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Judging The Apple 'Sweatshop' Charge
jurgen writes "MacWorld summarizes an article published in the U.K., stating that Apple's iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food. The article also claims the workers live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors." A Wired article looks at the same story, exploring the reliability of the Mail on Sunday's claims. From that article: "The situation is too murky for a rush to judgment on Apple's ethics here, and it may well meet minimum global standards. But for a company that has staked its image on progressive politics, Apple has set itself up as a potential lightning rod on global labor standards. Sweatshops came back to bite Nike after its customers rose up in arms; and Apple can expect a similar grilling from its upscale Volvo-driving fans in the months ahead."
- How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries? (Yes, yes, we can all say that "consumers" have the power to force companies to take up the banner. After all, you can't make China change, so why not go after Apple?)
- Reports about someone earning "X" per month are meaningless out of context. How much, exactly, do other workers in their locale earn? What is the overall cost of living? (Yes, I'm aware that the article makes reference to food and rent consuming "half" their salary.) If the pay is "dismal" even by China's standards, as one of the articles asserts, then why is anyone even working there?
- No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative. (Arguments about how people have no choice, or assertions about how people may be "persuaded" to stay in the employ of such a company once "hired" are likely to not be very persuasive to me. And if it's Chinese police or governmental entities that don't let workers leave and/or don't let them have visitors, well...)
- Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation? (I'm trying to figure out exactly why this was mentioned, because it's clearly intended to imply something, though I'm not quite sure what.)
- How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"? (And wouldn't more effective change come from the US being able to have a global position such that it can exert pressure on the Chinese government and other human rights abusers, rather than trying to mobilize consumers to target US companies?)
I guess it always pays to go after the market leaders. And I'm saying that in all seriousness: I'm sure people saw targeting Nike as the most effective way to fight sweatshops at large, just as some might say, "Free Tibet, and you free the world." I will say that it's rather unfair that, in campaigns like these, it's often that one target, however, that bears a hugely disproportionate burden of vilification, blame, and bad press. I can't blame them though; the iPod is certainly an easy and high profile target.
I'm fairly certain that this will be read by a number of people who think that corporations and corporate behavior are inherently "evil", and that the larger a company or business interest is, the more "evil" it is and indeed must be by definition, which is an awfully one-sided and half-blind way to look at corporations.
I'd expect and hope, from a supposedly intelligent group of readers, that the majority of the comments here will be examining China's labor laws and China's human rights record, and mechanisms via which those might be changed and how responsible governments of the world can affect that change, rather than thinking about ways that corporations that legally do business in China may be further targeted.
Like all large corporations, I believe it's now in their best interest to make the most ethical choice regarding human rights. Even if it means charging another $10 per iPod.
Apple should be given the chance to investigate and cancel their contracts before they're torn apart. Otherwise, if you wanted to ruin a company you could set up a shill business that has factories down in Latin America where the workers are beaten. Then route the parts you are selling to the company you want through that distribution center and alert the American media.
My work here is dung.
Time to defend Apple.
Pay only $25/month for rent and food! Wow...sure, no visitors, 100 per room, but it'll be like being in college all over again.
...then stockpile all the U2 iPods you can. They'll quickly become quite rare and collectible once Saint Bono gets wind of this.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Much better to let them starve to death. The lot of 'em. Food is for pussies. Apple should pull the plug immediately.
Don't look at what they make or how long they work. That doesn't matter one bit. If that worker over there working such long hours for so little, and then paying part of that back for lodging, didn't think the job was worth it they would quit. For a bunch of idiotic Americans to force companies to close up shop just so they can feel good about that company is just irresponsible. Believe it or not, folks, conditions suck in a lot of places in this world, and sometimes that job, and that offer of clean housing, is the only thing standing between a life of misery in a rice paddy, or starvation, or sex slavery, or you name it. Before you go poo-pooing a company like Apple or Nike for having "sweatshops" you should really google around for results of actual studies about what happens to people when the "do goody" American idiots get them kicked back out on the street. Not pretty. The only people it helps is the (usually very liberal and comparatively rich) Americans, because it makes them feel good. That's it.
That Apple uses subcontractors in China to manufacture its hardware, like countless other manufacturers the world over do, and that the prevailing labor conditions in those subcontractors' facilities is not unlike it is, and has been for ages, elsewhere in China?
They can only afford to pay market labor rates, so that they can keep their prices so low and pass the savings on to you!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"Your favorite sweatshop (was "workout") companion."
Good christ, I pay a damned sizeable portion of my income for rent and food. I have two jobs, and my typical work week goes well into the 60+ hours range with no overtime. Where's the news story on that?
blog |
This is all meaningless hyperbole. For example, who can consider working on Apple products "work"? Instead it is like Christmas play time every day. When you work on an Apple product, you are like an elf in Santa's north pole! Sure you only get 50 bucks a month, but you can go visit the marmalade forest and make bubblegum pie whenever you want!
And furthermore, you get good karma which ensures that you will go to heaven and receive 72 virgin powerbooks with infinite Altivec and a double dual core. We should be envious of these lucky women. They are an inspiration to us all.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Don't forget "latte-drinking"
Sweatshops are GOOD. Of course it doesn't seem that way seen from our first-world perspective, but is better than hunger. It's usually the only way out from extreme poverty. We had an industrial revolution where childen worked in similar circumstances. It's not something to be proud of, the feelings are all against it, but you cannot jump from having nothing to having everyting. As Groucho Marx said "I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty". Poor countries need sweatshops, need free trade of agricultural products, and need less subsidies. That's the way out.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
From this, I take it there are three possible realities:
1. Apple knew of the work conditions, and set up the "third party vendor" system so that they didn't have to hear how it was done - kind of like Ken Lay tried with Enron. "Oh, my goodness, I am shocked - shocked! - to hear that there are bad labor systems being used!" And then they can plead ignorance.
2. Apple didn't know about the work conditions. Their system was "Look - here's the work, let's go tour the plant, looks good - modern equipment, this will work. Quality of the iPods is good, so let's go with this." They didn't look into the work conditions - though I'd be curious to see if there was any kind of contract stating "treat workers kindly".
3. The situation is not as bad as it looks. I'm not counting out the original article, but since it does mention that there are several countries, including Japan (which I understand has decent employee laws compared to other countries), it could be this plant is an isolated incident - but 1 and 2 still apply about "What did Apple know, and when did they know it". It could even be that the rules of "employ mainly women" was used as a good point - "Let's give work to these women so they can earn a decent wage", which may now look bad. It's all about the intent.
Either way, I would suggest there is only one answer: That Apple take immediate steps to show how it "Thinks different", and insure that no matter what the conditions are *now*, that those conditions are up to par with good employee relations.
I have a lot of faith in Apple, but I'll find it very hard to purchase future products if these allegations are true, and the company that Jobs built is unwilling to take steps to ensure good living conditions for their employees.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
You want cheap consumer electronic goods? That's what happens i'm afraid. Their manufacture will be farmed out to the cheapest bidder. And don't just think it's Apple doing this, it's all the big electronics companies. Hell it's not even just electronics, take the dairy industry. Farmers want a fair price for thier milk, the big supermarkets want cheap milk so you shop at their shops. So the big chains force the farmers into taking less money.
And feels good - one less woman in China forced into sex slavery, but instead able to live for herself and raise the money needed for later in life.
And all you with Creative players, iRivers, and so on, can feel as good themselves, because they're probably using the same types of conditions to make the products, and saving even more people from a life of poverty.
They're slaves?
Cool. How much does Apple charge to bypass the "no visitors" rule? Hundreds per room....
Why should anyone care about this?
As long as the work is completely voluntary, the workers have decided that it beats the alternative. It's an improvement in their lives. Often times, a huge improvement - their families get enough to eat now. No one is doing anything wrong, and all the activity is mutually beneficial to all parties involved.
It also doesn't change the way the computers work.
Now I have to go back to drinking my coffee. It's fair trade, shade-grown coffee picked by virgin tribal girls under a full moon. Tasty.
Well, I can't wait to see the iPod ad inspired parodies that this is likely to produce!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I've just searched the website of the paper making those claims... there doesn't appear to be any information on the story currently posted on their site; perhaps they pulled it. Anyone from England know how much credibility this paper carries in the U.K.?
iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food. ...whereas if they had to pay half of that straight to some other landlord instead, it would be ok. wtf? Or maybe that's not the point. Perhaps the shock revelation is: "chinese ipod workers spend half their salary on food and accomodation". Tragic.
Sweatshops came back to bite Nike? Last I checked Nike is still one of the largest shoe makers in the world and the bulk of their labor is more then likely still done in a "sweatshop." This notion that consumers care is BS. People want to get shoes, clothes, electronics, and whatever else they desire at reasonable prices. The fact is if most these companies used standard wage practices we would be paying more for items, and if they were made in more industrialized countries we would probably go broke trying to buy half the stuff we wanted.
In the end, most consumers really do not care where the products they purchase came from. They are just glad that they have their new HDTV, designer clothing, or iPod. This notion that people will do something about the sweatshop labor is absurd. A few people might not buy one, but trust me, most people who want one will still buy one without a second thought.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food.
I don't know about you, but I sure wish that my living expenses were $25 a month. Heck, I wish they were only half of my income!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Hearsay! A report about a report? Yeah, that's murky at best. And what is the cost of living in that part of China? Half of my friends in San Francisco (yes, they are Chinese) spend half or more of their monthly income on rent and food. Nobody visits them either. Are they being whipped? Are they being forced into working? My friends in SF also work 15+ days and 50+ hour weeks. BFD. It sucks everywhere until people make a concerted effort to fix things. Are you going to pay more for your precious nano to help the impoverished Chinese workers? I didn't think so. I don't think Apple is going to face any sort of backlash remotely similar to Nike. The variables are way too different.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
I though all of us Mac users drove the New Bug because it matched our iPods so well.
You asked:
From the Wired article:Can you imagine there are countries where women would NEVER be employed by local companies, and the only companies offering jobs to women are from outside the country? There are still countries where female workers are considered "inferior", to the point that, if they don't sell themselves considerably below standards, they don't get a job at all.
Why is anyone working there? Why is anyone working at (insert random fast food chain here)? It certainly isn't the best paying job in the world, the work hours suck but it is A JOB! It gets you money. Not much, but it's still better than NO money at all. It's not like jobs grow on trees in China either. If you can't get anything else, that's still better than starving to death.
That comment alone sounds a lot like Marie Antoinette asking the starving to eat cake if they can't get no bread.
Bottom line is, this kind of practice SUCKS. And I'm glad we hear about it, even if it is Apple this time that gets the unwanted spotlight. But this kind of sweatshop labour is, amongst other things, what makes outsourcing to third world countries and countries with very poor social standards very attractive to corporations. So it is VERY much in your interest that this kind of exploitation ceases to exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is stupid. I look around my room, and It's probably likely at least half, if not more like 80% of the stuff here probably has some sweatshop labor in it (with 20% being made in the US if I push it). Although Apple and the related company are no small fries, they are in the overall picture of this sweatshop labor stuff. Ohhh, Apple indirectly uses sweatshop labor. Time to gang up on them, and about every other company that does it, especially directly.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
> The situation is too murky for a rush to judgment on Apple's ethics here, and it may well meet
> minimum global standards.
What's a `minimum global standard` then? Something fair and reasonable, or just some law cobbled together by the WTO, IMF, UN and other completely fair, unbiased parties with no vested interests?
China is a very different environment than the rest of the world, something we often forget. With over a billion people, everything that can be done with manual labor is done with manual labor. Why use a backhoe when you can get ten people to dig a big hole in the ground? Chinese industry doesn't have the same incentives to automate when labor is so cheap. Besides, what would all those people do if they were out of work?
On a related note, there are very few fat people in China. It's not from lack of food, but rather due to everyone being constantly physically active. If their air quality were better, they'd be healthier than most other industrial countries.
And as such, I consider those sweatshops, where companies can get their goods manufactored practically for free, as a threat to my job, since sooner or later the same will happen to software develop... rats, already happened!
Stop sweatshops! I want to keep my job!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Could that be the reason, they pulled out of India?
hilarious
So what? How much of the avarage persons monthly salary does rent/food/bills consume? I know in my case its half as well.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Oh yeah, and what about those Volvo sweatshops?.. ;)
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Well, if Apple did not manufacture iPods in China, those women would be tending pigs for $0 dollars per hour.
So why is this a bad thing exactly?
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Nike was the leader in "sweatshop engineering" although I think they have cleaned up their act quite a bit. But I can see a combo Ipod-sneaker in the future. Oh no, I shouldn't have mentioned that. (one week later Apple applies for the patent :)
Perhaps Mr. Jobs should send in Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford to pay off the workers.
It still matters to me. I just bought a pair of New Balance shoes, and I only buy NB athletic shoes because they still make some in the USA (check the inside label, because they also make some models abroad). I'm also a bit of a woodworker/tool junkie, and I refuse to buy tools made in China. I'll settle for Japan, Europe or Mexico if USA isn't available. But nothing from Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, etc.
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it. Settle, and you get sweatshop labor. "Free Tibet" isn't just a bumper sticker slogan. If you really cared about it, you would change your ways.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Sorry, but this is BS.
It is as much a "way out" as hard work is the way out of poverty in our world. It isn't. If anything is, education and information is.
Work never made anyone rich, only poor. It exploits your workforce and turns it over to someone else. HE gets rich, granted, but that ain't something you benefit from in any way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ah, half their pay goes to housing and food supply!"
So fucking what, so does half of my pay go to rent and food. I could only wish my place of employment provided me with housing and food, it would be 2 less thing I would have to worry about.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Ever notice there is no crying over the fact that the US/EU/Etc allows trade with China even though its known that China (or insert any country of your choice) has labor practices which are no liked/lawful/etc where the product is eventually sold?
Why is that?
Simple, its far easier for these activist to pick on corporations than governments. Governments don't care. People call corporations souless but governments are too. Worse we put these people in power only to have them ignore us.
Plus one thing corporations do that governments don't do is pay you to shut up.
Either stop all trade with countries whose labor practices don't agree with your local or shut the fuck up. Want to see your economy tank, fine, try to apply your laws to someone else's country before dealing with them.
Hold Apple/Nike/etc accountable, yeah right. What a spineless concept. Requires no risk on those objecting.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If they are still quality products. The living conditions of those around the world can not be viewed and judged by those in the 1st world. What those living in the 1st world would consider horrible, substandard conditions may be a huge improvement for those who are in the 3rd world. The quality of life needs to be compared to those in their geographic/political regions, not to those in the rest of the world. If one were to actually travel around the world and meet people, you would see that people can be happy without have mass amount of affluence and they may even be happier. I know it had opened by eyes when I had travelled.
Wow! Who would have thought people on Slashdot would be giving Apple a rimjob over this. I totally did not see this coming!
Give me good ratings or I will close down the internet.
My impulse is to decry the fact these workers have to endure such work environments. However, after having visited China a few years ago I'm not surprised.
:-). I had the opportunity to stroll through a small electronics factory, and I was rather apalled at what I saw. In general it seemed like all industrial waste was dumped into the ground next to small farm lands. In a small room about the size of a walk-in closet I saw women scrubbing printed circuit boards with Methyl Ethyl Ketone. They wore no repirators or gloves. The MEK smell permeated throughout the factory. I know MEK sold in the US have those warning labels saying MEK can be the cause for serious health problems.
I visited southern China in one of the larger cities (not Nanjing or Shanghai though
Going through town I saw people driving BMWs and people living on the streets. There seems to be such a disparity between people who can afford some level of comfort and those who don't have anything. If you are living on the street it seemed like even having $10 (Chinese) for a whole month was enough to get by, according to some locals.
My point? Sadly enough it MAY be that these women may have a work environment than a lot of their peers. I can have my opinions after enjoying the benefits and expectations here in the US, and it's easy for me to apply those opinions to people living in other countries. I wish everyone was as rich and everyone had workplace safety rules. Unfortunately that's not how the world is.
Would I boycott Apple over this issue? Well, if I did that, then extension, I believe I'll have to boycott everying made in China, or perhaps everthing made overseas. I'll just have to judge myself a hypocrite because I enjoy the benefits of cheaper goods (or, to put it another way, I don't want to pay for expensive goods). Apple isn't alone in this. Take a look at all the products you see in any store. In particular, look all those little electronic accessories you see in Fry's or Best Buy.
theySweat but iPod
Oh dear - join the rest of the world.
Can we have a comparison in REAL wages please? Not that a calculated fact would get in the way of a Daily Mail story.
It is called a race toward the bottom.
I have personally witnessed outsourcing of people who make $1.25/hr in the Dominican Republic. "Their Jobs" are now over in China where the pay is $0.10/hr. 2/3 of the factories in the tax free zone of La Romana are now sitting vacant.
Now, that is F-ed up!
Global Corporatism at its finest.
Who will guard the guards?
Hey everybody! Guess what? Apple is a very big world-wide corporation. Just like Microsoft, Nike and a million other corporations. Take whatever you think your least favorite Evil Corporation (tm) is doing and insert Apple. Odds on it is being done. If not by Apple, then by a contractor for Apple.
This is what a global economy means. Corporations seek the lowest cost labor around the world. In order to have the lowest labor costs, China allows corporations to treat laborers like slaves.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
MacWorld summarizes an article published in the U.K., stating that Apple's iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food. The article also claims the workers live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors.
Ok, people are still POOR in the world incase someone forgot. They can do it for cheap and thats the bottom line - and its not like they are being trapped in chains and made to work. Did anyone answer that? Maybe this is their heaven compared to other alternatives. If they are not being forced, and they want to - who are you to set their standards? I am sure they can determine whats best for them without your help.
Besides the 'optional' moral and ethical aspects, the real problem with more and more products being made in 3rd world sweatshops is that eventually Americans and Europeans will be affected too. Once there is enough unemployment due to jobs being 'outsourced' to foreign sweatshops the average westerner will have the joyfull choice between starvation or giving up on the little bit of civilisation we achieved and start working in a local sweatshop for food and healthhazards just like we did a century or two ago.
"staked its image on progressive politics"
Huh?
Apple may be run by a "friend of bill" and have Al Gore on it's board, but it's "image" is certainly not defined by politics, but rather by building cool products that are easy to use.
Remember, Rush Limbough is a Mac user.
"- Reports about someone earning "X" per month are meaningless out of context..."
I think that this is maybe business logic but it is immorall. Does it mean that the work of the people on the other side of the world is valued less? Is not this the way how the exploatation of poor countries starts? Is not the "contexting" the beginning of the problem?
Isn't the logic dangerous?: "Look that slave is the king among other slaves because he has exactly 30% more food then other slaves!"
Yes "contextually" he lives on pretty high level... BUT(!) isn't that king slave still just a poor slave?
O man... how can be the "contextual" stuff misleading when speaking about humans in globalized world.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
About those "upscale Volvo-driving fans":
The people who are most opposed to overseas sweatshops are in the US labor movement, which has long been at the forefront of efforts to improve labor conditions abroad. Granted, this is in no small part because better labor conditions abroad result in US workers being more competitive, since those conditions make offshore labor more expensive. But the stereotype that it is primarily upscale, "liberal," Volvo drivers who care about workplace conditions (or environmental health, or a whole range of other issues) is utter bullshit propogated by those with a vested interest in employing foreign labor in near-slave conditions, while also radically reducing wages and benefits for workers still employed in the US. A large proportion of those who drive Volvos come precisely from this ownership class. And much of the opposition to neo-slavery comes from those who drive used Toyotas and Fords.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Wal-mart *junk*, Apple products, and virtually any other product imported from China (computer parts, cheap tool sets, etc) is assembled by common folk in sweatshops who often live at the sweatshops - a poor quality of life. The humor in it is that all these PATRIOTIC Americans who support Wal-Mart, etc. are actually indirectly supporting the dark side of Communism - empowering the Communist government and further oppressing the people. So many wars (cold/hot) were fought to deter communism and here we are adhering to communist evil.
Sadly, Apple is just one of the numbers and shouldn't be the focal point of any argument in regards to this un-American type of business. All business dealing with communist practice should be in consideration. If we invented, manufactured, assembled, and exported our own products - problems like this wouldn't exist. As a matter of fact, many of America's current problems wouldn't exist (jobs, benefits, poverty) - aside from fat-cat CEO's making what they truly deserve (alot less money).
Sad, but true.
Rent an apartment and share it with 100 other people. And start eatting rice for 3 meals a day.
Their environmental record is poor too. See http://news.com.com/Jobs+defends+Apples+record+on+ environment/2100-1041_3-5680152.html
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Wow, who would have thought that an Associated Newspapers title would contain sloppy journalism and intentionally distorted claims to make this sound like a bigger deal than it really is?
Oh. Everyone. Never mind, carry on.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Those were my tags.
Why don't you ask any of these women, what would they prefer, continue working in the same conditions or going out to the street to sell their bodies?
In the absense of unions this type of working conditions impossible (almost) here in the West will always happen in the nascent capitalistic countries. And the unions won't happen overnight. How many years it took for modern industrial countries to come to unions since industrial revolution?
Will you, Steve Jobs, President Bush or any other American go to China and start organizing them? No, because you will get your paternalistic imperialistic behind rightfully kicked by officials AND by locals.
It takes time. So wait quiet and patiently, punch in your "thoughtful" posts on your shiny Macs and never even think of interfering in somebody else's country affairs.
And for now, Apple is doing right thing.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I asked my Chinese co-worker who lived in Beijing all of her life, and she said that $50US/month (400 yuan) is very little money. She said that welfare (social assistance for the politically correct) in china pays roughly around 400 yuan/month. She said it's also possible that the workers come from rural areas, where farming pays very little. The women may earn more money in this situation than by working on their farm.
However, she said absolutely she thought the numbers would indicate that this was a sweatshop, and the term she was more inclined to use was "slave labour".
Sweatshopping and child labor didn't end in this country until the government enacted labor laws (a.k.a. regulation of the labor market.) Yes I sad the dreaded 'r' word, bane of all libertarians. I can just hear the smoke whistling out of your ears now.
Anyone care to place bets on when the Chinese government will step in and enact similar laws?
To answer your question: It's not OK to exploit people whether you make money on it or not, but nobody exploits people unless it's for money, power or other benefit. So your question really has no practical value.
Every company that outsources to foreign countries all take part in sweat shops. Why do you think they do it? To help third world countries get money? Hell no. Its because they can pay assembly line workers a fraction of what they would have to pay a custodian at an american company.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
My daughter asked me for an iPod. I said, "You're 11. Go to China and make one!"
While it is terrible: how much money would these women make if they weren't making iPods? Extend to say: how much would they be making if not making consumer goods for the rest of the world? They probably have a better life in the 'sweatshop' than snuffed because of their gender and lack of ability to provide a service. Women in many parts of the world are considered worthless for much other than carrying unborn babies.
The real blame is not us for using overseas sweatshops. You cannot escape using products from impoverished workers. The real blame is the economic and social situations in many countries, but war is the only thing that will change those scenarios, whether a coup d'tat, civil war, empire building, colonization, or holocaust.
Click here or here.
about sweatshops before opening thier mouths.
I don't have the full details on the Apple sweatshops but I can tell you that no Sweatshops are not a good thing.
In most cases the person is in what is called a "Free Trade" area. This basically ignores the local labour laws and allows them to work people to insane hours for pittance. Women are fired if they get pregnant or if anyone has an accident. The pay is generally pittance (good luck trying to live in China on $50 a month) and they are sometimes held in the work areas and the living quarters are not much better then slums.
I've been to one in China (touted up as a tour). We were brought into a large compound that was surrounded by a 20 foot wall with soldiers on the towers and gates and in the factory. We were told it was to protect the secrets. The living quarters were inside the compound as well and it is no where near any other town. They would work from 6am to 9pm and we were told how "everyone loves thier job".
Whats an Ipod cost? $200-$300? One Ipod is 4-6 months pay and I am sure they make more then one a day.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Apple pay another company to make them for Apple? Wouldn't this impugn that company's practices rather than Apple? Sure, Apple doesn't HAVE to take the lowest bid but it does help with the margins.
Of course, all of this discourse is based on a report of a report that most of us haven't read yet.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
How come these types of articles, which seem to be flamebait, never go to the place in question and talk to the people actually doing the work. We ("rich" a-holes in great countries) think we need to save everybody, hell, making crap for apple earning anything about $10/month might be a dream come true for some people.
Sort of ironic that this situation is in a country that is supposed to be Marxist. Wasn't the original idea of Communism to create a worker's paradise? Now the People's Republic of China has just become another giant multinational corporation. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your ipods.
Corporations' prime purpose is to make money. Attack dogs prime purpose is protection. Both are legal but both need proper controls in place for the welfare of the general public. The international trade agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.) do not implement or mostly even suggest labor, environmental, or human rights standards be applied to the trans-national corporations who are the primary beneficiary of such agreements. In a globalizing economy the old libertarian business model of "let the market decide" has one final result: trans-national corporations (and Governments controlled by them) win and everybody else loses.
Is there any evidence that children are working at the factory? Is there any evidence that people are being made to work there against their will? Were people lied to about the salary or working conditions before they took the job?
If not, then what's happening is adults are being told about a job, and they decide to take it. Presuming that they're rational human beings, this means that this is the best job they could find and they decided it was worth the drawbacks. Why are people clamoring to take away their choice about this? Do we think that we know better than these people do what kind of job they should take? That's paternalism, and it's highly misplaced. The Chinese aren't children. We have no right to tell them that should or shouldn't be willing to do a job.
It would be nice if Apple's subsidiaries could pay their workers more, but the reality of the situation is, the workers took the job knowing full well what they were getting into. If they thought the job sucked too much to take, they wouldn't sign up for it, and the price of labor would increase. As it is, presuming a free market, the workers consider the money the best they can get. This means that if the job weren't there, they would be taking even worse jobs. So, by all means, let's not pillory Apple into leaving China. Why? Because that's what would hurt the workers the most. They'd get stuck with even crappier jobs, but hey, we could all pretend global inequity doesn't exist and assuage the guilt of Western affluence.
$14/hr average doing telemarketing! I mean, don't you read the first 20 pages of the classifieds in any given news paper for that little fantasy island?
And who needs groceries when you have 99 cent pizza?
And who needs to pay rent anyways when you have mountain?
And uh, I've ran out of montreal stereotypes for now so,
who needs heating when you've got computers and monitors to keep you warm. When it's -45C outside and you had a bad day on the phones at your telemarketing gig, I'll bet you'll be regretting getting rid of your nice and warm CRT monitors for LCDs.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
"iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day"
Huh. I guess Apple should be looking at buying Electronic Arts instead of Nintendo, then...
I'm not an apologist by any stretch of the imagination but this smacks of an RIAA PR firm. Stories like this don't make it into the press by accident especially since the iPod has been around for what, like 5 yearS?
The truth lies somewhere in there, I'd be curious to know the actual conditions and where these things are actually made...
Compare this to a young, single worker in a big city in the the US. Say you pay $500/mo. in rent, and $200/mo. in food = $700, after tax. So about $900 pre-tax per month doubled gives an annual salary of $21,600. Since the poverty line in the US for a single worker is less than $10,000, you could argue that Apple's contractor is paying twice the poverty wage, and so the workers are doing ok. Not great by any means, but ok; and I can imagine these being sought after jobs in their country for unskilled labor. That doesn't mean I think their life is peachy and that I want to trade places; but in their economy, I don't see any proof from these numbers that they're being mistreated. It isn't fair, but this is how poor economies develop in a capitalist economy. If western wages were required, then there would be no incentive for investment, and their economies would remain rural and undeveloped, and the workers would be much worse off. As it is, the Chinese economy and therefore the workers salaries will slowly develop as increased investment leads to higher skills and more competition for labor. Of course, prices will increase accordingly, but while the proportion of income to expenses will stay the same, the increased salaries will enable workers to use their disposable income to buy iPods made from sweatshops in Africa.
I don't think that "everyone else is doing it" should be an adequate defence. Consumers should demand fair conditions for workers, and if we have to pay extra for our iPods, then so be it.
Consumers created this monster. It's up to consumers to reverse it.
My other processor is big-endian.
Also, a friend owns a company that needed a large quantity of small, plastic parts. They tried to locate a mfg here in the States. The result was that there are no longer companies here which have the equipment to make it. So he, like everyone else, now has them made in China.
-JM
why anyone purchases one of them anyway. They are designed to die shortly after the warranty runs out I've got a 10 year old Diamond RIO that still works just fine and the only servicing it needs is an occassional double A battery.
Oh I'm L33T, I can afford to throw a couple hundred dollars into a land fill every year. I ain't impressed.
It is stunning. I came to this thread expecting to find 1...maybe 2 posts that immediately leap emphatically to Apple's defense. This thread is dominated completely by such posts! I do believe in an innocent-until-proven-guilty scheme - but if there are suspicious allegations afoot - those need to be investigated! Apple has in no way been proven innocent, either.
If Apple is using questionable corporate ethics to get more bang for their buck - then these are STILL questionable corporate ethics! I own an ipod and occasionally consider getting a Mac PC, but I'm shocked at the dichotomy in play. If one replaced the word `Apple' with `Microsoft', `Sun', or `Lenovo', say - this thread would be far less apologetic, I'm sure. Things are still rather vague - but you cannot just assume that Apple is beyond blame.
Please! Apple is JUST a company.
I have spent a lot of time near the area where the ipods are manufactured. It is a huge city that is almost entirely industrial park as far as the eye can see. It is a repeating pattern of factory, dorm, factory, dorm, on and on. The workers seem to make about a dollar a day and from the plant owners I talked to there is a labor shortage and they have to bid against other factories to get the better workers, the result of that bidding is about a dollar a day right now. That is why companies are starting to leave China and farm out work to other countries with cheaper labor. On they whole though, although the people live in dorms, they seemed to have a reasonable amount of buying power. At the plants I saw, it was not required that they lived in the dorms, but it was the cheapest way for them to live. All the consumer goods in China cost absolutely nothing so I would assume the people could buy a reasonable amount on a dollar a day. It sounds like the ipod plants are normal market-competative employers for the area.
My God. I can't recall the last time that so many people lined up to actively support sweatshops and exploitation. What does this tell us about Apple fans?
It's a simple equation. In a global economy we can try to raise everyone's wages and standards of living, or we can choose to lower everyone's wages and standards of living.
The Chinese worker being paid $50 a month is dragging your income down. Decently paid unionized workers in Europe or North America drag the wages paid to Chinse workers up
Look at it this way. If you work in North America your real income is probably in decline. What happens if in five or ten years the cheap Chinese labor pool unionizes and strikes for higher wages?
You'll suddenly find that you can't afford even Chinese made products.
Three Squirrels
What really matters here is the relative human rights and conditions of the factory, not that the factory exists. If there is proper safety procedures on the job (workers aren't forced back into working immediately after an injury, etc) and, more importantly, if workers aren't required by the terms of their contract to live and eat on site, then the factory is actually doing a pretty good job in the scheme of things. If the workers are forced to live onsite, however, requiring that half of their paycheck go right back to their employer, this is something that deserves to be looked into more and vocally criticized. There is a fairly established convention of rules for what makes a third world factory "acceptable" and not, and the employee's ability to choose their own residence is one of these things.
So if you assume 4, 6-day work weeks per month, thats about 24 work days/month $2/day == $48/month.
So they're doing better than 46% of the population of China on total income. 50% of your pay on room and board is pretty reasonable.
And not having visitors can be a bonus if you're a young single gal worried about her virtue (which I'm told actually happens in China ;-))
I don't hear anything here about anyone being beaten, worked more than 50 hours/week, etc. And given the slant here, they would have mentioned it if they had a whisper of it.
And compare this to old U.S. "mining towns" where between rent and the company store for food you spent 90% of your income on room and board, it's really quite good.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Actually, reviewing TFA, they do say the folks are working 15 hours/day. That is pretty steep. Sigh.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Some folks here think that $50 a month ($25 after food and rent) is too little to live on in China. Obviously .... some folks here have not been to China. I have...and that is about right for the average worker in China. So if they are willing to work for that....how is it wrong? Should they make Minimum US wage? Why they dont pay US Taxes? Common people either open your eyes and look at the reality....LABOR IN CHINA IS LESS THAN $2 per DAY! That is the reality. And for the common Chinese citizen...that $2 a day..is a big improvement over the previous generation.
But hey it sells news when somebody can say LOOK APPLE IS EVIL....forget that Walmart or any of the other millions of companies gladly pay this or less for thier workers.
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
Poor countries need sweatshops, need free trade of agricultural products, and need less subsidies. That's the way out.
Why is that the way out for developing nations when every industrial and post-industrial power in the world put an end to child labor and sub-subsistience wages through government regulations?
It's not like the US got to where it is today through free trade of goods and a lack of subsidies. Ever hear of Henry Clay and the American System? Free trade may be the way to connect economies into a global whole, provide extremely cheap goods, and possibly prevent wars, but it's not the way that America and other pre-WWII Great Powers became as powerful as they did. Read your history.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's true, and no doubt in due time, when they are richer, the goverment of China will enact laws with the exact same purpose. Or enforce laws probably already in the books. They'll have to do it in the end. But as when that'll be their call, not ours to do. Regulation is worth nothing, as the Prohibition proved. Social repulse is everything, and will make the laws or enforce them even if they aren't there (think of divorce when it was allowed but frowned upon). The chinese (and others) society will reach that level in the future, but not if they starve.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
How can you even reason like that? The fact that YOU have a choice does not mean that everyone else do. A choice between starvation and wage slavery, is not really a choice. Apple and its subcontractor are well aware that the workers in China have not better alternative, that is why they have choosen to exploit them and not workers somwhere else. The only ones having a choice here is apple, but do even they have a choice.
You imply that corporations are not inheretly evil. But what would happen to Apple without the sweatshops? Well, their costs would increase - reducing their profit and raising the price of their products. It would make them much less competitive. That is how capitalism today works. In capitalism of yesterday the way to increase your competitiveness was to invest in bigger and better factories and labour costs were secondary, but that race has been run so far that the only way to get an edge is to reduce labour costs - and this is precisely why countries like china becones the "world factory" of today whereas countries like Germany were the "world factories" of yesterday.
The conclusion of this, in my opinion, is that corporations are inheretly "evil" (to use a somewhat malplaced moral term). They have to exploit the workers more and more.
Actually, sweatshop labor didn't slow down in the US until the press and other writers publicized it. Think Upton Sinclair, et al.
The resulting outrage closed factories, and enacted laws.
With the laws in place it became much harder to pull off.
But, it still happens, especially in the textile industry with fresh immigrants.
If the market will bear it, and the press ignores it, it will happen. Laws or no laws.
[
make $50/month
Let's see...that would be 400 RMB...it's more like 1,000 ~ 1,500 (800RMB/100USD), and that holds with the norms around the country. To them, it is a significant amount of money, and much better than the $15.00 the entire family pulls down each month back on the farm (if they get lucky).
and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food.
These factories fall at both ends of the spectrum. Either you get paid, and then you have to buy things such as the company newsletter, giving up something less than 50%, or you don't get paid at all. Having to kick back 50% is clearly an assumption of a writer making up stats where they don't have them in the first place.
The article also claims the workers live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors.
More like 15 ~ 30 per room...unless it is a large hall, and then 100 seems too low, and visitors are kept out for two reasons... 1.) The worker's entire family would move in 2.)Evil doers would cruise around looking to steal anything not nailed down.
I was an Operations Manager at one of the better small factories (Shenzhen), with 300 line workers in 25 dorms, and believe me, inside the dorm was much more safe than outside. We had two murders in six months that both resulted from purse snatching episodes that went from bad to horrible. Are the dorms cramped...yes...unlivable - not by local standards over the years, no. Some college dorms are no better. Being cramped is not the issue...safety is.
Apple has always taken pains to insure they stay on the politically correct side of international law when dealing with vendors in developing countries such as China, India, etc. The factories today are far better than they were just five years back. This particular factory style originated from when the Taiwanese firms came in 15 ~ 20 years ago. Back then, there was nothing between Dongguan & HongKong but salty marshes. Today, as mentioned, Foxconn, Kodak and others have moved in and things are changing very fast. Guangdong province set up toll-free hotlines so that workers can blow the whistle on any factory not making payday, etc. Want bad? Look at the coal mines in the North...
What part of "Made In China" was unclear? Have people been imagining that iPods were made in some special part of China where labor conditions aren't shitty?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
"These are the first iPods made by kids for kids! And we pass the *wink* slavings on to you!"
I didn't mean individuals, but societies. Probably some of these dollars are paying for education for the children of those women. Many of the cheap labour of the industrial revolution in England didn't see better days, but their offspring could.
You CAN say the same thing about slavery, regardless of whether or not it's forced. If the alternative to working in a sweatshop is starvation or prostitution, there's not much of a choice anyway, so the fact that slavery is forced while sweatshop labor isn't doesn't completely invalidate the comparison since both involve little choice. On to the comparison...
In U.S. slavery, black people were taken from Africa hundreds of years ago and instead of their g-g-grandchildren living in disease, famine, and destitution, they are now living regular American lives. In effect, slavery benefited the future generations of those black people "fortunate" enough to be taken.
Like what the GP said, that doesn't make it good, that makes it not the worst, and it's certainly not "good" just because it might be beneficial in the long run. Ends do not justify means; never had, never will.
Finally, who's to say that sweatshops will benefit these Chinese women? They're still in China, after all.
from some of the replies one could almost get the impression that
people would think it okay that were I to "own" all means of production
and only gave people enough food to survive as long as they are able to work for their 20 hour days i'd still be considered a saint for giving them work at all.
I'm not going to defend working practices in China. They pale in contrast to Western standards. My issue is why this is news at all. Apple is not the first or last company to have products made overseas in sweatshops. If you really want to target a company, go after Walmart. They may not make any products overseas but they are one of the reasons many companies have moved manufacturing overseas. In order to do business with Walmart, a company has to continuously drive down cost as much as possible. For some companies they only way to save costs is to move manufacturing to China. Watch the Frontline episode Is Walmart Good for America? and make up your own mind.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Exactly!
You want your IPod cheap, reliable, and with as few scratches on the screen as possible. You don't care about the labor behind it.
The same labor problems exist for just about anything that has "Made in China" on it.
It's just a smear campaign.
Note: This message types on a microsoft keyboard made in Mexico.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
What we need is for developed countries and trading blocs, such as the USA and the EU, to pass -- and, just as important, enforce -- new laws demanding that all goods imported must be manufactured under conditions that would be acceptable in the destination country.
In the UK, for instance, we have strict rules about pollution, working conditions, discrimination, union membership rights, fair wages and so forth. It's simply not fair on British firms to expect them to compete with goods imported from countries where there are no such laws.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
you know... I could live without my ipod. But PLEASE don't tell me my Dual G5 Power Mac and Cinema Display are made in a sweatshop too. I don't think I could part with them.
Fortunately, us low-scale Volvo fans will still support them.
Don't generalize volvo drivers as either members of the "ownership" class or the "liberal" movement.
I'm a developer and I saved up my pennies for a volvo s60r because I wanted something with a lot of kick and yet different, ie, not a glorified toyota (Lexus) or some car made by former Luftwaffe contractors of the Third Reich. I think this same type of thinking made me get my Powerbook in early 02 (well before the "Think Different" campaign).
Also keep in mind, people who buy volvos understand *part* of the cost is due to the European (primarily Swedish)labor costs.
Sure, you can disagree with me on why I got my Volvo, but I paid for it, not you.
Now, back to the article. I think this is appalling, and if it holds true, I will gladly get rid of my iPod. I find it disgusting that such a pricey piece of hardware shouldn't cost so much especially if the technology isn't really anything new nor if the labor is so low in cost. It's a total rip!
Oh, and a final thing to this parent: Kindly fuck off for generalizing me into something like that, thanks. Ownership class my ass.
I don't know of any BMWs being made in a sweatshop. Apple fanboys are always spewing about how their products have a higher standard of quality. However, since they are made in the same places as Dell, Lenevo and HP. So their products are nothing more than pretty packaging - something many people have been saying for years. Sorry to burst your bubble fanboys, but its time to get out of the Steve Jobs "reality distortion zone" and join the real world.
Where does everyone think the billions of dollars of crap they buy from Walmart comes from, well paid Amercian workers?
Apple is just doing what they must to meet the low prices demanded by customers.
If you don't like "sweatshop" labour, stop shopping at Walmart and don't bitch when you start paying more for EVERYTHING.
If you don't want to pay more, go back to supporting sweatshop manufacturing in develpoing countries, and STFU!
Articles like this really make we wonder if Joe P. American has any fucking clue what is happening in the world.
It could be a lot worse. Apple could be one of those companies which for PR reasons decides to employ people in the US instead of in china. In this case all these chinese workers, who apparently prefer this job to their other options, wouldn't be employed at all (or more accurately would be employed in the same conditions but be making less money).
If the concern is the welfare of workers in China then every company which chooses not to make goods in China, often supposedly out of concern for the worker, ought to be held accountable. These companies are depressing the price of labour in china and making things worse for the Chinese workers.
It just doesn't make sense how companies who offer not so great employment to chinese workers are somehow treated as if they are doing something worse to the chinese than companies that don't offer them any employment at all. Yes, there have been problems with prison labor in china but all these workers are choosing to work in the city as opposed to staying home on the farm (many are doing so in violation of laws which say otherwise) so unless you think they are too stupid to know what is good for them we can assume they prefer the factory job to the farm job. Thus the idea that a company should refuse to provide them any job because they can't provide them an american quality job is just absurd.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
$50-$100 a month, which is the typical wage for these girls, is well and above what they used to be living on working from dawn til dusk in the countryside. In beijing, you can buy a huge 6 course meal for 20 yuan. 20! the conversaion between US dollars and chinese yuan is something like 8.3:1. that was enough to feed 3 grown men, and we were paying tourist prices, i might add.
look at us in the US, for example. a secretary working in Los Angeles making $30,000 a year would be paying about $1000 a month in rent. That's $12,000 a year just for housing. If u take into account the secretary is in the 25% tax bracket, then her net spendable is $22,500 a year. that means she's paying more than half her net spendable income just for housing. Then there's gas, food, social life.... all said and done, if she's good, she may end up saving a hundred bucks a month.
i think that americans crying foul all over the world is akin to an indirect form of elitism
$25 a month for housing and food!
the news not aways true form internet. The press exaggerated the whole affair wildly.that is their favor.
Q: What's worse than being exploited?
A: Not being exploited.
ok, it's not really funny, in fact it's kind of sad, but such can be life.
Shit at least the women are alive, in a country that tells citizens they can only have one child, yes they can have more than two but lose social benefits if they chooose, why do you think we got so many chinese over here with more than one kid that won't go back there? So, the majority of the females born get killed off or adopted by sally struthers, so at least they are alive and earning something instead of being ripped from the womb and placed in the circular file. This isnt a rant about abortion, this is about social politics. I could care less what people do with their lives, but the truth of the matter is these women should feel lucky to be treated as slaves instead of never having taken a breath. Just remember, life could be worse.
"- How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries?"
As much responsability as they make profit with products created by sweatshop-labour.
"- Reports about someone earning "X" per month are meaningless out of context. How much, exactly, do other workers in their locale earn? What is the overall cost of living?"
I agree with this one. It's logical to assume wages should be regarded to the livingcost in the country where those workers work. That said, I doubt it's, even in comparison, very much. But even if the wages would be reasonable, the hours they have to work are not.
"- No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative."
And how exactly would YOU know the exact background why they 'choose' to work there? Even if they weren't forced at gun-point, poverty leads to a lack of choice.
"- Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation? (I'm trying to figure out exactly why this was mentioned, because it's clearly intended to imply something, though I'm not quite sure what.)"
The parent poster was alluding to the fact that this difference isn't quite normal. Women are often the most weakly protected workforce, more abused and discriminated against then men. This was also true in our societies, and still is, seen the fact that even today they often get a lower wage for the same work then men. Is this because they "choose" to get payed less? I doubt it.
"- How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"? "
I believe another poster below has already answered that one.
Your last comment, btw, was a bit of a fallacy. I consider myself pretty intelligent, yet, it does not mean I have to agree with all your points. I also don't see the logic in going for the country/state itself (certainly nopt as foreigner), rather then the companies who outsource there. The fact is, it is easier to accomplish a 'moral reveille' (*cough*) by forcing the corporations to adopt some standards (as Nike has noticed), then the government of china.
Not all your points are devoid of logic, but I fear you start with a completely different premise (based on a typical anglo-saxon capitalistic viewpoint). All your points could be said about childlabour too, for instance, if the laws of the country in question would allow that and they follow your reasoning (of not being forced at gun-point, for instance). So, in regard to the morality or ethics, it are pseudo-arguments; they could apply in circumstances which are clearly (at least to most humans) unethical. In an anglo-saxon capitalistic viewpoint, where you consider corporations and workers have equal status/power and are 'free' to choose, regardless of the circumstances or background, they make perfectly sense, however.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It's pretty easy to "blame" Apple for hiring sweat shops, but the real blame in all of this is ourselves. Companies like Walmart have spoiled us to such low prices for things that we are unwilling to pay the "real" cost of the product. A really lean company needs to pull 20 to 30% profit on their products to cover warranty costs and overhead of employee's heathcare, benefits etc, some may be able to go lower but not most. If apple were to still cover their profit requirements; then a typical ipod would be hundreds of dollars more, an we the consumers just aren't gonna pay anymore then what we are now. We've forced most of these company's to outsource because basically Americans are always looking to the "best" deal on everything.
Every society has to evolve from a poor agrarian society, to a wealthy industrial society. All the people complaining about sweatshops in China are very short on other alternatives - it is not like the workers would be working for $50+ an hour like GM assembly line workers if it wasn't for the Ipod gig. And it is not like the people in the west complaining about the sweatshops have any vast pool of resources they plan to mobilize to improve the standard of living.
Sweatshops will disapear as a country becomes richer. Despite what the propoganda tells you, sweatshops in North America and Western Europe didn't disapear because the government banned them... they disappeared over time because those countries became rich and prosperous enough that they could afford to pay everyone a decent wage. Productivity was so high, that goods and services became so cheap, that everyone could afford stuff. If a country is too poor to provide good wages to all people, it doesn't matter if you have good intentions, people are going to be poor and exploited.
Chinese sweat shops are attracting foriegn capital, increasing the means of production and ultimatly raising the standard of living for all Chinese. It may come as a suprise, but China has one of the fastest increasing standards of living and fastest growing economies in the world: It's economy and standard of living are growing faster than all the G8 nations for what it is worth!
If you are going to condemn sweatshops in China, you had better come with a pretty damn good economic plan as a substitute - because things are improving at quite a pace right now (far faster than it did in Chinas socialist past).
This is no surprise at all. The reality is that almost everything the developed world buys is manufactured in third world nations under generally deplorable conditions.
People want to pay as little as possible for their products and companies what to make as much profit as possible. Companies like Apple, Nike, etc. who charge a premium for their products I see as even more exploitive because they could afford to pay their workers better but apparently refuse or don't care to do so.
$150 for a sneaker that barely cost $10 to make? $3000 for a computer that costs a few hundred dollars to manufacture and is essentially no different than a PC which costs a fraction of the price. What justifies the price? The logo on the product? A designer spent a bit of extra time designing the product and someone put a little more effort into overseeing the manufacturing process.
Of course this means that Apple must have a good idea of the working conditions at the manufacturing facilities. Because they are a bit more meticulous with product development someone must have been at the factories making sure they were doing things right.
But they don't care. Why should they? The consumers don't care and they don't even want to hear about it. Even worse, in some cases people try to rationalize it. Companies will only change their habits when consumers do.
I can't help but think that if this weren't Apple people here would have been far more critical. I'm sure if it were Microsoft we were talking about no one would be showing them any mercy.
Talk to anyone who works for a US manufacturing company and has been involved in outsourcing manufacturing to China. These dormitory arrangements, pay and work hour scenarios are part of the sell job. You'll hear all about how much the employees love it. You'll see them all exercising together first thing in the morning. It's called Communism folks. They will do what they're told, when they're told, for whom they're told and get paid how ever much the state decides. Certainly there are segments of society in China that are more westernized, but the majority of the unskilled/semi-skilled labor force are (by our standards) slaves. I noticed that someone was blathering about "they wouldn't work there if they didn't want to". Shut up jackass...these people don't pick their jobs. You think that they can walk into their boss and resign.
With the huge margins on ipods and Apple's stock pile of raw cash and very little debt, it could afford to pay the Chinese workers a few more dollars per month, maybe bonus pay based on reasonable production goals or meeting quality standards improving iPod reliability.
The rich of the world can keep dishing out big bucks for high priced iPods and iMacs, and the workers could use the extra money to feed their kids, it is a reasonable request.
Whatever happened to enlightened self-interest?
This is exactly why I don't agree with this laisse faire approach to outsourcing. Other countries do not have the same labor standards as the US or other first-world nations. You can not tell me China (Tiamanmen Square) allows labor unions or give them any latitude. In order to have prevent outsourcing under laisse faire policy, we have to not unionize, give up essential benefits, work longer hours, and get less pay. You would hope (naively) that American executives would demand better conditions from their subcontractors in China and other countries but I am sure they would overlook those conditions for the bottom line. In end though, we are our own worse enemy. We demand cheaper prices and could care less where or how our products are made. Moreover, instead of watching elected officials, we choose to be hypotized by reality TV and crime dramas. There is only some much our population can do in a services economy. Not everyone can be a financial analyst, a software architect, engineer, or any other job that requires a bit of intellect. Construction jobs are going to illegal immigrants and those won't last when interest rates go back up. We are in for some desperate times. I predict this is going to bite us in the ass some day with a depression, a recession, and/or a really nasty war.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
"[They] make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food." This is completely unfair! I wish I spent only $25/month on housing and food.
There's something else we need to consider here. We're talking about a story that came from The Daily Mail, a news source as reliably inaccurate as any other supermarket tabloid.
I suspect The Daily Mail writers did their usual bang-up job in the storyroom: found a half-truth, made the rest up. They noticed iPods are manufactured in China and made the rest up.
Until this story is reported in a news source (the Daily Mail being that other thing, a FUD source), it's not worth debating.
Many people have been saying the workers make $50 dollars a month and pay half of it on food and housing. THIS IS WRONG. The articles clearly show that the workers making $50/month get free housing and food. It's only the workers making $100/month that pay half their salary on food and housing.
This should put the comparisons people have been making on average Chinese salaries into new perspective. In particular, $100 dollars/month is by far much better than the mean.
The worse thing that can happen to third-world country worker is when some "charitable" activist group tries starts this kind of lobby. Have you ever thought that in country with over 1 billion people, and a GDP which is barely higher than Brazil (less than 200 million people) it's very difficult to find a job? People usually forget that pre-capitalistic societies were none of the paradise they imagine. People had a life expectancy of no much more than 30 years, famine was common place, plagues abounded. China is like that, and yes, it's sad that their standards of living are so low, that they eagerly see receiving 50 bucks a month as a blessing, but the fact is that they do. They have one billion people to feed man, and it's going to take a lot of economical growth till the market move to a higher-standards equilibrium. Companies like apple are doing what is supposed for a company to do: lower their costs as much as they can, so they can have a competitive edge in the market. 50 bucks may be shamefully little money, but it's more than most of those people ever dreamed of, they came from rural areas, where famine is everywhere, and they see it as a raise on their standards of living, preciselly because it is. Denying it for them is just a hypocrital form of protectionism, that disguise itself on supposedly well intentioned ideas. If there's someone to blame here, are their overlords who kept the misery for a so long time because of their inneficient economic system. Denying them access to global markets is only going to take the last hope they can have of improving things for them.
Your ad could be here!
* With purchase of second Tibet of equal or greater value
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
workers making $50/month do not need to pay for food and housing. It's the ones making $100/month that do, and they spend half of it on food and housing. Does nobody read the articles?
half the stuff you see in your house was most likely made in a sweat shop in Asia. to put it bluntly the first world can't exist without the exploitation of the third world, whether it be for natural resources such as oil, natural gas, ore, or even slave labor.
Conditions in sweatshops are bad, but they are better than the alternatives by a long way, and unlike the alternatives they mean that people do not starve due to state imposed restrictions on labour or trade.
These increase wages, increase skills, enable people to learn how to use new technology. Those who wish to will leave and set up their own businesses, and then employ more people. As competition for workers increases so do wages.
And at the same time, it means that we in the west get cheaper produce, and can spend our time doing the things we're good at like designing iPods, or writing software.
The simple fact is that people would not work there if it wasn't worth their while. To treat them otherwise borders on racist, they're foreign or poor and don't know what's good for them and just won't do what's best unless we tell them to or make them...
It makes me sick that people would rather have people starve than be able to take control over their lives. We should be celebrating greater employment opportunities, greater opportunity to trade. It is what made the USA and the UK rich nations, why do we seek to deny others those opportunities?
If there was no prospect of progress, I'd join in with criticism of sweat shops, but the truth is they are a step on the ladder to greater prosperity and a better future, a future which they are rapidly progressing towards.
(just think, an estimated $60 million people starved to death in China after Mao's 'Great Step Forwards', the economy was in tatters, look how far China has come).
Damn it, you ruined my print!
Freakin' echo chamber. One person says something, others repeat it, whether it's right or wrong.
_ ld_1118ipod.html) makes iPods for Apple (Foxconn does too).
The original article claims the iPod factory is 200,000 people, despite the fact that Foxconn only employees 211,000 people total. The Longhua campus has about 200,000 people. Not all of them make iPods.
Then the Wired article repeats two paragraphs almost word for word and adds a little more info, like Invatec (giving a horrible link) makes iPods for Apple.
Except they don't. Inventec (http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2004/11/18/cx
These stores are nearly-fact free. And as to people being surprised about this, did they look at the back of their iPod? They didn't see the "Made in China" mark? Or they thought perhaps it was made in China, but Apple still paid employees $50,000 a year?
These people make decent money. That's why it is difficult for Chinese to get one of these jobs, many people compete for them. People just don't have any idea of the cost of living in other countries. Heck, look at me above, putting down $50,000 a year for factory workers! That's my Bay Area experience messing me up, where I grew up in the Rust Belt, it would be more like $38,000!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
As far as I see it, Steve Jobs is an up-standin' Amer-kin. Jis doin' his pert to keep them red commie bastards demoralized...and such...God Blerss Amer-ka (F@$K YEAH!) ;)
P.S. I'm being humourous....don't flame me!
your iPod would cost ten bucks more and a few thousand peasants would languish miserably in the countryside instead of toiling in that factory.
There is no moral high ground here—unless you sell your iPod and donate the proceeds to a third-world charity, I suppose.
that's all i want to know. i keep mine in a case all the time adn still the back gets scratches all over it.
... cannon, solitaire, breakout... get real...
really, next to my psp, the ipod sucks like hell.
on the psp, we have full screen awesome 3d games, video, music, inet browser, wifi, rss channels for streaming music, photos... awesome
on the ipod.. lets see, tiny screen, music, and games that are just puke
peopel that come over to my house, play loco roco demo on the psp and fight over it. i try to offer the ipod as a consolation to whoever loses, but they don't even want to mess with it. it just sucks so bad compared to a psp
the psp has such a coolness factor in it. i can go in a taco bell and surf the net, watch videos, and draw a crowd anywhere i go
and best of all
no rats nest of blasted ear buds and wires, i hate that. the psp has speakers, which alone make it rule
I read a different article, which said the factories were bad and the pay was barely enough to survive on. Not enough to eat well, not even enough to allow the factory workers to save up enough money to leave and go elsewhere. These people face starvation if they complain about conditions to the barely existent government regulators. Your situation being "poor" is not comparable to these people, and the fact that you've pulled yourself out of relative poverty through hard work doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. No matter how bad things get for you, there will always be a soup kitchen if you're hungry.
If we actually paid these people enough to feed their families and do relatively well, then it would be a lot easier to accept.
The truth however, is that most of the arguments are just made to help people feel better about the horrible impact on someone's life caused by their choices as a consumer.
is toiling even more miserably in the fields. Globalization can carry these unfortunate people from worse to bad: what have you ever done for them?
I have a mac. I have an iPod. I drive a volvo. Man, do they have me pegged.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
$50 per month? Minimum wage for factory workers in China is $37.50 per month. For $50, they'll have people waiting in line to work for them.
Um, people, since Ford Motor Company acquired Volvo, they have become nothing but pieces of shit, like every other car made by an American company. A fine car company now flushed down the toilets like so many others who prided themselves on quality and customer satisfaction.
And yes, I am an American. Why in the hell are we paying some moronic Union members $24.00/hour to press a 3 cent microswitch and do a job that a $4.00 Embedded device can do, and do better?
~ Leilah
Let's start a movement to publicize this horrible practice. Instead of "Free Tibet!" our slogan can be "Free Ipod!"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
HA! I drive a turbocharged 1.8T Beetle. No Volvo here.
I teach English at FoxConn Beijing, I actually used this article in my class today.
The kids I teach are mostly engineers and marketoids in their early 20s who work 10 hour days for 2000 RMB (135 pounds or 250 USD). They don't believe this article because the minimum wage in Beijing is 600 RMB a month (40 pounds... why does this have to be in pounds).
I have a list of how much things cost in China, but I'd estimate a 330 RMB/month lifestyle (after rent) has a 128meg MP3 player and eats meat almost every day (a frozen chicken breast is 20 cents, and I live in the city).
Oh, they also think "women are more honest" means honest as in diligent and steady workers, nothing to do with stealing like I thought.
My students all tell me they work 8 hour days, so I surveyed the class, the average working day yesterday was 10 hours + 1 for lunch. They were as shocked at the idea of a paid lunch as anything you read in this article.
Unfortunately it seems I don't have enough pull to get to visit this factory when I'm down there in a few months, which is a shame, I really wanted to see a 200000 man factory.
My list of multiplayer
Would the conditions be considered so awful if maybe the company provided them with an iPod to listen to while working??? (songs not included)
"But this one goes to 11!"
"Naked Economics", by Charles Wheelan.
Read it.
Sweatshops, while appalling in the US, export money to third world nations. Where would these women work if not at an Apple factory? This is just the start of taking a third world nation out of the dumps. As more people make more money, the economy grows, the government grows, and then they can make their own laws on labor. They are just in a different stage of development than the US.
Free trade helps everyone. It always has, and it always will.
If you don't like the wages, don't work for the company. Enough people not working for the company, they have to raise wages. That's how it works. Your labor is worth what someone will pay you for it, or what you can create and sell with it. TANSTAAFL.
And if Apple (or some other corp) weren't there, what would they do? Farm?? Like you can make any money doing that with western subsidies glutting agriculture markets.
Hey, there's always the sex trade...
So Apple is "evil" after all (by "evil", I mean that they're no better than any other company (it remains to be seen if they are actually worse)). That will crush the illusions of the deluded Apple fanboys and Jobs sycophants, but they had to be brought back to reality sooner or later. :-)
Then again, a lot of companies (Red Hat, IBM, etc) are making huge profits by exploiting unpaid labor: that of the opressed OSS developer, who isn't "forced" to produce software for free, but has been brainwashed into doing so as part of a children's crusade.
So Apple gets cheap labor because workers are "forced" to work in sweatshops because they have few other options.
Red Hat, IBM, etc get free labor because some OSS devs are "forced" to work for free through indoctrination.
Who's worse?
If this is true, then all American companies, I'm sure, who do business in China, will also fold their tents, right? Or at least double the salaries we pay to the women who assemble their products, right? Well, no. Lemme tell you about the Mail and the attacks against the iPod. Apple has 80% of the (US?) market, and it's growing. Making a player that is widely accepted as BETTER seems to be beyond Apple's rivals. So all kinds of atacks are going on, some of it naked -- on the front page of MSN "news" is a link, entitled "iPod Killer", to a C/Net article detailing the alternatives to iPod -- and some of it stealth.
If you notice, the US economy is tied, cheek to jowl, to the Red Chinese pretend-Marxist gummint in PEKING!!!! China is our leading trading partner. Wal-Mart is their distributor. We don't export much there -- they can't afford it -- but we sure as hell profit from the factories we have exported there. We have had, in the last ten years but especially in the last six, a huge, looming trade deficit. What do we offer the Chinese in exchange? Well, our debt. The yuan is bailing out the dollar. Gee, that sounds funny, especially for such an anti-communist gummint as W's. It is funny.
What other music players are being manufactured in China, or in other low-cost manufacturing centers? Gee, I don't know. The only story is about Apple, and how Apple should raise the salaries of these women, thus pricing themselves out of the mp3 market. No mention of where other players are made.
I don't know if these women are paid enough, in line with the economy. I'd have to know something about the "market basket" of goods they need to support themselves and save some. In other reports, I've seen that young women are preferred, and that a lot of money they make ends up supporting their parents in the country, for whom a lot of the Marxist safety net has been removed. Try finding a doctor, barefoot or not, in rural China. So the post-communist authoritarian capitalist regime in China has recreated many of the horrors of feudalism, which is where we came in before the Revolution.
There are a lot of valid points to be made when you talk about our economy and its increasing dependence on low-cost labor, the collapse of our once world-beating manufacturing, and the dependence on goods made with low wages to continue the illusion of an American middle class.
I'd bet that Apple's workers in China are paid much the same as anyone else. The Nike scandal, and the Kathie Lee sweatshops in Central America, happened at the beginning of the modern global era. I don't think the same outrage can be used today, because the situation globally has gotten much worse.
And it is beyond the power of any single company to change global trade. If Apple switched to North American factories tomorrow, the iPod would go to $6-700 for the top of the line, and nobody would buy it.
You intend to simply demand fair conditions for billions of hopelessly poor people? While you are at it, you might put in a few words for world peace, too.
Just because it is happening everywhere else, means its OKAY to happen here too? Oh, I see, you wanted to point out the irony of the silly American. Your post was nothing more than a well worded troll.
.. you just can't let it slide by.
Change has to happen somewhere, and some companies, believe it or not, will be held to higher standards. No one would give to winks if they found out Microsoft was doing the same thing with their XBoxes, but when you have a company like Apple, who prides themselves of being a very progressive, different, and generally feel-good company
Change has to happen somewhere, and passing it off because it's the norm doesn't hold up.
...Apple can expect a similar grilling from its upscale Volvo-driving fans in the months ahead.
I resent that. I drive a '70 Impala that gets 9 MPG and vote conservative (not neccisarily Republican, any more). Ah hate stero typing!
I drank what? -- Socrates
£27 = $50.
Okay, so that's the $50/month quoted in the summary.
Now, let's move on to the next paragraph.
Twice the salary (£54 = $100), with half of that spent (£27 = $50) on food & accomodations. Ergo, *this* is totally wrong:It /could/ read something like this:
MacWorld summarizes an article published in the U.K., stating that Apple's iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, making $50/month, and live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors. The article also claims that some make twice as much, but have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food.
Oh wait...I see the problem - I read TFA.
I run my own (micro) business (a corporation). The corporation can afford (more or less) to pay me a salary that nets (after taxes and etc.) $1000 / month. My expenses are:
$862.50 Rent (for a small one bedroom apt. and half a storage locker)
$25.00 Average Utilities (Gas and Electric)
$13.11 Phone
------
$99.39 Remaining
The corporation pays me for work-related travel, which more or less covers the cost of my (16 year old) auto (as long as I don't use it for any long personal trips, and nothing major breaks down), which means I have about $100. / month to spend for food, clothing, entertainment, etc.
So, I am doing 4X as well as a Chinese woman sweatshop worker, except I suspect $100 doesn't go as far in Silicon Valley, California, USA as $25 goes in Sweatshop City, PRC.
BTW, in California, a corporation has to pay $800 / year to the government even if it lost money. Plus substantial penalties if you can't get all the forms figured out and the money together in time.
Try to remember me when you sit around dreaming up ways to punish the "evil corporations" for grinding down the poor workers.
It's just my opinion, but I don't think it will be wise to make it more difficult for an honest man to succeed in business in the USA than it is in communist China.
Comrades.
But, the original article reads:
For the Suzhou factory,
In other words, we should really based the discussion upon $100/month. This makes a hugh difference. For people who know a little bit about China, they know the figure is about right for a line worker... Of course, whoever wants to give our fellow workers a more decent pay is more than welcome.
In major cities, the Chinese government starts imposing minimum salary. It is $84/month in Tianjin (the city next to Beijing, with higher cost of living than either of the towns mentioned in the MacWorld article). The submitter is like complaining MacDonald pays its workers 1.2 times of the minimum salary. So, what the heck is the problem???
I imagine this is a case where economics would say they're just making an optimal choice and ethics would say they've got questionable ethics.
People might go so far as to look at this not as Apple's doing wrong, but the market's trends and forces being out of whack. That is, I imagine they're in China because many other companies are, and for them to not be in China would require them price their products higher (higher cost of labor makes a higher marginal cost sets a higher optimal-price for the product.)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Is this the same Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday that has spent almost every day since Princess Diana's death carrying a consipracy theory story.
Trust me I wouldnt wipe my arse with the Mail...
My arse prefering double sheet ultra soft toilet paper probably sourced from cheap labour.
Still not the greatest bastion of journalism in the UK thou.
I can think of no good solution, but I know something that might help. Imagine if we could pass a law that every item we buy from outside of the US (electronics, clothes, furniture, ect) comes with a new label. The label has to include a photo of the inside of the factory at which the product was made, the lowest paid employees earnings, average floor workers hours a week, a picture of a factory workers home and family, a photo of the companies CEO's house, and the CEO's annual salary. Maybe this would help to humanize these people and criminalize the companies that do so much wrong.
The scary thing is a law like this would never pass. The washington lobbyists would eat it alive. I just hope that in 50 years when people overseas are buying products are grandchildren are making in factories for $50/week we don't look back and say, nothing we could have done anyway.
This is not about Job's!
Or Apple.
It's "YOU"...
Its your job. Or theirs... isn't it?
Are you willing to sacrifice more of your job (ie. cash)
so that China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, etc... can have a job more like yours
(ie. wages)?
They already have your job,
at least what once was your job
(ie. manufacturing),
don't they?
Apple designs products that represent a " store-of-value" (ie. iPod) to consumers
and
provides services that represent a " store-of-currency" (ie. iTMS)
- both translate
to Apple's bottomline as
cash.
So you want "Sweat-free" product?
Product labeling is
legislated by law
in the US.
Apple positions products
that appeal to consumer's higher values
(i.e. morality, intellect, etc...)
subsequently
enjoying higher value in product pricing
by association.
Consumer's who vote their conscience
pay a dollar premium for a U2 product.
Those who value "Black"
spend more for black products.
If there is value
in a "labor-sourced" product
Jobs will develop a business transaction
that trades on
the currency in the value
of jobs.
Raising Apple's corporate profile
extending legislated labeling requirements
into product placement and marketing
Apple could afford.
No sweat...
Can you?
Apple doesn't have any choice.
Foreign companies simply cannot own factories in China. You must partner with a local company. Because of that and other factors, it doesn't make sense to buy a factory in China. So your contractor owns it, and they do what they want.
You could pay more and tell the contractor to pay the employees more. And they might do it, but then every worker will want to work there, and the employees will have to pay bribes and kickbacks to get jobs at that factory, just reducing their pay again.
Employees already often pay "favors" to get on the list to get jobs in desireable factories in China, even at these wages.
So, if Apple wants to save money building in China, they may not have a reasonable way of controlling employee wages.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
For all I know, $100 a month in China is far better than $8/hour here. $8/hour is about what people working in electronics plants get paid. We are talking about completely unskilled labor here, like inserting resistors into boards and sticking two pieces together. I'm sure that it doesn't cost $500/month to rent an apartment in China.
Fifty dollars a month is heaven to China's huge farm workforce where a half billion of them make about $200 a year. Until that is remedied, they'll be an unlimited supply of labor willing to work in those conditions - better than before.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, not far from Apple worldwide corporate headquarters. I work as a software engineer, sometimes 15 hours a day.
More than half of my salary goes to my lodging and food.
Two hundred thousand workers? WTF? I don't think so! That would be over HALF A BILLION USD a year on sallary for those workers alone. I seriously doubt that there are 200,000 people working in this plant...
NMG
"MacWorld summarizes an article published in the U.K., stating that Apple's iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food. The article also claims the workers live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors."
Without passing judgement on whether it's good or bad, I have been to Beijing, and seen the living conditions of the lower classes up close. What is described above would be an upgrade for some. So while it may be a bad thing, don't get the impression that it is slave labor or indentured servitude - the people who work there are problably happy to have the job.
Finding a way to improve labor practices in China would be good. But if it leads to those people losing their jobs, it would (at least in the short run) be a bad thing.
Again, not saying the present state is defensible or good, nor that there are not good paths to improvement, just adding some information for thought.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Lets face it. We love slavery. We are horrible creatures that could careless about each other.
We'll given millions of illegal mexican immigrants amnesty because we love slavery!
We'll sell out our working class because they demand a quality life but slaves dont! Slaves can be used without a care in the world.
We love to use humans and not pay them.
We love to take credit for work other humans do.
We love to make money and not care about each other's well being.
We love slavery. We are horrible people that do not care about each other at all. We're doomed.
There is no reason why this has to happen, and yet we exploit people at every oppurtunity... because WE LOVE SLAVERY... WE ARE HORRIBLE PEOPLE.
We are not evolved enough to survive as a species. We'll kill each other for a dollar just to feel special in our fancy cars that the next guy cant afford. We dont deserve to the future, and we'll never get there.
Communism is actually the ideal system until you add the human factor. Once human nature is introduced you'll end up with what became the Soviet Union and China. Therefore, the best system in the real world is a capitalist society which is a republic or democracy.
I would counter that capitalism is also an ideal system until you add the human factor.
Communism fails because of labor sloth, abuse of asymmetrical state power between leaders and citizens, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
Capitalism fails because of business avarice, abuse of asymmetrical contract power between the rich and the not-rich, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
The only system that works is a mixed economy system where greed and apathy are balanced against each other (profit motive must be present but not overwhelm human dignity), state and corporate power are checked by rule of law and an engaged citizenry (democracy, sunshine laws, anti-trust law, labor law, etc.), and consideration of the effects of one's actions on others enforced by courts and legislatures (pollution control, worker safety laws, food safety laws, reasonable tort law, etc.).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So these workers in the factory are trapped....between the proverbial rock and a hard place. These crises are utterly manufactured by many governments worldwide. It sickens me to continue to see this drama played out over and over again. Why in the world anyone would think it's ok to pay so little that people have to live in mass bunk type housing and eat the food provided by the company?(which may not be enough or of poor quality) It's one thing to have to get a roommate, but it's unconscionable to force such squalor on people and then point and say that they're better off than they were... when *the way they were is a gov't created crisis*.
When salaries are too low to afford someone the basics of subsistance AND it doesn't afford a few hours a day where someone can dream up a better life and try to pursue the education to achieve it *then you indeed have created a wage slave* who can never achieve anything more than hand to mouth existance...a lovely zombie indeed. Ah...but it's also assured that they can't rise up against their servitude since the means to cultivate their own food, fix their own homes (they don't have those any more either) are gone therefore they don't have the means to stage a revolt.
There isn't any such thing as a free market in this perverted global economy where corporatism and it's need for insane profits rule the day. Something is indeed wrong when competition and profits got so out of hand that it trumped being humane. Why in the world has human civilization always governed itself by the pursuit of money and willingness to use slaves in the process? Just because it always has, doesn't mean that it's "right" or that another way couldn't be devised.
(rant and speculation off)
And the real question is, which one of you hypocrites is ready to pay double for your consumer electronics?
I say yes to child and sweatshop labor 'cause i'm a realist, and don't give a damn about people who are making my dvd-players.
The awful truth is that you also don't care.
Everybody's interested until you tell them they're gonna have to pay double for that MP3-player they're going to buy.
Or even more by several multipliers.
After that, child labor ain't so bad. EXCPET if those big moneymaking corporations use it.
And who do you think buys their products, happy to see that the prices have dropped so much.
People who have a clean conscience are happy. People who don't have a conscience are the happiest motherfuckers alive.
But Apple is the company that's been placed on a pedestal by it's fanbase and the mainstream media as an enlightened, progressive, cool, hip company, above reproach, and Apple has only played into that.
If Apple was a person "its fanbase and the mainstream media" would be up on charges for stalking.
I get regularly modded down here for pointing at problems like Apple's daft approach to security in Safari. If you want to get on Apple's case for something they can and should do something about, start there.
Time to gang up on them, and about every other company that does it, especially directly.
Umm, yes, why is that such an outlandish idea? A lot of the comments in this story basically just state "well, sure, these sweatshops suck, but that's the way capitalism works, nothing you can do to change it." Bullshit. That's no different from saying 150 years ago "Sure, it may suck that slaves had to pick this cotton for my clothes, but that's just the way our system works, and look they even get room and board for free."
The point of publically going against a large company like Apple is to shame them into improving working conditions, and more importantly to get consumers (that's you) to think about where that $20 DVD player comes from.
People working as janitors are payed at this level in China. As there are 200,000 workers in that plant, I belive there are many janitors. Don't know how much Walmart pays its janitors in US but I don't guess too much. As others like people working on assembly lines, I guess they are payed at level of $100 per month or more.
Also in this article the authors take Suzhou as part of Shanghai, it looks something like a piece of news saying the tobacco smelling Richmond become part of DC. I don't believe articles like that.
I think the authors saw somehting via a pipe, and trying to tell us something via a second pipe. Everything has been badly screwed.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
It would better yet if material goods were to fall like manna from heaven upon the poor masses—but in the real economy, there is often no better alternative to working long hours, under bad conditions, in exchange for a petty wage. And we must make ethical decisions in light of reality. The rich world should simply give more money to the poor: they would then have no desire to volunteer for exploitation at the factory doors. By blaming the capitalists one merely shoots the messenger.
which people have attempted to implement again and again with tyrannical results must be flawed on some basic level. Saying "That's not what he meant" when the outcome of attempts to apply his philosophy are consistently dehumanizing is meaningless. IMO, marxists are insane by the old definition: They keep trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Not that there would be anything wrong with Marx's ideas in a perfect world, he just failed to take into account the world that we really live in.
Unfortunately for radicals on both sides (Marxists and Capitalists) the only workable solution in a world populated by flawed humans is a balance between the "100% free market with no government controls" and "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" points of view. Those of us who are rational realize that a system based on greed must be regulated since enlightened self interest isn't a sufficient control for everyone, and that a system that fails to reward based on merit inevitably leads to stagnation.
As with most things in life, there are shades of grey here.
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From the CIO article below, median wage across China is around $120 USD/m.
= 2
http://www.cio.com/archive/101505/china.html?page
Financial Times reported Shenzen minimum wages around $100 USD/m according to this link:
http://www.danielgross.net/
So your # seems a little high. But the $50 USD/m quoted in the parent article seems too low. It would be illegal.
It's actually pretty easy to look for related information on Google about these issues if you know what to look for. This kind of thing is very common in China, especially in southern China. The place "Longhua town" in question is located in Guangdong province ( Map of Longhua ) so it fits perfectly into the common scenario.
. html
The keyword you should look for about this kind of issue are "migrant workers", especially women migrant workers, in China of coz. For example, this one: http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/public/0205/ye
I'll do a little bit of summary for why it happens in China, and why women workers are involved:
i. While the Longhua town in the case is actually considered urban area in China (notice that it's called a 'town', and it is very near to the major cities Shenzhen and Hong Kong), the slave labours in question should be from rural areas of China (s.t. they are migrant workers). It is actually illegal for them to work in Longhua town under China's hukou system. Labour laws do not apply to them since they officially "don't exist". If these workers are busted by the police for some reason they will be sent back to where they came from, in the best case. Another major reason for these migrant workers, not mentioned in the article I provided, is the closedown of state owned enterprises in China. State owned enterprises is another major pain in the ass in China (state owned => corruption => inefficient and prone to go backrupt) which you can have a field day on Google.
ii. The reason why they go out to work in urban areas, risking to become slave labours, is becoz the economy of the rual areas cannot support them. The explosive economic growth in China has only benefited the urban areas, while farmers in the rural areas have seen little increase in their income. Inflation affects the rural areas anyway, and so they have to move out and find a living elsewhere. For former SOE workers, it is because their employer has been closed down by the government and so they have to look for jobs elsewhere.
iii. The reason why the workers we see are mostly women is because they are cheaper, and they are easier to exploit (they have a family to support back in their rural village). That has nothing to do with "better" human rights in China.
iv. Since the Longhua town in our case is considered urban area, the average wage there is actually far higher than the average income of a rural Chinese. If these were legitimate workers in Longhua they would have received much better salaries than USD $50/month. Compound that with 15hr/day working times they are definitely slave labours. So please don't cite the average income of a Chinese, compare to them and say they're actually better off.
As for labor conditions overseas- feh...
Let's see now, that's 200K workers each at $50/month to manufacture 2M iPods per month. In other words, 10 iPods are manufactured per month for every worker, at a cost of $5 per iPod. Assuming a luxurious 20 days worked per month, 2 person-days are required to manufacture (assemble, package and ship) an iPod. Somehow I feel this is a whole lot more time than is actually required for the job and either the manufacturing plant is operating very inefficiently or something is wrong with the "facts" being reported.
Shut up and get back to the work pit!
Your points are right on.
It is helpful to remember that the vast majority of the populace in Indian and China
still live in the rural regions surviving more or less on subsistence farming.
To move these farm laborers into the industrilized economy, a tremendous # of jobs
have to be created. This is an ENORMOUS transition in the history of a country which
England and US have made about 100 years ago. That is why the demand for jobs
are so high which helps keep the wages down. Even so, Chinese wages have quadrupled in
the past 5-10 years. So things are slowing improving there.
A MUCH greater concern for me is workplace safety and environmental polution.
For example, many coal mines operate illegally in unsafe conditions in China.
They also pollute to boot.
Regulatory agencies are inadequate and too easy to bribe. So the only really practical
means to combat these illegal and dangerous practices is to empower the worker
to form REAL unions and allow civil suits with real enforcement mechanisms.
This may pain some of you to hear it; China really need a strong court system
with MANY MORE LAWYERS.
To the extent that failing to exceed local labor laws would cause their customer base to revolt, they have a large responsibility. It's well-known that American and European consumers take a very harsh view of companies practicing what they view as exploitative labor practices. For some reason, they don't like it when they find out that their lifestyle is causing misery around the globe. Not taking that into account could be seen as evidence of negligent business practices.
How much, exactly, do other workers in their locale earn? What is the overall cost of living?
This BusinessWeek article indicates that the average hourly wage of a Chinese factory worker is $0.45 (rural) and $1.06 (city). Guessing at 22 working days a month, that's about $150 and $350 a month. The article suggests that $150 in China has the same purchasing power as $693 in the US ($350 is equivalent to $1618). So it would seem that, assuming that Longhua is a rural area, factory workers in these two locations are paid less than a third of the average local wage. But you raise a good point -- why is anyone even working there? What sort of illegal practices are being used?
How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"?
Apple frequently uses icons of human rights in its marketing materials, such as Ghandi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr. Arguably, these are cynical marketing tools designed to give the impression that Apple cares about the same things as its target market, and shouldn't be taken seriously. Nonetheless, Apple has made a significant investment in portraying itself as a pro-human rights, pro-environment company, and permitting potential abuses to continue would significantly undermine their brand, as well as make a mockery of their own internal standards for suppliers. See the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct [pdf].
wouldn't more effective change come from the US being able to have a global position such that it can exert pressure on the Chinese government and other human rights abusers, rather than trying to mobilize consumers to target US companies?
Would it? The US is not presently in a very good position to exert pressure on human rights abusers and the government is influenced by multinational corporations who have strong financial incentives to maintain the status quo. And in any case, those are not mutally exclusive options. It occurs to me that companies frequently complain about government interfering with their business, but when human rights activists adopt free-market compatible strategies such as publically embarrassing companies, they complain about that too. This gives the impression that corporations are untrustworthy, interested only in covering up their immoral practices.
I will say that it's rather unfair that, in campaigns like these, it's often that one target, however, that bears a hugely disproportionate burden of vilification...
I'm afraid I'm not terribly sympathetic to that argument. How can you argue that people treat corporations fairly when they expend a great deal of effort to evade their own responsibilities? Is it fair for competent employees to lose their jobs for reasons outside of their control? The social contract says that if you work hard and do good work for your company, you will be rewarded, but companies have successfully freed themselves of that and now claim that they actually have no responsibility whatsoever to treat their workers fairly. They should not now make appeals to fairness. If you engage in labor practices to the displeasure of your customers, you run the ri
"It's Dot Com!"
All -
Based on what I know about labor costs in China at present, these charges don't hold up.
For background, factory workers (usually young women), are not so surprisingly in short supply and high demand in the manufacturing areas of the PRC these day.
Given this situation, they are demanding better wages and working conditions. The wages and working conditions are no where near what I have seen in the last 10 years of working with China and bear no resemblance to what is the market now.
1. Wages
Wages for factory workers are actually above those of recent college graduates (there is a glut of college graduates). A good college grad can expect to make 1500 to 2000 RMB (about USD 180 to 250) starting out. A factory work will make 1800 to 2400 RMB.
2. Room & Board Chargs
As part of the job package in China, a factory work receives housing and food. They aren't charged for these.
3. Housing Conditions
By and large they are college like and are above the average for Chinese housing for young adults who are living at home.
Based on my first hand knowledge of China, I have to heavily discount the claims in this article and question the rest of it.
Yours,
Jordan
If Mickey D employees work over 40 hours, they get overtime pay (i.e. time and a half.) So someone who worked 90 hours would get
40 hours at * $5.25 an hour (minimum wage) = $210 +
50 hours at * $7.88 an hour (time and a half) = $394.
That's $600 a week, which translates into roughly $2,400 a month, over $30,000 a year, and essentially a lower middle class job.
Oh, and they can live wherever they want, eat whatever they want, and you know, DON'T HAVE TO WORK 90 HOURS TO MAKE A LIVING WAGE.
But if you want to compare the two some more, go right ahead.
Dear Steve Jobs,
I'll not buy any of your craps - since you're using slave labor
Sincerely,
Your consumer
The term "sweatshop" really shouldn't apply to this sort of job regardless of the pay rate because no sweating is involved; it's quite comfortable work. Electronics assembly is a fantastic job by the standards of the region because it requires a clean, cool, well-lit, dust-free environment. As for the rate of pay, the number quoted was a bit higher than I expected and in any case quite excellent by comparison with what one can earn in the rural farming areas nearby where all these workers come from. These factories are improving the standard of living for many thousands of people and should be applauded.
(Yes, I've worked at factories like this.)
I play Nerd-Folk!
Films inside of a bead making factory in China and relates it to how the beads are used at Mardi Gras.
http://www.mardigrasmadeinchina.com/splash.html
Here is the solution, let people themselves decide. Have two iPod Versions for each model. For example:
The iPod 60GB and the iPod 60GB SW. The SW version is as it is now. The iPod 60GB sells for about 1100 but is made in the US.
Let's see which sells and how many people from Slashdot will be buying the SW or the regular or can't afford any of them.
Anyone?
We now have a new product called iSlaves
I shop at Wal-Mart, so MOST of the goods I buy are made in sweatshops by underpaid Chinese people. My only question is: If they're so cheap to make, how come IPods cost so blamed much?
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
Gee, I guess not a lot of people noticed that the fucking summary by Jurgen (which was posted by Zonk) is completely wrong. 100 women a room? The article says 100 per DORMITORY. Half of $50 for housing and food? Nope. Housing and food is FREE, it's only the workers making $100/month that pay "half" for food and housing. Way to go, Slashdot!
...is a really, really shit paper. Really shit. In some ways worse than The Sun, which Slashdot has in fact linked to in the past.
:|
So pay no heed. When this appears in a respectable organ (no, Slashdot is not respectable), it might carry some weight. Until then...
iqu
Libertarian philosophy is a wonderful policy between relative equals.
It breaks down horribly when the parties involved are not roughly equal.
For people who have the choice of "be a slave or starve", it is an especially
unworkable philosophy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I was wondering where they did the usability testing for those new shoes, and who works harder than people in a sweatshop? (Nike would know!)
Ahh now I see why they joined forces.
Another clueless fool who doesn't know history.
I know googling it is way harder than starting to blab about communism, but perhaps you should expand your horizons.
Read about coal mine history, and maybe pick up Oliver Twist, and learn about child labour; Chaplin movies also have a socio-political aspect, so perhaps you should watch Modern Times, and The Kid, along with the commentary.
As far as to your question whether it is ok to exploit people even if not making money (or for any other benefit, if I may add), then please give at least a single example, because as far as history shows us, people were always exploited in order to gain some benefit -- monetary, or not.
Someone else already did it in the responses. These people are making above average money for ALL JOBS in China (something like 55th percentile). And they don't have to risk their lives mining coal.
Doesn't seem all that bad. Do factory workers make average or better money for the economy as a whole in the US?
And anyway, like I said in another post, these people have to pay bribes to even get jobs at these factories already. If you raise the wages, the bribes will just become bigger, because the jobs will be that much more valueable.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Okay - I've just seen this link in a post further down. Looks like that kind of wage is not uncommon.
However, I'd still say it's not a decent wage.
"...living costs eat up about half the worker's salaries."
Welcome to the Bay Area. Wait - rents easily eat up about 2/3 of the typical household income, or something like that. $14/hr is good for young people (using my roommate), and $1,500 for an apartment is common. Full time with 4.3 weeks per month, at a 30% tax-rate, that salary is down to $1,685.50. $185.50 left over. 88.9% of this post-tax salary to rent, or 62.3% pre-tax. So she has a roommate - me. No wonder roommates are a neccessity to life out here.
And the further reality is that if sweatshops were removed, those workers would have absolutely no income. Long hours and low wages (which describes the typical fast-food employee or Wal-Mart "team member"), or no income. Or prices can be raised, comsumers bitch, don't buy, and the product goes under anyway, taking those jobs away. It's be nice to find a balance, but first company owners need to realize that they aren't at risk of going broke if they "only" have $500mil in quarterly revenue.
It's a girl!
As someone who work with vendors in China. Factory have trouble getting as much labor as they need. It's pushing wages to about $220, free room & board. With overtime pay for night and sundays. With the factories so close to each other, places don't offer the average amount can't survive.
Experiment:
Go down to your local electronics retailer and inspect ten products in the store.
Turn each one over and note where the "Made in China" sticker is located.
Are there really manufacturing plants in China that aren't sweatshops? Why do we import bulk goods from China if not because they're cheaper than everywhere else? And why are they cheap? Because they don't have to worry about pesky expenses like reasonable wages.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it.
No, I blame voters and the big dumb companies that control their media.
The US used to not trade with non free countries. That's not true anymore and we are all poorer for it, despite having piles of cheap slave labor stuff around.
There is little hypocrisy and no sin in buying those cheap goods though. By allowing companies their share of the exploitation, the government has set up a system where those who do wrong will win in all but a few markets. On an individual level, you too will fail to compete if you hobble yourself.
The easy way to break out is to change everyone's import and export laws to reflect public indignation. The indignation is coming but it has to be global.
The hard way to break out is to help China liberate itself. Money and living standards alone won't do it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This happens with almost every product that gets imported from somewhere.
Read about how the workers live and work on the pineapple and banana-plantations that DelMonte and Dole have begun to outsource to local contractors so they don't need to take the heat on the bad working-conditions.
Chances are your house is full of electronics made in sweatshops around the world (there was an article some time back linked on slashdot or kuro5hin). And the multi-national corporations are playing the different sweat-shop countries off against each other.
Picking Apple for it is, well, somehow understandable, because a lot of people have an iPod - but the fact is that almost all of the world's laptop are pieced together in that area (by a handful of OEMS/ODMs), too and nobody cares.
It's a really depressing thought that a big part of our prosperity here in the western hemishpere is really gained by squeezing it out of the already-poor population of developing-countries.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"If apple were to still cover their profit requirements; then a typical ipod would be hundreds of dollars more, an we the consumers just aren't gonna pay anymore then what we are now."
Not really. It would cost the same. It's not about using cheap labor to increase profits, it's about using cheap labor to increase profit margins. With cheap labor, they can lower prices and maintain the same profit aka Apple's sweatshops. Profit margins allow them to use cheap labor but the cost doesn't decrease. Everything has gone up in price due to this and price of oil. It's a scam to get money for nothing all the while Americans are still chasing after the consumeristic dragon.
Sweatshops came back to bite Nike after its customers rose up in arms;
Ya I can't remember the last time I saw someone wearing Nike's.
In order to have a middle class, you need businesses to start up. In order for that to happen, you need an investor class to front the money.
Money for businesses does not come exclusively from the angelic gifts of the wealthy. For the longest time there's been this concept of an institution where people pool their money into saving's accounts which draw their interest from interest on payments to loans handed out to people with business ideas, newly purchased homes and cars, etc. It's called a "bank."
Credit unions are a testament to the fact that it can be done with a pool of small initial investments. Also, investments in stocks and bonds can be done by large numbers of middle class investors as well as by small numbers of upper class investors. Heck, sometimes the government even gets involved with giving low interest loans to small businesses to kick-start economic growth!
There is no reason for wealth and power to concentrate in the hands of a select few for the economy to run well.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If I find out that my ISP, or my chair manufacturer is exploiting workers by piling them 100 into a room, and making them work 15 hour DAYS - then I will be mad at THEM. Since it is Apple does not change the fact that it is wrong!
Please - Apple is JUST A COMPANY - just like HP or Sun or IBM or...yes...Microsoft. Get over it.
The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month. So they're getting paid 1/5 of the median household income for the area, before their employer takes half of it for living expenses.
Something is not adding up, perhaps it is my memory. Last summer I watched a documentary on Nokia supervising their manufacturers in China. I believe the documentary stated that the average salary was $25 in the coutryside and that the factory jobs were highly desirable. As far as rent and food consuming half a paycheck, is that really very different from what many middle class families face in the US?
I think we need to know more than absolute dollars, we also need to know what buys a comfortable standard of living in this area and adjoining areas. We need to make sure we are not comparing against some outrageously priced area, their version of SF or NYC.
And mod down the stupid grandparent.
No, a more interesting question to answer would not be "is the job making the factory worker's life better"?
If you aren't getting what you want out of your job, get another job. It isn't your employer's job to fulfill your life. Even in China (odd, since it's allegedly a Communist country).
And these people are not skilled welders. Skilled workers are making more than the minimum which was presented here for maximum shock value.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
And it still does to anyone with a clue.
Where tools are concerned the standards for metals are higher in 1st world countries. So a USA/AU hammer will be made from proper hardened steel. However this is not the case for consumer electronics which need to be constructed to a standard just to work.
And yes apple should be held accountable for the practices of its subcontractors if it sells a product that is made from those components.
TFA is probably a bit exaggerated but actually knowing Chinese people I can say not by much.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Have you seen the price of house in California? Most people I know put 60%-70% of their salary into a mortgage. Sounds like 50% is probably a good deal.
Plus one thing corporations do that governments don't do is pay you to shut up.
I'd rather have the money.
When the govt wants someone to shut up, the recipent gets something much worse than money.
An abstract preference, like that people should be prosperous and comfortable, may arise according to personal feelings of right-and-wrong. Day-to-day choices are not so freely chosen, on the other hand: they must respect the constraints of reality. That is all I mean to say by "making decisions in light of reality."
...but since when is Apple stuff cheap?
And here I thought it was all hand-carved by magic elves in their own modern Eurostyle condos...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
So why is Apple held to a higher standard than any other company whose products are made in China?
So what this is telling us that Apple aren't using robots for all of their production? This is 2006, human workers are sooo 20th century! Heellloooo!!!
I'm not going to defend Apple, but how much more are you willing to pay for an iPod to see that workers are treated the way you think they should be? Whose product will you buy because they treat their workers better than Apple does? Or will you refuse to buy it at all, for the sake of the working conditions in China or wherever? And how much will that help?
Is it a good thing? No. But saying that a Chinese company is a 'sweatshop' for paying their workers better than WalMart does in California (relative to local economic conditions) is not an accurate statement.
You said
I was pointing out that the people working in this factory are in better conditions than most of the rest of China. So how is that "worse and worse conditions"?We should save our ire and righteous indignation for the companies who are making conditions worse and worse. If we waste our energy and breath on companies who are actually doing pretty well, we just look like ranting, clueless people.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'