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So It Is A Sweatshop After All
One would think workers commit suicide out of enjoyment at their labor conditions. One would be wrong. From Bloomberg:
- FOXCONN AUDITOR FINDS ‘SERIOUS’ VIOLATIONS OF CHINA LABOR LAWS
- FOXCONN AUDITOR FINDS CASES OF EMPLOYEES WORKING TOO MANY HOURS
- FOXCONN PLEDGES TO CUT WORKING HOURS, GIVE EMPLOYEES OVERSIGHT
So China does have labor laws... In other news, more margin contraction for companies reliant on Foxconn slave labor... pardon... delightful work conditions.
From CNN:
A heavily anticipated report on working conditions at Apple supplier Foxconn documents dozens of major labor-rights violations, including excessive overtime, unpaid wages and salaries that aren't enough to cover basic living expenses.
More than 60% of the workers at three of Apple supplier Foxconn's factories in China say their wages fall short of their basic needs, according to a report released Thursday by auditors from the Fair Labor Association. The FLA is a watchdog group hired by Apple to audit its overseas suppliers.
The average monthly salaries at the plants range from 2,257 RMB in Chengdu -- around $358 in U.S. dollars -- to 2,872 RMB (USD $455) in Guanlan.
A team from the FLA, an independent labor-rights organization, arrived last month at the vast Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China, known as Foxconn City, to conduct a voluntary audit commissioned by Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500). Thursday's report, which the FLA said is the first of many, covered three factories in Guanlan, Longhua and Chengdu.
The team surveyed 35,500 employees at those factories about their working and living conditions, including their compensation and working hours. The audit also included inspection of manufacturing areas, dormitories and other facilities.
The FLA's report says Foxconn has agreed to work with the group to remedy many of the violations it recorded. In one key move, Foxconn says it will achieve "full legal compliance" with Chinese work-hour laws by July 1, 2013. To do that, Foxconn will need to hire "tens of thousands" of extra workers to offset its current employees' workload, the FLA said.
In a written response to the FLA's audit, Apple said: "We appreciate the work the FLA has done to assess conditions at Foxconn and we fully support their recommendations. We think empowering workers and helping them understand their rights is essential."
The company added: "Our team has been working for years to educate workers, improve conditions and make Apple's supply chain a model for the industry, which is why we asked the FLA to conduct these audits. We share the FLA's goal of improving lives and raising the bar for manufacturing companies everywhere."
Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling in China this week and visited an iPhone production line in Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant. Apple on Wednesday released photos of his visit, but did not provide any further details.
And now we expect a NYT Op-Ed from a former Foxconn worker explaining just what Jim Hanson term the firm uses to refer to its clients.
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Big suprise.
Sounds like a great place to work........if you like being a slave.
AAPL kills... or makes you kill yourself.
if you're not happy with work conditions do you:
1). jump off the roof
2). hand in your notice
presumably Answer 1 is natures way of culling the village idiots
I think it would be great if they all quit....not quite so good I imagine for Apple earnings though.
"Last Train Home" - The Video Documentary Of The Human Cost Behind China's Stunning Growth Story
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/last-train-home-video-documentary-human-cost-behind-chinas-stunning-growth-story
?2500/mo is quite normal for unskilled labor in China. I'm guessing the real pinch is in overtime hours and the probable lack of pay therein. Remember, these employers provide housing and sometimes food for their employees.
Cots and bowls of rice in a room shared with four others is not exactly fantastic, you must be thinking of great living conditions in India.
Better than sleeping in the gutter.
So according to Hamurabacommie they get free living quarters and free food? Shiite throw them on a boat and bark commands at them and they will be in the US Navy
and I am sure your masters at the fema camp will house and "feed" you well.
Silver Tree -- the problemo with moaners like you (and greens and lefty loons in general) is you're always "counting the cost" (not very well actually as lefties are crap at maths) but you're not counting the positives
Of the billions of Chinese now enjoying the fruits of economic expansion and modernisation would you say they'd think theyve gained many (many) more positives/gains than negatives/costs from this period of economic growth?
maybe you'd like a reverse back into bankrupt, rationed, bleak-future Communist hell?
Why don't you mind your own business and let the Chinese people sort their own affairs out eh?
Having an American company participate in the sort of shit makes us all complicit. If we look back at American labor struggles, it was violent and harsh at best. My ancestors suffered though hell to get better conditions. They fought in foreign wars and dealt with trials beyond what most US citizens understand today. To sit and watch a US company treat their employees like this so a few assholes can get richer sickens me beyond all belief.
Not to mention it creates contempt for these companies and ultimately, us. Little world wars have been started with just a spark.
There, fixed it for you.
Oh you don't purchase Apple products?
Your hands are washed clean. Indeed, totally washed clean.
I wonder, do you include forced unpaid labour - internships - as "fruits of economic expansion" enjoyed by young Chinese people?
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/2/15/foxconn-s-other-dirty-secret-the-w...
Zero Govt: you're right of course, but don't expect many of the illiterati around here to agree with you.
A mass walk-off would be unlikely, but AMAZING!, and beautiful. Seriously, what do they have to lose?
Their "cake".
Amazing if your shot or starve to death.
Worst sentence of the day award … Spelling and punctuation matter.
You can't hand in your notice if you're in hock to the "company store." Luckily Tyler doesn't "cull" people for mocking the plight of mere Industrial Age serfs, who don't have the wisdom and sophistication of armchair political philosophers such as yourself.
I routinely work more than 60 hours a week and my wages fall short of meeting my needs, but nobody seems to give a shit.
precisely
maybe if the cue of moaners above could set up a company, shower their employees in gifts, and show us all how it's done
regards "my ancestors fought for better work conditions" i'm more worried there's so many conditions for employees the unemployment cues are patent evidence of how the West has priced, pampered and legislated itself to death out of a job
maybe these moaners should be more worried about homes jobless than Chinas employed
Toots speaks!
http://annoyanidiot.blogspot.com/2012/03/toots-speaks.html
didn't foxconn recently raise wages by 25%? I guess they didn't do anything about the working conditions though. It's amazing how great marketing and design can cause people to ignore the fact that the product they're buying was made by people enduring dickensian conditions.
"But Apple products are soooooooo shiny :D...."
Hard to believe a corporation disregarded the laws....never seen that here in America.....mmmmmm....shocking!
It's not because China has labor laws. China has all kinds of laws, but in pratice, they are worth a spit. What matters is the dictate from the leaders.
Is it a coincidence that the auditors suddenly found out all those violations at Foxconn a day after China's Vice Premier (successor to Premier Wen) Li Keqiang made a comment hoping Apple have more humanitarian concerns for employees?
You don't like it, off to the re-education camp for you comrade.
.
OK, now I understand. Chinese labor laws are like American financial laws.
Who would of guessed! I've boycotted Apple products for a long time. Horribly corrupt company when you do your research.
http://ericsprott.blogspot.ca/
If you think Apple is bad, you should boycott clothing because close to 100% of it is made in factories with much worse conditions than Foxconn.
my friend's sister makes $74/hr on the computer. She has been out of a job for seven months but last month her check was $17871 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this site .... http://bit.ly/wYpMrv
Tyler, please remove this spamming fuckwad.
Maybe this is what they meant when they were talking about spending some of their reserves.
Buy APPL, quick!
FREE TIBET! OH but hold on there, dont harm my Apple stock value!
Heh heh....stupid Apple hippie hypocrites.
Is that from the Onion, "China Labor Laws" say what?
Its gotta be REAL grim if it violates Chinas labor laws..sheesh.
...just what I was thinking....
Actually I'm kinda surprised that China has labor laws
iExploit
iApplied for the iJob
don't like it, fuck off
iForced to iNtern for zero wages. iSlave.
iLeave or iStick
Make your mind up mate, you want the job or not?
I'm sure the street will be outraged and sell Apple in absolute disgust...or, you know - not give a shit. Closet indexers don't have the luxury of morals.
I guess its just not a fashionable hippie cause to protest slave sweatshops, no colored ribbon for this one when you own the stock in the fashionable hip product made by slaves in deplorable conditions. World awash in hypocrisy.
real "hippies" don't do gadgets, iHipSters do though - it's about being seen as fashionable, which old school hippies were always set against.
I feel sorry for the Chinese workers. With Europe and North American consumer markets contracting further, their labor conditions are not likely to improve anytime soon. This is a recipe for desaster. Revolution in China to the tune of hundreds of millions of people.. might be a good idea to stop watching the News when it happens.
China has labor laws?!?
Of course they do...if you don't labor, you are breaking the law
China apparently has a great 'labor market'....ours is 'improving' which I guess means soon to match Chinas at $1/per day hard labor. Hooray for labor markets.
Before taxes right?
Corporations using prison labor are not even paying that.
Tis why Henry Ford is one of my Hero's. Gave his men a decent wage. I regret buying an apple product and won't anymore.
If you are making a stand on principle, you had better give up all computers, because Foxconn makes every brand of them, or at least all of the major ones.
Someone find me one that doesn't use components from that company, much less China as a whole. I can't.
quite right TM
...we might ask what tenuous link a Chinese Communist Party official thinks he has between people committing suicide and work conditions after Mao slaughtered/starved over 30 million
Too bad our obscenely bigoted and prejudiced, anti-American Chinese dishwasher troll friend AnAnonymous is far too cowardly to participate in a thread such as this one which dares to show the true face of the People's Republic of Nose-Picking and Roadside Shitting. I would just LOVE to see him blame poor Chinese working conditions on ...... wait for it ...... "US Citizenism"!
i wonder if he is currently displacing conquered Tibetans and confiscating their land for new Han Chinese colonies, or if he is just trolling and blobbing-up other online forums screaming about the manifest dangers of his supposed "US Citizenism", for which can be blamed apparently not only every negative human development since approximately 4000 BC, but also the last Ice Age and the extinction of the dinosaurs as well.
Time-traveling US Citizenism: make me laugh!
Please, don't encourage him. If I never see the phrase "US Citizenism" again it'll be too soon.
If he would demonstrate the courage of his convictions by leaping off the roof of the FoxConn Towers, I would at that point admire his courage, his fortitude and I too would be convinced of his just arguments concerning US Citizenism. Make the leap of faith anon- Your honor demands it!
.
Craftiness of clever Ben Franklin inventionism in the creation of time-traveling 4th July 1776ism is responsible for Mount Vesuvius blobbing up in 79 AD.
But hey, is this the eternal nature of US citizen Pompeiism? Easter Island citizens answered that question a long time ago in an irreversible manner.
You're both right. Something to think about.
Build it. There are hundreds of companies (all asian ) that build very high quality computers and components. China does not have all manufacturing yet.
There's only hippy hypocrits. Bwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh
Plenty of Asian companies build computers. Most don't make the components, which would include Foxconn - they just put stuff together they get from elsewhere. It's a hard business to be in, as just shoving stuff together isn't where the money is, it's a low value-added function, which is why Foxconn pushes so hard on the labor - it's their entire cost, almost, and certaily the only one they have much control over - since they DON'T MAKE THE COMPONENTS. For that, you'd be looking to people like Samsung, Intel, Motshushta, you know, people who make components - even take risks to design new ones and thing like that. Like the guys listed here: http://singaporecompaniesdirectory.com/categories/singapore_semiconducto...
The trouble with racism is that it's really just an excuse for being too lazy or too dumb to make more than blanket judgments based on half truths. A sign of "lazy brain".
Those Foxconn jobs are obiously preferrable to the alternatives.
They do get decent medical, vision & dental. When considering the cost, it's costs alot more than their wages.
You mean my iWare is going to get more expensive? Say it aint so!
Must be a slow news day, markets levitating on nothing - not news - apple is a morally bankrupt company - suddenly news? yaaaaa
Highest paid manufavturing worker 160 Euros a month...16 hours shifts....no breaks...source DW TV
What next? They violate Chinese copyright laws?
CHINA HAS LABOR LAWS?! WHO KNEW?!!!
Question for the group: Is this the same plant that put netting around it so workers couldn't kill themselves by jumping off the roof?
Yes. Exactly the same plant.
The suicide rate for Foxconn employees is much lower than the national average for all Chinese.
Anyway we could increase the suicide rate for all these moaners cring and sobbing about Foxconn?
China is beating us up and taking our lunch money, and you (homos, not you monoloco) are crying for the Workers in China?
China is kicking our ass you anti-logic Commies. One day soon, like the Japanese and the Korean, the Chinese will be making more than we do, who will you sob for then? Nepalese Shoe-Shine boys?
The song remains the same ... WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!!!
Lets cut out the Apple Chinese slave labor assembly lines and assemble IPhones and IPads here with american workers....hello Apple stock at $20. Cant have that though, a lot of hippies have great paper gains on their Apple stocks.
BTW, Apple products sure arent very CHEAP considering it costs Apple about $5 in labor to make an IPad. Weird huh?
Not to mention EMC stock, brocade, HP stock(i know lol cant get much lower). Foxconn makes a lot of stuff for all the big names. Why are we pretendign liek we care about forign work conditions today all of a sudden. No one cared when the first Foxcon employee did a swan dive off the roof, or the second, third, fouth, fifth.......
Well this is not a fashionable cause for hippies, if its the hippies who are rich from the slave labor. Dont worry its not total hypocrisy or anything.
Jobs didnt wear black becuase he was a minimalist. He was actuall the grim reaper for foxconn employees.
Bullshit. I'm a hippie and I think Apple is a total-suck-ripoff. Lazy brain leading to overgeneralization much?
Conman, its simple and selfish, its because we KNOW American labor will only suffer the more we outsource to such low paying countries. This will only bring down our high level of living compared to the rest of the world even further than it has.
We are all gonna end up in femuh camps.
Labor rates aren't nearly low enough in the US for TPTB to make anything here.
So it's conflict or fascism, your choice.
But were the workers wearing hoodies??? Because then this is truly an act of crime.
So anyway I guess 'the correction' spoken of was OK at -100 DOW points...DOW 13,250 is Goldilocks JUST right huh? Oh well we've had our correction, back to DOW 15,000 and beyond I suppose.
Seems to align with the Apple corporate mandate ...Stay hungry, stay fool(ish).
Convenently new iPad is not selling well
I'm still wondering who DIDN'T think they work in sweatshop conditions??
Anyone?
Anyone????
Kind of ironic that we have our own pet FoxConn slave laborer on this board, he sees fit to chime in and casitgate us on just about every subject, BUT! on the actual subject of his 'job' (since slavery isn't really a job is it, more like a sentence or victimization) on his very job where he could give us valuable first hand insight, he seems so strangely silent?
Have you made the tragic leap to your death anon? I shall weep a thousand bitter tears!
Your sound wisdom and your sage and didactic hectoring never again to enlighten me......
(I am inconsolable)
What is truly ironic is that, after saying that Wikipedia is the result of US citizen popular will, AnAnonymous created a Wikipedia page about his theory of US citizenism:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_citizenism
Of course, there is only the Chinese language version of it. If you ask him why he didn't create an English language version of it, he will not answer or else deny all knowledge of it.
Just another example of Chinese citizenism denial and the impossibility to self indict.
Next he'll blame the Mongolians for the problems in Tibet.
Apple.....A Great Chinese Company!!
One of hundreds of famous American companies!
What is Foxconn and who owns it?
It is a redundancy --- we already know that FOX is a con.
So does this mean Steve Jobs hated Chinese, Americans or all humans?
what say you 'real' capitalists?
A real Capitalist would be happy as a happy ending to see international trade, to see free trade, and to see a company like AAPL making products for the sheeples, which most of the haters on here probably use, and doing well.
Theory of comparative advantage. Use the superior mind of SJ, to create the corporate culture and bring the engineers together to make the perfect products (or most popular, things that people actually want, unlike GM "cars", taxes, wars, and Commie bleatings online) Use the high-tech manufacturing facility in China to build/assemble the product at the best low cost/high quality 'point.'
Or he could try to build them in America, and when Jesse Jackson wasn't suing him into bankrupcy, or the TOTUS forcing him to locate the factory in the right spot for Union advantage to quicker bankrupt the company. Or if it were in America it could just be a virtual company that didn't make any products anyone would ever want or use, but it would be a great boondoggle for Unions Bribes Bailouts and ripoffs, they might even take market share from GM
Apple is horrible to treat workers this way.
Sent from my ipad
Gold Trolling my friend. Bravo.
Apple is horrible to treat workers this way.
Sent from my ipad
Kathy Lee was chastised and run out of town on a rail 20 years ago for doing 10000000 times less than what Apple does every single day. Apparently supporting slavery is back en vogue now or does Apple just get a free pass because they are hip and TBTF? It's so hard to keep up on what rules apply to who and when these days. Apparently from what I've gathered, rules only apply when you are an individual or have a market cap under a few million dollars.
It's not supporting slavery, it's coming to an understanding with an alternative labor methodology that provides me pleasurable things in my life.
Wrong, it was because Kathy Lee wouldn't do a nude spread --- if she had just done a nude spread --- everything would have been alright.
Jobs did a nude spread? huh, I must have missed that. . .
Attention all Suicide Vampire Squid of the Great Wal Mart of China Muppets. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/usa-china-weapons-idUSL2E8EQBM020120326
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4wCX253ZEM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCcBnAj_PLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjIjFIGuII&feature=related
Ya know, heard that dickhead, Richard Clarke, former blah, blah, blah security douchebagger, blah, blah, he who made money with those people saying all jobs, all technology and all investment should be offshored to China, now warning us about Chinese cyberwarfare ---- hmmmm... so his "cyber security firm" makes money off of the "solution."
Why is it the same rat-tards who profit from creating the problems --- then try to profit from providing those faux solutions?
Because they are the only ratard scumbags who can get on "the media" --- Foxtard-CNN-NPR-ABC-CBS-PBS-jackoff news?
People can call David Ickes all kinds of crazy --- but he was the first one to describe their strategy -- as far as I'm aware?
The globalists' dream ...
I'm not sure why it's only Apple that gets called out in this Foxconn debacle. Other companies like Dell and HP also use Foxconn produced parts in the PCs and Servers they sell, so they're quite probably equally to blame for the conditions.
I'm not saying don't hate Apple, I'm saying spread the hate equally.
@ForTheWorld
Uh, check out AAPL's market cap? Most people probably assume Dell is bankrupt or something.
Yeah, and why is Apple held in such high esteem, when anyone who knows their ass from their elbow knows that both HP and Dell computers are among the very worst made for any money, much less THE money.
Not one reaches the quality of the junkiest computer I've built over the last couple decades for my business out of good old Asus, Acer, Logitech, Intel, NVidia, and so on, parts from the local chinese gangster PC parts store. Not even close, and in fact, they even cost more than my home assembled ones.
As soon as you make too many of exactly the same thing - the pressure to find ways to cut nickels off each one becomes so insurmountable that no company seems able to resist it, and they all wind up with trash - in Apple's case - high margin, overpriced trash.
You're much better off in the aftermarket for gamers or performance enthusiasts where the extra performance does command a small premium, but that money is something you get somthing for, instead of lining some banker's pocket. In that very market, you can also buy the lower performance (for them) stuff a lot cheaper, because it's falling out of favor (for them) just as it hits mainstream (for Dell, Apple, HP)....and in that case, you actually save some money - hundreds of bucks for putting in a few screws myself? I'll screw for that.
And comming to a Neighborhood near you! It will be declared Soverign land.
http://ia.ita.doc.gov/ftzpage/letters/ftzlist-map.html
Why isn't anyone shooting the auditors?
NOTE: I'm an auditor who ducks quite often.
Luxury items seem to made by slaves a lot in peacetime. Fancy clothing used to equal sweat shop. Knockoff's, always equal to a sweat shop. Now it's gadgets. I think I heard of luxury yacht labor being indentured slaves. Wonder if this typical? You don't hear about this at all in other types of manufacturing.
what are they doing?
making something to eat?
Low wage Chinese workers+ridiculous price point for icrap= success for a few! Who would have thought that would be a winning formula? It's funny, most of the people I meet who insist on apple products tend to be self rightous turds that seem to see themselves as more worldly, intelligent, socially conscious, etc. In fact, many of them represent a minor variation of the " I buy shit I can't afford, therefore I am" crowd.
iTards don't give a shit about iSlaves. They just want more unoriginal, overpriced pieces of shit with operating systems that anyone as dumb as box of rocks can operate.
Henson...his name was Jim Henson...
This is quite shocking, of course.
All this time, American workers thought they were being laid off, and their jobs offshored, to veritable Shangra Las, where everything was joy and happiness.
Just like prison labor in the US of A**holes, where everyone lives easy amid milk and honey.
All those women eating lunch with each other in those restaurants we walk by are smiling at their good fortune in making big bucks by offshoring all those jobs.
I don't understand this blog post? You mean they are actuall offshoring jobs to exploit workers????
Shocking...shocking....shocking...next you'll be telling us that Mayor Bloomberg appointed GE's Neutron Jack (off) Welch to be his education czar for entirely nefarious reasons --- something other than improving education?
Truly, I must learn to cultivate my own garden, as everyone else's is coming up weeds?
Next up, a shocking expose blog post of how China is actually a Totalitarian Capitalist State and the USA is a Corporate Fascist State!
Geez, we live and we learn....
next, Amerika!
Cheap one-way muppets.
Interviewer" "What to you think about your Smartphone?"
Citizen: " I love my Phone"
Interviewer: "What about potential slave labor and misery?"
Citizen: "So sorry. I don't have a Phone. I am the slave"
Interviewer: "Get back to work"
Behind the facade China is a deeply divided country.
On the one hand you have the usual brainwashed, privileged idiots who worship "Master Jobs." On the other hand, you have this.
Doesn't look good for the future of that country. Not that America (or anybody else in the world) is better off.
That's what happens when you have 7 billion humans who all think they are going to become rich and live forever and who are rapidly burning up the stock of fossil fuels that slowly developed over hundreds of millions of years.
PLAN A: Westerners get loaded up on debt and buy stuff from Asia.
PROBLEM: PLAN A no longer working as westerner has too much debt and has lost job
PLAN B: Sell things we make to ourselves
PROBLEM: We don't make enough wages to buy the stuff we make
a look into the looking glass of the future of Amerika!
Embrace it!
Love it!
Live it!
Die by it!
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, the Taiwanese are famous in South China for running very efficient and productive factories. Most Chinese are in agreement that Taiwanese factory owners are a bunch of cunts.
That said, Foxconn workers have a surplus at the end of each month, as food and accomodation is provided. It must be remembered its not how much you earn but how much you save at the end of each month that counts. A job at Foxconn is actually an OK job in China.
Chinese workers rarely stay more than a year or two at any job. The demand for workers in so great that employers are continually poaching each others workers.
A Chinese worker will work at Foxconn until something better comes along and then bounce to another job that will pay another RMB100 in a heart beat. The labour market in China is incredibly fluid and workers excercise their right to bounce to a better job day in day out.
.
Poached workers: the favorite breakfast of oligarchs the world over.
Let's not exaggerate, CHINA as a nation is one huge sweatshop not just Foxconn. :-D
p.s. does anyone really think that the factories where Nokias, Dells, Acers, Samsungs or RIMMs are made are that much better?
maybe this is why the ipad 3 runs hot in normal operating conditions.
There are American, Canadian, English and Australians all working as English teachers in China some of them are working for RMB4,000 per month plus food and accomodation. That is the bottom end of the market but it highlights that it doesn't cost much to live in China.
How about a few tears for these "English Teachers"?