Apple is Lobbying Against a Bill Aimed at Stopping Forced Labor in China (washingtonpost.com) 87
Apple lobbyists are trying to weaken a new law aimed at preventing forced labor in China, the Washington Post reported Friday, citing two congressional staffers familiar with the matter, highlighting the clash between its business imperatives and its official stance on human rights. From the report: The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, where academic researchers estimate the Chinese government has placed more than 1 million people into internment camps. Apple is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and human rights reports have identified instances in which alleged forced Uighur labor has been used in Apple's supply chain.
The staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks with the company took place in private meetings, said Apple was one of many U.S. companies that oppose the bill as it's written. They declined to disclose details on the specific provisions Apple was trying to knock down or change because they feared providing that knowledge would identify them to Apple. But they both characterized Apple's effort as an attempt to water down the bill. "What Apple would like is we all just sit and talk and not have any real consequences," said Cathy Feingold, director of the international department for the AFL-CIO, which has supported the bill. "They're shocked because it's the first time where there could be some actual effective enforceability."
The staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks with the company took place in private meetings, said Apple was one of many U.S. companies that oppose the bill as it's written. They declined to disclose details on the specific provisions Apple was trying to knock down or change because they feared providing that knowledge would identify them to Apple. But they both characterized Apple's effort as an attempt to water down the bill. "What Apple would like is we all just sit and talk and not have any real consequences," said Cathy Feingold, director of the international department for the AFL-CIO, which has supported the bill. "They're shocked because it's the first time where there could be some actual effective enforceability."
Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:5, Insightful)
when you can't use borderline slave labor there's no point in outsourcing the job.
For Apple, there was no real need to outsource the job at the prices (and profit margins) that trillion-dollar company has been enjoying for well over a decade now. Of all the companies out there, they can certainly afford the switch to domestic manufacturing.
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> they can certainly afford the switch to domestic manufacturing.
The issue is about the _cost incurred for verification_ that certain conditions are true.
Even with this law enacted, Apple will have some manufacturing done overseas.
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Agreed. This reminds me of a Leslie Stahl piece for 60 Minutes about car manufacturing. She pointed to two of the same cars. I'm not positive but it might have been Toyota.
One was made with foreign parts but assembled in the U.S.
The other was assembled outside the U.S. but had U.S. parts.
Which do you buy?
There's always a need (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: There's always a need (Score:2)
All those woke customers of Apple, too.
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investors demand maximum return on investment. Any CEO who doesn't bring maximum return will be replaced. So unless you legislate they will always make use of the cheapest labor they can get.
The US company will follow US laws when engaging in labor practices. That should be held the world over. Greed should not be allowed to create inhumane working conditions anywhere. Stepping up oversight should prevent that.
Sad that we employees are trained regularly on morals and ethics in business, and then find anything but when it comes to justifying unethical profits.
Re:Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not saying we shouldn't do this. Just pointing out it would require a whole new regulatory regime that currently doesn't exist, because there is no mechanism for tracing the provenance of parts and supplies like this.
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Labour cost isn't the issue, supply chain is. China has the world's best supply chain for this stuff. Taiwan is great too but practically part of the China chain.
Point is that moving manufacturing back to the US would mostly be a question of assembling stuff imported anyway. It takes months to ship to the US so if there is a problem you are already months into it with stock and can't just switch to someone else overnight. Even just getting samples back to the factory or those guys over to see the problem fi
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This is why it was always a bad idea to export our manufacturing to China. At some point we were always going to have to move it back, because China was never going to change its ways over trade. If a big percentage of their population dies because we stop sending them food for example, they'll just double down on nationalism and blame it all on us, saying there's nothing they could have done.
Re:Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:5, Informative)
And yet the bill was sponsored by a Democrat, and was passed by the House, with 230 Yea's from Democrats, 176 from Republicans. 2 Republicans voted Nay. 2 Democrats and 20 Republicans didn't vote.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/... [house.gov]
I'm not sure how much credit I would give to the Trump administration over it.
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go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms,"
What does that even mean? What are they going to do in classrooms?
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As opposed to the family connections the Bush family had with the Bin Laden family?
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Re: Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:2)
Remember, Trump told Xi he thought what China was doing to the Uighurs was the right thing to do. . . .
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when you can't use borderline slave labor there's no point in outsourcing the job.
Well, I'm thinking that a reverse contra-positive converse of the inverse H1-B solution would work here:
1) China wants to get rid of their Uyghurs.
2) The US is big on privately run prisons.
3) Apple opens a privately run Uyghur H1-B private factory/internment prison camp in the Nevada desert.
4) China gets rid of its Uyghurs by shipping them to the US.
5) Apple can now claim that its products are manufactured in the US.
6) Even more profit!
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Communism requires slavery of minorities.
You really do like making shit up out of nothing, don't you? Plenty of minorities in Vietnam and Cuba, and yet no slaves. There were plenty in Nicaragua, but no slaves there either.
Now if you stay true to form you'll make up some shit with no documentation and declare it the gospel truth.
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By all the gods, check your sources and verify that they're not US State Department toadies (they are in this case) or Project Mockingbird alumni. Good grief.
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Communism requires slavery of minorities.
Good up to that point.
Re: Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:2)
True, just nix the "of minorities" part and you've described how communism works.
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While they're not the actual marx or even mao definition of communism, they still represent what communism ultimately becomes 100% of the time it is implemented. Marx's own philosophy is fundamentally at odds with democracy, namely because he believes that it is necessary to overthrow democracy and take everybody's stuff in a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that supposedly slowly withers away...until it doesn't.
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That's roughly 2/3 of China's factory labor force. Their "migrant laborers" are borderline slaves. For example, they are often forbidden from buying and renting closer to work because the gov't wants to avoid crowded cities. Thus, they have to live in roach motels and trains, often going long stretches without seeing their families. And unions are either forbidden or de-clawed by the gov't.
Uyghur's are only one of multiple lab
Re: Laws like this are how you bring jobs back (Score:2)
Doesn't the USA also have forced labor?
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And they will (Score:3, Informative)
because the only thing apple cares about is making money.
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because the only thing every for-profit company on the planet cares about is making money.
FTFY, since it was rather necessary to point out the obvious.
Apple sure as shit doesn't make China's world go 'round all by themselves...
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Wrong. There are many for-profit companies out there which hold other goals to be more important. My dad could have expanded his business but said, "I'd have to spend all my time in meetings, I'd rather be out in the field swinging a hammer."
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But his company still made money, and if it failed to do that your dad would try to find new ways for it to make money.
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Probably, but it wasn't the **only** consideration, like you declared.
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Probably, but it wasn't the **only** consideration, like you declared.
Uh, there is no "probably" about it. He would have either found other ways to keep a company profitable, or he would have shut the company down. In that way, there IS only one consideration. You run a business to be profitable. Otherwise, it's a hobby. Your Dad likely preferred to be out there "swinging a hammer" because that is what actually made money.
As I said, what every for-profit company in the world expects. Some are simply far greedier than others, but every for-profit company is measured the
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His profit goal was to pay himself enough to cover the mortgage and end the year as close to $0 as possible so that he wasn't required to pay corporate taxes. If there was money left over he generally bought tools and/or gave my brother and I a bonus. Call it a hobby if you want, the corporate charter was just the thing that allowed him go build interesting, challenging, and beautiful things.
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His profit goal was to pay himself enough to cover the mortgage and end the year as close to $0 as possible so that he wasn't required to pay corporate taxes. If there was money left over he generally bought tools and/or gave my brother and I a bonus. Call it a hobby if you want, the corporate charter was just the thing that allowed him go build interesting, challenging, and beautiful things.
Thank you for sharing. Sounds like your father worked hard and was likely blessed with a bit of good fortune in his business to be able to nurture creativity like that. So many dreams are crushed by the weight of a shitty reality that can often force the artist, to cease being an artist.
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Same for most companies. :(
Slavery is one thing everyone should oppose (Score:5, Insightful)
This is pretty vile by Apple, and the other companies listed on that opposition.
There is no excuse for this stance. So what if this stance causes some other problems due to how these supply/labour chains work, you can't pick and choose the slavery aspects you do and don't want.
Now this is in the open, you need to be clear, and very soon, about what the problem you have with this bill is. I'd hope it was because some politician was side-loading their own personal China-issues into the bill, muddying it. But now this is out, no way to stay silent. Out with it.
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This is pretty vile by Apple, and the other companies listed on that opposition.
So is pointless warmongering for Greeds sake, but hey we humans have been killing each other for thousands of years now.
Damn. Already forgot what point you were trying to make. Probably had something to do with morals and ethics in 21st Century capitalism...
You must be new to capitalism. (Score:3)
Slavery is one thing everyone should oppose
There is no excuse for this stance.
Umm... do you not know about Anti-Social Personality Disorder? (aka sociopathy/psychopathy)
This is how publicly traded corporations behave as a whole. Nobody has to take responsibility for everything, just hire people that do not give a fuck about who they hurt with the very small responsibility they do have. Someone has scruples? Replace them with someone who doesn't and your stock price will increase. The directors job is to increase the stock price, right? Was your evil plan exposed? Mothball it, t
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Perspective: Government is responsible for more death and misery that spans as far back as human history has recorded.
Better perspective: authoritarian governments and dictatorships are responsible for more death and misery that spans as far back as human history has recorded.
Corporations are a lesser evil.
Corporations are dictatorships with no mandate to take care of the welfare of their employees. Between a representative governments and corporations, corporations are the greater evil.
Don't jump to conclusions (Score:2)
Hold on a sec, we don't know what specifically they are objecting to. They are not against the concept itself, just something in the proposed law text. It's prudent to withhold judgment until we know more. As we techie's know, the devil's often in the details. Give people time to "debug" the law text.
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This is pretty vile by Apple
Hold on a sec, we don't know what specifically they are objecting to. They are not against the concept itself, just something in the proposed law text.
But Apple's not willing to come out and say what they're objecting to, and the only real reason for that is that what they're objecting to is something that they are evil for objecting to it. Apple virtue signals constantly, for example crowing about how they're the only ones who allegedly don't abuse your data, so there's no reason for them to be quiet on this issue unless they're up to something malicious.
A Bad Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporations aren't moral entities, their goal is to maximize profits. Leveraging forced labor in countries which suppress freedom of speech is OK if this maximizes profits. Employing lobbyists is OK to maximize profits. However the people associated with these decisions are moral entities and they and their families should be ashamed and uncomfortable with this approach. Chinese people are generally nice people however any Government which suppresses freedom of speech and freedom of the press is prone to excesses and judgements which benefits them and theirs rather than the public good.
Democracies aren't perfect, just look at Trump however they're better than the alternatives.
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However the people associated with these decisions are moral entities and they and their families should be ashamed and uncomfortable with this approach.
The people associated with these decisions were hired specifically because they aren't uncomfortable with this approach. Corporations optimize out scruples.
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Corporations aren't moral entities, their goal is to maximize profits.
The goal of corporations might be to maximize profits, but the goal of the corporate decision makers is to maximize personal income by maximizing the increase in stock price. A corporation that earns a lot of steady profit is useless for a CEO that earns most of his income via stock grants. That's why corporate decisions are guided by short-term decisions that pump up the stock price. That's why corporations buy back stock instead of making investments. That's why future cost cutting is required, even i
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That's a choice, not a given - non-profit corporations are a clear counterexample, and there's no law or regulation that says you have to be either non-profit or money-grubbing. If a company was established and made it clear consistently and from the beginning that it placed, say, social good above profit-making, it can do that.
Given that companies are allowed to make moral decisions affecting their employees and are allowed to partic
It's hearsay. Don't get all worked up (Score:5, Informative)
Two unnamed congressional staffers said they thought they might know what Apple was thinking.
We don't know about the proposed bill, or what Apple may or may not object to, or why.
We do have unsubstantiated jumps to the worst possible motivations on Apple's part.
There's no story here (yet).
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We do have unsubstantiated jumps to the worst possible motivations on Apple's part.
There's no story here (yet).
You remembered to sound authoritative - that's critical when you've got nothing to work with; well done.
This is pretty low (Score:2)
I can *understand* if they were against some environmental regulation or outsourcing issues. But this is plain old slavery, and there could be no moral or economical argument against it.
Okay, maybe they would think competitors like Chinese firms would take advantage. But then we can also mount a backlash to those firms as well.
There should be no place for forced labor in this day and age. Plain and simple.
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The reason conditions for the lower sectors of the economy have been worsening in the last 50 years is that our people are competing with slave labour in who will produce with the least costs.
There's an obvious winner to this race and it isn't the worker.
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There are around 40 million people worldwide still enslaved (for various definitions of slavery) today. The vast majority of them are in Africa. Are you sure that's the reason?
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And we collectively allow it to happen by continuing to trade with these countries. If the "west" would take a stand against slavery, it would make a huge difference but we won't because American is all about business above all.
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Helped the above emerge? Slavery is at the lowest point in history, but the hell if the IMF and WB had any part in that. Their function is to destroy economies and to ensure that the client countries sell their national assets to corporations for pennies. Any role in the reduction of the number of slaves worldwide would have been accidental at best.
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After all, barely subsisting workers with next to no rights are a great way to reduce the cost of production and ensure you can keep making usurious loan repayments to the above institutions.
And when you get a politician that actually stands against it... well, have a look at how Thomas Sankara ended.
Re: This is pretty low (Score:2)
Doesn't the USA have forced labor?
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Yes... Technically slavery is not abolished for the prison population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: ..."
This isn't Apple being vile, but reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
"Apple lobbyists are trying to weaken a new law aimed at preventing forced labor in China ...
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers"
This is a case of intent vs. results. The intent may be noble -- to reduce or eliminate forced labor in western China -- but a law by no means guarantees such a thing will occur.
Here's what Apple sees: increased cost and effort trying to certify their circuitous supply chain while competitors Huawei, Xiaomi, and others continue their current manufacturing practices unabated.
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If you don't like the way the Chinese do business, don't do business with the Chinese.
If you don't like the way Apple does business, stop buying Apple products.
Simple.
ah, yes (Score:2)
Why should Apple certify that it uses slave-free cotton in its products when its competitors are using the cotton picked by slaves in the confederate states?
It could be a competitive disadvantage. It's unfair to fay wages for labor when your competitors are getting their labor for free.
YOU don't have to use slave labor; you're free to pay more and buy slavery-free products, but it's none of your business if others use it. It's simple: let the markets sort it out.
See how that works?
There is no argument here
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Sounds like business as usual. Woke people don't mind slavery so long as it isn't in front of them. Conservatives are just as bad but neither has any room to speak.
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Here's what Apple sees: increased cost and effort trying to certify their circuitous supply chain while competitors Huawei, Xiaomi, and others continue their current manufacturing practices unabated.
I'll give you 10 minutes to think and realize why this is total bullshit.
So how exactly is this bill not going to affect every company importing into the US? Whether it's Apple, Foxconn or Huawei, if their products contain parts made by slaves, they will be sanctioned. The bill does not discriminate against US-based companies. If anything, it somewhat favors them, because US-based companies should have an easier time not making shit in China, unlike Huawei who are pretty much forced to, by the CCP.
Its business (Score:2)
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Your sig should end with
"Bloody Mary, full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pay for me now".
Key sentence from the article. (Score:2)
"Because China has transferred Uighur Muslims out of Xinjiang to work in other parts of the country, human rights advocates say it may be difficult for any U.S. company operating in China to ensure it isn’t benefiting, even indirectly, from forced labor."
Who's going to certify this? The AFL-CIO?
Let me state the obvious (Score:1)
Ahhhh.. classic Apple. Evil as fuck.
Stay hungry (Score:1)
Of course they are! (Score:2)
Forced labor is the cheapest, like prisoners here in the US. Of course, the only crime the Uyghurs commited was being a Muslim minority.
Re: Of course they are! (Score:2)
So, no terrorism then? Lol. Right.
Now about Apple... (Score:2)
Slave labor makes Apple wealthy (Score:1)