame for something that's a problem with the entire industry.
But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better".
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But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better".
Apple ARE better.
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/accountability.html [apple.com]
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But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better"
Apple ARE better.
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/accountability.html [apple.com] [apple.com]
If Apple is that better they would STOP letting their contractor abusing the workers a long time ago
Back in 2010-2011, another contractor, Wintek, caused deaths and injuries to several of its workers due to n-hexane exposure - including one engineer who dropped dead while working
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Especially after the death and injuri
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Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Have you been following the news? Apple stopped doing business with two suppliers. They forced the companies using child labor to pay for those kids to go to school and pay them wages while they went. They forced several companies to pay all the overtime they were trying to bilk employees out of. Any they did all this for years and openly published their audits before anyone paid any attention.
Who else has done anything? Who do you buy your computer from that is doing better? You are part of the problem Mr.
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But according to you, Apple should have some magic touch that enables it to prevent any accidents in the workplace whatsoever.
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Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Bullshit. If anyone was "giving lip service" to the policy, WinTek was. Apple does indeed have independent inspectors visiting the plants to find violations of it's policy. And where those are found the are corrected. But of course companies can sometimes hide bad practice for a while.
Bad things happen. And not just in China. Industrial illnesses are far from rare in America itself.
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If Apple is that better they would STOP letting their contractor abusing the workers a long time ago
Back in 2010-2011, another contractor, Wintek, caused deaths and injuries to several of its workers due to n-hexane exposure - including one engineer who dropped dead while working
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Especially after the death and injuries that had occurred in Wintek last time, Apple ought to have wised up and ensure that their so-called "policy" be strictly followed
First of all, do you know what hard-hitting journalistic work the NYT had to do to find out about that incident? They had to look into Apple's 2011 report. That's the source they give, and they obviously didn't know about it before. Wintek used n-hexane for all products for all customers - but only apple reported the incident, and only Apple required Wintek to stop using n-hexane and to provide evidence that they had removed the chemical from their production lines.
And talking about deaths: Samsung has bee
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Apple is a well-known and envied brand
Isn't it interesting how evildoers such as Microsoft and Apple love to play the "envy" card? Sorry, what you may mistake for envy is actually disgust.
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I'm assuming you're also refusing to buy a Dell, HP, Lenovo, or any other PC, a smartphone or tablet, or... wait a minute, how are you replying to this post, anyways?
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Capitalism is a dirty word and only spells misery. Ill buy Apple the day where their products are US made and workers have decent conditions.
Enjoy your new MacPro [apple.com] then.
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It says it is "designed and assembled in the US."
to me that means Designed in US, built in China, they put the case lid on in the US.
May be I am a bit cynical?
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Re: Are you sure it was China? (Score:1)
If you think this way, then almost any product from asia has inhumanity story behind. To be specific this is how captialism works. You live and enjoy on someones' misery. I am very much from from that region, and i know this very well. Leave this hypocracy as we all know how the world is running.
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This is an insanity that we consumers can ultimately defeat by refusing to buy products made exploiting the workers. .
Maybe it's time for our " ethical dollar " to speak
Maybe you should examine your ethics a little more closely. If you make no distinction between companies that don't care, and companies like Apple that are making an effort to improve, then you are not helping the situation. A blanket refusal to buy Chinese electronics means the factory workers go back to the rice paddy. Working long hours for low pay in a crowded and noisy factory is still a lot better than getting paid a lot less for 16 hour days stooped over in a mosquito infested rice paddy with wate
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Where's the evidence that Apple cares about anything other than its public image?
If conditions improve, and people's lives improve, it doesn't really matter what the motivations were.
If companies working for improvement, and companies that are not, are both boycotted, then where is the motivation to improve?
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Where's the evidence that Apple cares about anything other than its public image? Apple didn't uncover these problems on its own. China Labor Watch did. The same was true at Foxconn.
Because Apple is a paying China Labor Watch to do what they do - while none of the other customers of either Foxconn or Pegatron do. And then Apple forces the companies CLW cites to change their work conditions - while none of the other customers of either Foxconn or Pegatron do.
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In the 3 years I worked in China, I have visited literally hundreds of factories. Not only that, we actually used Foxconn to produce some of our products. Of all the factories I saw, Foxconn by far had the best work conditions. From boiling lead solder to paintiing in enclosed rooms, I saw some appalling conditions pretty much at every factory EXCEPT Foxconn. If you really care about this issue apple is the last place you should look. Don't buy anything made in China.
Apples to Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
If it wasn't for all the false reporting about conditions at Foxconn, I might take this seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey [wikipedia.org]
"All the false reporting" was one nutjob who was confusing journalism with stage performance. A stark difference between Mike Daisey and China Labor Watch is their falsifiable report [chinalaborwatch.org] that, unlike Daisey's heart wrenching anecdotal stories, can be checked.
Examples:
At Pegatron, over 10,000 underage and student workers (interns), from 16 to 20 years of age, work in crowded production rooms, doing the same work as formal, adult workers. But some students are paid lower wages because schools deduct fees for the internship, while other students will not have their wages paid to them on time.
CLW’s investigations revealed at least 86 labor rights violations, including 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations. The violations fall into 15 categories: dispatch labor abuse, hiring discrimination, women’s rights violations, underage labor, contract violations, insufficient worker training, excessive working hours, insufficient wages, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, difficulty in taking leave, labor health and safety concerns, ineffective grievance channels, abuse by management, and environmental pollution.
Did you read the report? It's got hard numbers and straight up accusations with defined conditions that can be checked. It's not like "I met a little girl who polished my iPhone." Instead it's like "A dorm room at Pegatron can accommodate 12 people. From Monday to Friday, residents have to clock-in within 24 hours or else they will be considered checked out of the dorm." or "The Pegatron factories had a list of discriminatory hiring practices, including refusing to hire people shorter than 4 foot 11 inches tall, pregnant women, those older than 35, people with tattoos, or people of the Hui, Tibetan, or Uighur ethnic groups."
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"All the false reporting" was one nutjob who was confusing journalism with stage performance.
No, that was just one example. Another is for example the reports of suicides at Foxconn factories. Very widely reported. Except none of the reporters checked the numbers. If you you divide the number of suicides by the number of employees, you get the suicide rate. ANd it turns out that the Foxconn suicide rate from those figures is lower than the suicide rate for not only CHina as a whole, but also it's lower than the US suicide rate.
All in all, the facts are that Apple enforces higher ethical standards o
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And I'm sorry, but there's nothing about "Child Labour Watch" that raises it above the rest of the noise.
LA LA LA I can't hear you! LA LA LA!
The story here, as usual, is that Apple is no better than anybody else. And everybody seems to know this except you.
--Jeremy
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The story here, as usual, is that Apple is no better than anybody else. And everybody seems to know this except you.
Next step is to realize that Apple is actually worse than the others. Ever heard of the Apple Police? [gawker.com]. Make no mistake about it, Apple didn't fire him because he did wrong, Apple fired him because he got caught.
Then there are the lockdowns. [gizmodo.com] A company accustomed to abusing its own employees obviously does not bat an eye at having a contractor abuse their own.
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The story here, as usual, is that Apple is no better than anybody else.
If only it was presented like that here, and elsewhere in the media. But it's not. It's presented as if Apple is the only, or at least the worst offender.
And regardless of your Android fanboyism, the picture seems to be that Apple is better than most, BECAUSE it's done everything to follow up all these accusations over the years, and fix what problems have been found.
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the Foxconn suicide rate from those figures is lower than the suicide rate for not only CHina as a whole, but also it's lower than the US suicide rate
I'm so sick of this "gotcha" point. Guess what: Foxconn isn't a country, it's a workplace. Suicide rates at the workplace are not the same as overall suicide rates.
You can't compare to US suicide rates. You can, however, compare to US workforce suicide rates:
U.S. workplace suicides (source: http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/sh20040126ar01p1.htm [bls.gov] - best source I could find):
2170 over 9 years, averaging 241 per year.
U.S. labor force during same period (I picked the lowest, so it doesn't seem like I'm cheating - http [ri.gov]
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But if you like statistics, you could compare the rate at which US
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They did commit suicide at work. One condition of work is living at work. Not near work. And it's quite likely there's a correlation there. As far as I'm aware, the suicides don't typically involve guns nor cutting nor pills, but jumping. Hence the suicide nets around the factory.
The point of the figures I provided is to find something close to comparable—far closer than general population suicides. These are not GP suicides, and GP suicides are, across the board and as you say yourself, far higher th
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They did commit suicide at work. One condition of work is living at work. Not near work.
Sorry, no. That's ridiculous. You don't get to discount every US suicide that didn't take place at the workplace, on the basis that the Chinese workers live in dorms near the factory building. You must see that a good proportion of those US suicides were caused by work, or at least work was a significant contributory factor.
After all, one workplace suicide is too many.
Again, that's silly. Everyone dies sometime. And suicide is one way that people go. It can't be erradicated any more than most of the other causes of death can. Reduced sure. But the "on
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Good work on researching numbers. But you missed out a crucial fact that makes your comparison the wrong one, and the general suicide rate the right one.
The Foxconn workers (as is common for factory workers in China) live at the factory. So out of work time suicides are included in the FOxconn suicide figures.
US workers in general live in their own homes. So out of work hours suicides are NOT included in the workplace suicide figures.
It's fair to say that most people commit suicide on their own time. For se
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Always eager to do Apple's PR work, aren't you?
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Daisy was not a "nutjob", he was just less careful than others doing the same thing.
Since when is intentionally fabricating evidence "just less careful"?
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Just like with Daisy or Greenpeace or the other people that have made allegations about factories in China, they all attach the Apple name to get attention even if Apple is not involved. Daisy was not a "nutjob", he was just less careful than others doing the same thing.
I remember "hundreds of workers threaten suicide at iPhone factory". Why? "They are afraid of losing their jobs because of reduced Xbox production".
What is better, an attempt at truth or nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and they also have a vested interest in lying.
But the other companies don't have even that. Even if Apple is misleading in some respect, they are at least giving you SOMETHING. Other companies remain totally silent on worker care issues. They provide no documentation as to conditions. They impose no restrictions on companies they contract with for Assembly. Apple Does.
So even if Apple isn't doing some of it quite right, they are still vastly far ahead of other companies in trying to improve working conditions in China. Which is why if you actually cared about the Chinese, you'd be supporting Apple instead of attacking them.
Instead, you'll continue to use your non-Apple laptop and your non-Apple smartphone because you like them, totally ignoring the fact that the conditions they were made under are far worse than anything reported for Apple.
Myself, I have taken to buying some things like wireless routers from Apple that I used to purchase cheaper versions of before, because at least I have some idea of the conditions they are being manufactured under. Either you actually care or you don't, you can't just claim to care and then act as if the issue doesn't matter.
The hypocrisy here is just sickening.
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If Apple genuinely gave even the slightest fuck about improving working conditions in China they'd take some of that $100billion cash pile and produce their own or buy out a manufacturing plant and show how it should be done.
The fact is that despite with their massive cash pile and their gigantic profit margins they're still going for the lowest bidder highlights how much of a fuck they give about workers rights compared to turning the biggest profit imaginable.
In fact, part the reason Apple has such high p
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If Apple genuinely gave even the slightest fuck about improving working conditions in China they'd take some of that $100billion cash pile and produce their own or buy out a manufacturing plant and show how it should be done.
Which they did in the U.S. for the Mac Pro.
And of course they used their own money to give bonuses to Chinese workers at FoxConn...
Again your whining just looks like pointless nonsense because Apple is still doing far more than any other company, and you give all those companies a pass.
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Didn't read the report, but if that's the worst you can dig out of the report then it sounds like this China Labor Watch is trying really hard to attract attention to itself when there's not much there worthy of attention.
Good because if you did you would realize how fucking ignorant the rest of your post was.
From the first fucking sentence of TFA: China Labor Watch, has alleged that three factories of Pegatron violate a "great number of international and Chinese laws and standards".
Turns out there _are_ laws in China, as well as laws to which China must abide in order to export goods internationally. These are the laws they are alleged to be breaking, including discrimination and imposing excessive/overcrowded work conditi
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Didn't read the report, but...
Good because if you did you would realize how fucking ignorant the rest of your post was.
Some Apple dude modded it up.
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Didn't read the report, but...
Good because if you did you would realize how fucking ignorant the rest of your post was.
Some Apple dude modded it up.
Some Apple dude modded that down. Sucks to be you.
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:4, Informative)
4 foot 11, really? So they don't hire midgets that can't grab parts off a shelf... discriminatory and evil!
In a factory with many workers they can easily assign people to appropriate tasks, or provide a step. In the west this kind of discrimination is illegal, and it is also supposed to be in China.
Not hiring pregnant women. I'm guessing if they DID hire pregnant women, we would be seeing in this report much outrage about the exploitation of pregnant women in sweatshop factories that jeopardize their health.
Pregnant women need employment and are not invalids. Legislation prevents even asking if a woman is pregnant. If you think it is due to health and safety or something you are deluded, it is simply because they don't want them to quit or take maternity leave.
No Tibetans or Uighurs. Is it because Pegatron hates Tibetans, or is it because there aren't any Tibetans showing up at Job Fair?
Your reading comprehension skills are pathetic. The quote you are replying to quotes the report directly, which clearly states that they discriminate deliberately. The fact that they needed to create this discriminatory rule suggests that they were in fact getting applications from those areas and ethnic groups.
Are any of these things illegal in China?
Yes.
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In a factory with many workers they can easily assign people to appropriate tasks, or provide a step. In the west this kind of discrimination is illegal, and it is also supposed to be in China.
Is it? It's certainly not nice, but what law is there that disallows size discrimination?
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Wow who actually modded that up. It's painful to read.
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That's like not taking the war seriously because of a foxnews article about it.
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If it wasn't for all the false reporting about conditions at Foxconn, I might take this seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey [wikipedia.org]
The problem with Mike Daisey is that way too fucking many people consider "This American Life" to be journalistic instead of anecdotal (which is what the piece from Daisey clearly falls into). While TAL has much more self-imposed rigor than most op/ed outlets, that still doesn't mean you should treat their pieces like they are headline news. It's white folks riffing on how goddamn hard life is, plain and simple. Read more into it at your own peril.
Disclaimer: I am an avid TAL listener and fan.
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The problem with Mike Daisey is that way too fucking many people consider "This American Life" to be journalistic instead of anecdotal (which is what the piece from Daisey clearly falls into).
When it's made up, as Daisey's stuff clearly was, it isn't anecdotal.
no one actually cares, (Score:2)
not enough to stop buying ipods and whatever other trendy shit is important to social status right now
Re:no one actually cares (Score:1)
Yeah, iPods are *really* trendy these days. So are fax machines!
That aside, everyone knows that "being trendy" is the only reason that people would buy Apple products. It doesn't have anything to do with preferring the way a product works, what an OS does, the design of the hardware, or actually being okay with the dreaded Walled Garden (Bzzzzzzt! Not allowed for Orthodox Slashdot Readers and Posters).
Nope, it's just to look like a hipster.
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yep only reason
Apple supplier, better than a union (Score:2)
In China, workers don't need unions, they just need to be an Apple supplier, and get China Labor Watch to give them a poor report on workplace conditions. Then, the world will force Apple to force the supplier to address the issues (or hide them better).
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And then Apple will then take the world on and declare themselves to be the police on Chinese labor, and be able to shut down any factory that is not up to Apple's standards.
Apple will walk into whatever factory Samsung uses, conduct a surprise audit, and de
Pegatron (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Apple does not. A supplier that Apple uses, Pegatron, does.
I know Apple generates more page views than Pegatron but can we please try for a vague hint of accuracy in the article summaries.
EA Developers flooding their HR (Score:1)
Came to see comments about EA developers flooding into facility to work only sixty hours a week!
Why focus on Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Page hits.
Re:Why focus on Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two reasons.
First, customer base. HP is a rather boring company, and most of their customers are medium and large businesses bulk-purchasing hardware. They couldn't care less about some workers in China, but they do care about the pricing. Apple, OTOH, has more individual customers, and in particular a large number of that type of vegan "fair trade" coffee drinking hipster. This is precisely the kind of audience that can be efficiently targeted with emotional appeal, and would respond to it by pushing back onto the company.
Second, finances. Apple is widely known as a wildly successful technological company. With the kinds of profits that they report every quarter, they can't say that their margins are too low, or something along those lines.
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no one buys HP though
Shill (Score:2)
Stop placing blame on people who are kept ignorant to the practices and lied to. Every time something like this comes out, consumers are first told "No wayz, we would never hurt people to make profits" which turns into "we are investigating" when more evidence is provided, and finally "we are fixing it" when they can't deny problems any further.
It's like blaming unions for the downfall of companies while exec's get multi-million dollar bonuses. It's illogical to put the blame there, but you tow the party
Only one employee? (Score:2)
So Apple has only one worker in all of China?
If not, then surely it should be "Chinese worker abuse claims".
Why is constantly Apple vilified for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the actions of the Pegatron Group, a separate company from Apple that like FoxConn is a contractor. So why is it claimed that Apple that is mistreating workers? And why the exclusive focus on Apple when other high profile tech companies, including direct competitors who use these same companies with workers receiving the same treatment at those plants?
I suppose the most likely reason is because Apple is seen as the lead brand in consumer technology, and by slamming Apple in the press, they prompt Apple into action, but it also seems that by focusing on Apple, they unfairly saddle Apple with the cost of fixing this than the industry as a whole.
Re:Why is constantly Apple vilified for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the difference in projected traffic volume for an article with the headline
"Pegatron faces China worker abuse claim"
vs.
"Apple faces new China worker abuse claim"
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So why is it claimed that Apple that is mistreating workers?
Stop it. Do you really think Apple is invested in ensuring the quality of life of the people? Besides, they made the commitment FTFA: "Apple is committed to providing safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain. "
If Apple was serious about getting these conditions improved, they would be proactive about, not reactive. They only do something about it when they get bad press about it and then they basically hire a 3rd party to say "Oh, everything is OK. It's just a handful of troublemakers j
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If Apple was serious about getting these conditions improved, they would be proactive about, not reactive. They only do something about it when they get bad press about it and then they basically hire a 3rd party to say "Oh, everything is OK. It's just a handful of troublemakers jumping off the building to make Apple look bad"
From what I hear, they are quite proactive actually. They just didn't tell the world until accusation, including some completely made up accusations, kept flying at them.
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So what you are saying is that they are incompetent. They try hard, but fail.
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Californians want to have their cake and eat it too. And the worst part is, this culture of absolute idealism that much of California embodies is spreading.
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Oh, and before anybody tells me it's a New York-based "watchdog" group, Apple's based in California, and it's Californians who're most up in arms about these kinds of things.
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Californians get to have their cake and eat it too.
Fixed that for you. Stay away from this place. Earthquakes, wildfires, and mudslides every day. Gays always trying to marry you. Beautiful women forced to take actressing jobs. Really, you don't want to come here.
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Two reasons.
Apple claims to be making an effort to prevent this kind of abuse, yet here is solid evidence that they are either failing to do so or lying.
Apple pay these companies to do work for them. Rather than doing it themselves they employ others. Just because they are not on Apple's payroll directly does not mean Apple bares some responsibility for their actions.
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...yet here is "solid" "evidence" that they are either failing to do so or lying.
FTFY
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Want to hurt Chinese workers? Improve Conditions. (Score:2, Interesting)
The country I live in (USA, you may have heard of it) once counted abundant, low cost labor as a comparative economic advantage. At that time, we exploited this advantage, which resulted in a sustained economic boom, accompanied by exploding output, and eventually the creation of a middle class. Our middle class then organized themselves and enforced much better working conditions. This eliminated our labor cost advantage, but we were able to make do with productivity improvements and a shift to services.
Im
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Those who criticize Chinese working conditions are either ignorant of economics and history or have an agenda to hold China back.
Well, yes. Many of the people demanding 'better working conditions' in China seem to believe that, if they can increase manufacturing costs in China, manufacturing jobs will magically return to America. In reality, they'll go elsewhere in Asia, and most work that does return to America will be done by machines.
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Well, yes. Many of the people demanding 'better working conditions' in China seem to believe that, if they can increase manufacturing costs in China, manufacturing jobs will magically return to America. In reality, they'll go elsewhere in Asia, and most work that does return to America will be done by machines.
It's actually a quite perverted point of view that better working conditions would have to increase cost. For example, improving worker safety and having fewer accidents reduces costs. Having a clean workplace makes it easier to produce items that pass quality control than dirty workplaces. Sexism, racism, or just plain bullying in the workplace doesn't exactly make workers more productive. Excessive overtime increases cost because the work is done by exhausted workers who can't concentrate and therefore wo
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Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed. A well-meaning effort to improve the lives of a few then would have hurt the quality of life for many later.
Your equation is faulty, because you use words like "few" and "many" on a very ad-hoc basis without quantifying them. Why, exactly, would "few" be affected, and not the entire worker base? And why should those "few" be forced to sacrifice their life quality for the sake of some other "many"? If you know anything about the history of sweatshops in US and Europe, those places were real hell; we'd probably consider them outright torture in some cases, in fact.
And the abundance of cheap labor, aside from a "sus
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We cheer on labor rights in China, but complain about unions in the US. Maybe it's the balance, I don't know. But, it seems hypocritical.
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We cheer on labor rights in China, but complain about unions in the US. Maybe it's the balance, I don't know. But, it seems hypocritical.
US unions seem to be among the biggest cheerleaders for 'labor rights' in China, presumably becuase they're the ones who expect to benefit from increasing Chinese manufacturing costs.
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Re:Want to hurt Chinese workers? Improve Condition (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed.
That is far from an indisputable argument:
1. Working conditions in the UK were not all that different from working conditions in the US over the same period. For example, child labor was legal in both the US and the UK until well into the 20th century.
2. An overall growth in wealth does not necessarily create a middle class - you also need the distribution of that wealth to be even enough that those who are not members of the investor class are not living hand-to-mouth. If you want an example of a rising tide not really lifting all boats, look at what happened to GDP versus wage growth [lanekenworthy.net] since 1975.
3. You're completely ignoring trade unions and government regulation, both of which changed policies dramatically.
4. I'm not sure which period of the middle class you're talking about, but if it's the one from the 1950's, you also have to factor in the lack of able-bodied men and the G.I. Bill.
5. There was another significant comparative advantage in play for the US in the 1880's: Many of the raw materials for the products of US factories were from the US, so manufacturing in the US cut transportation costs. If you're raising cattle in Colorado, it's far easier to make that into ground beef in Chicago than it is to ship cattle to Birmingham. If you're mining iron in upper Michigan, it makes more sense to do your smelting in Cleveland or Detroit than it does to ship it to Bath before smelting.
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Alternatively you might just have become like Germany, where manufacturing is strong but wages are reasonable and conditions are generally good. You might have moved towards the kind of service economy you have now. After all, the way the UK would have "meddled" would have been though consumers demanding products that are ethically manufactured, and by being willing to pay for them. Apple products are quite expensive anyway, but even with things like basic foodstuffs people are willing to pay for Fair Trade
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What's the price of a Fair Trade iPhone? (Score:1)
I think a lot of this hand-wringing is just masturbation unless we can see what something like an iPhone completely made in the USA or under Fair Trade conditions would cost. It's easy to for a Westerner to feel righteous indignation about these working conditions in China. However, I want to see how many people will put their money where their mouth is when they are required to pay based upon first world manufacturing costs.
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I think a lot of this hand-wringing is just masturbation unless we can see what something like an iPhone completely made in the USA or under Fair Trade conditions would cost. It's easy to for a Westerner to feel righteous indignation about these working conditions in China. However, I want to see how many people will put their money where their mouth is when they are required to pay based upon first world manufacturing costs.
$20 more. It would cost about $20 more to have built it paying Us labor wages. There were a flurry of articles on this last year, but the short version is it's not labor costs, it's labor conditions. Specifically that in China, you can wake up the Pullman town stuff in the middle of the night and make them work double shifts at the drop of a hat, without and meaningful (by US standards) worker protections. The Chinese aren't better or faster or even much cheaper, but they'll be obedient little serfs and the
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IIRC, when they calculated the price of a US-made iPhone, it ended up being something like ~$150 more expensive. That's pretty reasonable. Not to mention that Apple itself makes insane profit on that hardware (didn't they end up with $100 billion in the bank not so long ago?), and there's no reason why they couldn't pay back a little bit more of that to the workers who, you know, actually produce the damn things.
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For $150 more, you would get a shit-ton of goodwill by building them here in the US. Since most people get these phones financed by their cell phone companies, you wouldn't even notice the difference.
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For $150 more, you would get a shit-ton of goodwill by building them here in the US. Since most people get these phones financed by their cell phone companies, you wouldn't even notice the difference.
Unlikely. There was a business analyst on a Canadian news show just last week saying how he's not going to buy the next iPhone because he's not going to drop $900 on a new one. Never mind that this guy is a company chairman and venture capitalist who wouldn't think twice about such a small cost, so his righteous indignation was laughable. Also never mind he was referring to the highest-end iPhone, and that the entry-level one is $700 unsubsidized, and that the fully subsidized one is around $170 here.
So for
Countdown for Apple announcing new factory site... (Score:2)
Plenty of dirt poor Asian countries full of workers who aren't going to cry about better treatment. If they're willing to wait 10 years, I'm sure they could relocate to Michigan for even cheaper!
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the apple can buy up a huge part of detroit, privatize the DPD, and augment a police officer to take a bite out of crime.
And he never wanted this.
Apple and the Pegatron Group .. (Score:2)
What other western companies do business with the Pegatron Group and why is Apple only singled out for attention by China Labor Watch?
Sounds like a vindication of Mike Daisey (Score:2)
Even if there were some questionable rendering of the facts, Mr. Daisey seems to be spot on about Chinese factories. China has only proven - since the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4th 1989 - that they are only interested in giving favor and freedom to multinationals while denying freedom to their own people.
That said:
It seems like the factories in China would rather smear anyone who questions their practices, and hope that their US-side clients come to the rescue if it goes global. Failing that, they go to
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Even if there were some questionable rendering of the facts, Mr. Daisey seems to be spot on about Chinese factories.
With Mr. Daisey, there was no "questionable rendering of the facts". What he did was purely made up, based on his prejudices and what he thought would get him audiences, with complete disregard to any facts.
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that they are only interested in giving favor and freedom to multinationals while denying freedom to their own people.
If they were free, they'd probably have someone else in charge. Can't have that now can we?
Only reason Apple or any other corp. (Score:1)
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You're right, Apple is clearly the big issue here.
There are no other tech companies that use foxconn and pegatron (oh wait, no, pretty much every tech company in the world goes via these factories).
All the other tech companies do much more to check out the conditions where things are being produced (oh wait, no, Apple are the ones sending teams in to check out what's going on, in randomized inspections, and actually canceling factories' contracts).
Apple aren't moving manufacturing to
Who is better then? (Score:2, Insightful)
What the world needs to realize is that no pun intended, Apple is rotten to the core
Why?
Apple is the only technical company to actually provide reports on factory conditions, and impose worker limits on factories assembling for them.
If you think Apple is rotten, why are you not out complaining about EVERY other technical compan, which is far worse?
Whatever you are typing on was produced under worse conditions than Apple assembly workers face. The same is true of whatever display you are looking at, and the
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::Apple is the only technical company to actually provide reports on factory conditions, and impose worker limits on factories assembling for them. Nice of them. Of course, those same condition would be illegal in the US. They are still terrible condiions in china, report or no report.
What conditions exactly would be illegal in the USA? There may some minimum wage, but that is based relative to the cost of living, which is a lot lower in China. For example, do you think it would be illegal to offer cheap housing in dorms, which makes it possible for workers to safe more than half their wages?
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What conditions exactly would be illegal in the USA?
In the USA, it is illegal for a 16 year old to work in a factory that uses "industrial equipment". A 16 year old can work in an office, or a fast food joint, but they cannot operate a fork lift or an assembly robot. If the 16 year old is just assembling an iPad with normal hand tools, or even safe power tools like an electric screw driver, that would probably be okay in the USA. The only exception to underage workers operating dangerous equipment is farm labor, which is exempted from many safely rules.
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Of course, those same condition would be illegal in the US
No they wouldn't. Hours worked, conditions worked in, all would be legal in the U.S. and in fact some workers here have it worse (farm workers for example).
They are still terrible condiions in china, report or no report.
But they are worse for all of the other companies except for Apple. because other companies are not even checking. That is my point. No matter how bad conditions of people working on Apple products are, they are X times worse for p