Slashdot Mirror
Apple Admits to Occasional Excessive Work Hours
rev_media writes "After Apple's release of a report on the labor conditions in their Chinese factories, many took issue with the deliberately vague wording used in the statement. The BBC is now reporting that Apple has admitted to 'excessive' working hours in some locations, and they would be ensuring that a 'normal' 60-hour work week will be adhered to from now on." From that article: "'We found no instances of forced overtime and employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty,' said Apple in a statement. The firm said there were 'overtime limit exceptions in unusual circumstances' and that it supported a healthy work-life balance. But it did not specify what the triggers for 'unusual circumstances' were and what upper limit it set on working hours. Mr Kuczkiewicz said Apple had not asked workers what they preferred - a decent wage or minimum wage and overtime."
Sweatshops are evil. But... other cultures outside of the US may be so poor compared to the average US citizen that working 2/3 of their existence may be well worth it for the pay they recieve.
Is it worth it? Well, to them maybe.
Is it moral? No.
And even though Apple may be a part of the problem, they are certainly not the cause.
We can sell 150 trillion iPods at umpty hundred dollars each but we can't employ anyone within 7000 miles to make them.
Makes all the sense in the world. What's the problem?
Oh, nobody can make their mortgage? Oh gee. What, you think you're entitled to a job or something? You don't have five years of experience assembling iPods? Quit being so lazy! Get more skills!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It's interesting how I keep getting reports of factory workers being constantly over-worked in China. It's a good idea to make sure laborers have enough rest, but as a [former] Chinese national and one of full Chinese ethnicity, I should say that the work ethic there is so strong relative to many North American and European countries that this is more of a non-issue. I don't know, but have Slashdotters heard much about "Asian parents"? As a high-schooler, that concept is one of the most frequently repeated ones in my [predominantly Asian] high school. One last point is that this article is ridiculously late, but that's to be expected.
Cogito, ergo sum, fosho!
Holy crap. Apple consider 60 hours a week normal?
Companies are pushing the human rights back into the dark ages. Where will it end?
Famously, if you opened up the data fork of the System File in Mac OS 7.1 through 7.5 in a hex editor, you would find the string "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!"
:O
Who knew that was for real?
I've noticed in the factory here you are expected to work overtime not by your boss but by your peers. It is common to see most people work 1 or 2 hours overtime, sometimes until 9pm. I end up feeling guilty if I leave at the offical time (5pm) because I am normally the only one to do so.
But you've got to take into account the population density and lack of social security, the wages here aren't the best, and if you don't perform well enough you can easily get replaced, so you've got to make the most of what you get, due to this it's become the cultural behaviour.
Though wide differences between wages is common here, the IT supervisor can earn more than 10 times than the IT staff even though his work isn't that much difficult.
\(^o^)/
With increasing manning shortages and prolonged deployments, many service members find themselves working 60 hours a week at home and 72 hours deployed. It's the new normal.
If instead your number one concern is that your family doesn't starve, or making enough money to emmigrate from the oppressive regime in which you live, and the amount of money you make is proportionate to the number of hours you work, you would generally like to work as many hours as humanly possible. I knew at least one guy (in America) who used pull over a hundred hours a week working at an oil rig. It was quite dangerous to boot, but his reason for doing it was just the extra padding in his bank account, not because he had an emaciated wife and toddler back at home.
The last thing people in developing nations need is you telling them that they can't have a job except at 10 bucks an hour, or that they can't work for more than 40 hours a week, or that it's only legal for companies to come in and provide them with a way of obtaining food, medicine, and education (i.e. money) if they also provide full health care, dental, and college tuition for the kids.
I'm not saying to give companies free reign. Some things are clearly morally despicable. But frankly speaking, you are not helping these people by being indignant when they are not afforded the same accomodations that you are. That is the one asset they have that allows them to compete for jobs against Joe Westerner (whose parents could afford to get him quality education and is the preferable employee at comparable wages).
Don't let corporations get away with complete crap, but please don't have people starve for the sake of your armchair idealism either.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I wonder how large the development team is nowadays for Mac OS X.
Considering that many other products that people purchase from china are made from labour which has not be placed under the same workers-rights rigor that apple outlays in their vendor contract, this is a good case of a global company doing what they can to ensure adequet working standards in a country that is rife with human exploitation. You can almost decide with certainty that something you own has been produced as a result of human labour exploitation, occurances often go by without the knowledge of the even the staff member; There is a lot of difficulty in ensuring proper work practices in these mega factories (many staff demand excessive overtime hours to get ahead of the rat race.) Take for example that this factory assembles iPods, there is no way of knowing, without investigation, if the screens being used in the assembly of the iPods are made in another factory where labour issues are more common.
So while others may pick at Apple's summary report for leaving areas grey, I still feel this is by far a more advanced effort in ensuring factory workers rights than what many other companies do. (Particularly the fashion and small parts industries.)
"You just work" I for one welcome our new Apple Overseers!
Cue the drums! Ba-dum dish!
it's like my worst nightmare
oh they meant building them
well that is almost as bad
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
I am also sure that people from times go by in Western countries, lets say 19th century, would claim today that they had a stronger work ethic.
Did they have a better life? In a society were children used to work in mining, women had no rights in regards to pregnancy and men were suppossed to work 14 or 16 hour shifts, I may venture that their lifes were crap.
Stronger work ethic? Maybe (do people in these "stron work ethic" situations have a choice?).
Better life? Doubt it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I use to work 70+ hour weeks at Apple in Cupertino, and I see no reports about my situation! lol :-)
For more information, take a look at Apple's report (courtesy of AppleInsider), and AppleInsider's analysis.
The norms in the U.S., Britain and other places DO NOT necessarily equal the norms elsewhere in the world. They always seem to leave out the fact that the cost of living is extremely low in these places because the consumers are not subject to getting gouged on everything that they buy the way we are here in the Western countries.
I think people expect Apple to have better ethics than most other companies - their CEO is kind of hippie and the company frequently utilizes save-the-earth public figures such as Bono in its propaganda. No-one expects Dells and Walmarts to behave, but for Apple this kind of publicity just puts it among other greedy multinationals, an image it has so far for some odd reason avoided.
Apple is slowly becoming the new Microsoft.
Woz would be spinning in his grave if it weren't for that whole "not being dead" thing...
*blinks*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Geez, I'm working for them in Cupertino at the moment... a 60 hour week would be like a vacation.... /raindog - posted anonymously for fairly obvious reasons! ;-)
...then I realized it was cause the apple guys were just getting off work.
and yes i am aware it is not 3:30AM in china....thank you it was supposed to be a joke... but please feel free to post a link to some sorta timezone converter....
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
"Apple debunks most of the unsubstantial accusations"... oh, wait - that wouldn't make a headline our beautiful days of excesional sensationalism replacing old-fashioned journalism so quickly.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
While I agree that this is an issue, I can only wonder about whether Dell, Gateway, and every other PC manufacturer is guilty of the same. I can't imagine the motherboard factories, hard drive factories, video card factories, RAM factories, case factories, and sound card factories don't use some kind of extraordinarily cheap and exploitive work force at at least one of their plants or offices. I'm against it anywhere, and against not staying competitive in the local labor market with healthy work environments as well. I'm all about philanthropy, but singling out one of probably thousands of manufacturies guilty of this seems wierd.
"I mean, how far the rabbit hole do you wanna go here?"*
rhY
*Quote stolen shamelessly from: http://www.myspace.com/wtc_7
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Chinese labour law is very clear on this issue and the comments attributed to Apple are laughable. It is unlawful for employees in China to work 60 hours per week, even if they request it. Chinese law provides for a 40 hour working week with quite limited legal overtime. Apple have chosen to permit these unlawful working hours.
It is very unlikely that Apple is unaware of this and this is just exploitation of workers by Apple's subcontractors.
900 million Chinese earn less than USD 300 per year and yes, that is poverty. You cannot live comfortably on that amount in China. No-one wants to work 60 hours per week, but it is not difficult to persuade someone to do that, contrary to the law, if they are very poor. That is why they do it - it has nothing to do with the Asian work ethic.
Apple should be ashamed of itself for participating in this exploitative conduct, and then trying to gloss over it.
I will gladly trade in my old iPod for one of those Chinese women that work in their factories!
I'm a horrible human being for saying that, aren't I?
Monstar L
Dude, you are in the Apple section, to return to normally, see here.
liqbase
It's called comparative advantage. Basically it's an economic term that means that vertain people are better at making certain things and certain people are just better, therefore they deserve an un-fair share.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
How many of you have played an RTS game?
No one gets to start off with a modern industrial complex and a space program. You start out with a few poor villagers. Then, those villagers work at building up a Civilization, stopping at points which involve a fair amount of labor.
There was a time when the USA was also a dumping ground for cheap labor. Our grandparents through great-great-grandparents worked very hard at dirty jobs for long hours.
Then someone got the "Organized Labor", "Industrial Revolution", "Clean Air Act" upgrades. Those laid the groundwork for the "40-hr Work Week", "Military-Industrial Complex" and "Civic Green Space" upgrades. That, in turn, unlocked "Space Program", which allowed us to advance our Civilization to the Information Age.
The US has managed to do a pretty good job assembling a Rush strategy to catch up to civs that got a headstart on us.
China is turtling right now....give it time, it'll get its upgrades.
I have never worked overtime in a regular basis in my life. Ever.
But I am progressing on my carrier fine, TVM.
The difference is that in those horrendous countries with social policies you have protection against abusive employers that pull the "mandatory" overtime bullshit.
In Mexico the working week is 40 hours, in Europe between 35 and 40. Nobody gives a second thought to people working exactly just that, and many companies actively encourage that you actually do not work more than that.
Most EU countries are more productive thatn US workers, perhaps because they have a more balanced lifestyle.
Maybe one day USians will stop drinking the Koolaid that their employers (via bought legislature and media) is serving them....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Apple has done this before, right? They used to have t-shirts in the old Mackintosh camp that said something like, "90 hours / week and loving it".
T-shirt (sweatshirt) attesting to this. (wonder if the shirt was made in a sweat shop...)
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Mexico, for example, has had a maximium working week of 40 hours (unless you pay overtime or are contracted as a consultant. in which case your rates are much higer) since 1917.
During that period it experienced high rates of development comparable to any of the Asian tigers (specially between 1945-1970 period). 6%, 7% or 8% growth rates wer not uncommon.
We should also refer to the German economic miracle during the same period. It is well known that German workers enjoy a highly protective system under which economic growth was still possible.
Protecting workers rights is not necessarily opossed to an increase in productivity.
In the case of China the poor record of workers rights (in an allegedly Communist country of all places) has more to do qith the collapsing of the Chinese bureaucracy under the weight of corruption thatn with a real economic need.
Dictatorial and opressive regimes would use any excuse to justify the bad living conditions of the population, which is particularly easy to do if it is for the good of the people....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Imagine yourself working 12 hours a day in a factory and sleeping in a dormitory in the same fucking factory! No intimacy, no sex life, no love, no children, no family life,...now dare tell me this is not a soulless slave life!!! And at the same time you enjoy your ipod. Joy for you, nightmarish meaningless minimum-wage "life" for them.
Capitalism is a giant gulag for most of humanity! Whether YOU at the center of the privileged capitalist empire like your fucking job or not!
The article said that they work more than 60 hours a week during 17 weeks every year! I saw a documentary about a Chinese factory where workers were working 15 hours a day. One morning, in a dormitory, the workers woke up a guy who was still sleeping and about to be late. Surprise: he was dead! Exhaustion! His heart could not take it anymore!!! And all that for a salary of misery! All that for Walmart and Apple and YOU cheap bastard inhuman consumer! While Apple's fat lazy shareholders (=virtual slavemasters) in America make money doing nothing with their fat asses! Motherfucking Steve Jobs should be sentenced to work 15 hours a day in that ipod factory until he motherfucking dies! And YOU must boycott Apple if you pretend to be human!
Real life on this capitalist Earth is that of those Chinese slaves! Finding excuses for Apple comfortably seated in front of your PC is not a life!
Possible exception may have been Tibet. . .
Tibet was a theocracy with an upper class who did no work, but lived on the backs of others, although many of the upper class were themselves slaves of the theocracy in their own way.
It wasn't necessarily a very nice place, but the Chinese have certainly worked no improvement on it.
For bias purposes I'll point out that I am a lifelong Buddhist.
KFG
This is untrue. Chinese law provides for a 5 day 40 hour working week for most employees.
Employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty.
It's worth noting that sometimes companies like these will order their employees to lie about forced overtime, with the consequence of firing them if they tell the truth.
Why 40 hour week = 5 days of work per week * 8 hours per day is good while 60 hour week = 6 day of work per week * 10 hours per day is bad? Isn't the line always a bit arbitrary? We know a human cannot function well if required to work 16 hours per day. But, it is hard to say whether 12, 10, 8, or even 6 hours is too much. The two days-off per week practice is even more so. Do you think, for example, farmers work 5-day a week? If so, do the cattle go fasting for 2 days every week?
Officially, most developed countries defined 40 work hours per week as the norm. But, even in these countries, many professionals do work >40 hrs or even >60hrs (ask any person in investment banking, many medical doctors working for a hospital or many IT/programming people in US)...
I work in software development and there's this thing called "Exempt" and "Non-Exempt" which basically means some of us do not receieve overtime pay. And it's fairly normal for a project that's reaching a deadline or behind to start requiring massive amounts of overtime. I have (yes in the states) worked 60 hour weeks frequently back to back for sustained periods of time. It was expected that we would be working 10 hour days and at least one day on the weekend. Thank god I found another job on a more laid back project.
But what I really wonder is how much of this overtime was driven by pressure coming down from Apple. There's so much talk trying to rationalize the "mindset" of the Chinese worker, but doesn't all workplace culture trickle down the hierarchy of leadership within a company? Knowing that China is one of those places which we also say is a civil-rights abuser, wouldn't we upon taking the risky move to start employing workers there want to be "extra" certain that we made sure our policies were outlined clearly to the Chinese taskmasters?
>or if it's the result of living in a part of the world
>that is often exploited for the good of wealthier nations.
Do you actually think that people in that part of the world weren't
being exploited before wealthier nations came along?
"Chinese labour law is very clear on this issue and the comments attributed to Apple are laughable. It is unlawful for employees in China to work 60 hours per week..."
How is this marked informative if there are no sources?
it is universially known to all that many people in China working in some factories are just barely earning their bread and there would be a long way to go before the Chinese government finally made up their mind to attend to the health of its rural citizens and the working class on the wholee in big cities.
You know, the legal system is not well structured to protect the interest of the needy and the group of people who need legal aid the most will get to nothing if they can't afford to hire a lawyer to represent their interest. And the Apple case is just one small aspect of the labor market hang on a thread in China.
Apple is a publicly traded company and as such here's what's important to them.....
Making money for their stockholders.
That's it.
That means sweatshops for iPods and doing things like heading down the dangerous path of closing off the Darwin source for development so that OSS geeks can't find a way to make OS X work on commodity boxes.
Apple is going to do what is best in their corporate interest. Surprised? Don't be. It's business
I'm confused. Guy wants to work more and make more money, when he's currently dirt poor. Apple is (you allege) circumventing a tyrannical system that doesn't let the guy do it... but it's Apple that's being exploitative?"
The only difference between sweatshops and hiring illegal immigrants at much lower wages than the law allows is location. They both are exploiting a situation the employee has no control over and meant to "maximize" the already obscene profits these companies have. Asking an entity whose sole existence is making a profit on other's labor to do it morally is not too big a thing to ask IMO.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
But the employees being interviewed told them anyway!
Quoth Apple's report:
"Employees expressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of the workplace. The single largest complaint (approximately 20% of interviewed workers) was the lack of overtime during non-peak periods."
These people want *more* overtime, not less.
But you're definitely not going to get a very good slave at that price.
(The exchange rate is more like six iPods to one slave.)
90 Hours a Week and Loving It!
If they can't own slaves legally then they'll try to find the poorest, most desperate, impoverished people in the world to work for as little as possible so they can sit on their fat, lazy ass all day.
I used to worh 3-4 months straight for my business.
Good God, Daengbo, what did you do to keep awake?
The real sweat shop is in Cupertino...:-)
And Bush admits to occasional mistakes too...
Working voluntary overtime is one thing, but being forced to work 60 hours per week for $0.20 an hour because the Master wants to stuff more cash in his pocket is a totally different matter. That's called slavery.
What is wrong with an 80 hour work week? I do here in America. No one is forcing me to. I do it because I have goals that I want to achieve. Where in history did some omnipotent power declare a 40 hour work week? I got my work ethic because my grandfather worked from sunup to past sundown as a farmer and a barber. And from my father often worked double shifts while working on the Saturn engines for the Apollo program. Would I prefer to play all day...actually...no. I like to be productive. Do I like to play? Yes. And I reward my hard work and more importantly my productivity by doing just that.
My grandfather used to say (he heard it from others I am sure) he only worked half days. What he meant was 12 hours a day seven days a week. Yes, he did take time off to do non-work things.
**Note: this response is not targeted specifically at your posting. Rather your posting was just where my response to all the 80 hour work weeks are immoral comments. So please don't take it personally or even feel a need to personally respond since it was not directed at you.
60 hour work week - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .
OK Apple apologist - start spinning (or is it spitting?) 8^)
In Republican America, we are working longer and longer hours, with less overtime, just to stand still... almost. Check out the stats.
60 hours a week has been pretty standard for me since I started working. At first, it was because I was producing a show, and being paid rather nicely. Now I'm doing that time, and not being paid all that well.
This free-trade business means always low prices, always, but a price on everything; and it has also meant the collapse of the American middle class. Watch out when all those interest-only mortgages come due. Or when the properties that people bought and then second-mortgaged into their credit cards get to be a bigger and bigger stretch.
I used to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week doing home renovation (that's 84 hours/week), for a summer job when I was 17. A 60 hour work week may seem like a lot to some white collar workers, but there are a lot of blue collar workers in North America that work those hours. The only real difference is that in North America, people actually get paid a decent wage and the working conditions are much better.
I recall seeing a documentary, "A Decent Factory: Made In China", that followed a team sent by Nokia to their suppliers in order to conduct an ethical evaluation. To measure compliance with local laws and contractual obligations governing worker treatment. You are being a little harsh on the capitalists, especially the foreign ones. They may be doing more to protect workers than local industrialists and government.
Given the government's communist nature I would have expected that workers would be treated more fairly (yeah, naive, I guess it was more that communists would be disinclined to favor industrialists). However, communist or not, China seems to be at the early stage of industrialization where the local industrialists are in bed with government and can get away with nearly anything(*). I recall a lawyer who represents "peasants" who were injured in factories. Injured as in their hand was crushed by machinery. The Chinese industrialists investigate and determine that the worker violated safety rules and is therefore owed nothing. The government, in the form of local police, beat up for "peasant's" lawyer when the worker wants to take the industrialists to court.
(*) I'm not suggesting that in the west industrialists are not in bed with governments, both left and right leaning, just that there are laws on the books that do get enforced. A artifact of unionization and other social movements, a later stage of industrialism that China has yet to reach.
Many of these workers are young adults from the impoverished rural regions of China (hence the dorm housing). Like many Eastern Europeans and Chinese who came to the US in the late 1800s, their goal is to maximize the income they can send home or save. Like a student from India I once met, coming back home with a degree or what in their village is a small fortune, means they can buy a farm or set up a business and marry the prettiest girl in the village. Young, healthy and with high aspirations, they want to maximize their income. Higher wages might mean fewer contracts, fewer jobs, and less money. It's that simple.
That's why the limitations on overtime may be less attractive to the workers than the BBC, the ICFTU, or Apple assumes. China has abundant, cheap labor and long hours always hurt worker productivity. If these workers weren't eager to maximize their income with long hours, their employers would know and have abundant reason to hire extra workers.
We see the same thing at a more affluent level here. Men often take second jobs and work longer hours to have more money for their families or to send a kid to college. Young men often take harsh or dangerous jobs because they'll make lots of money to spend or use to jump start a business they'll enjoy. Ordinary people aren't as stupid or as powerless as these moralizing twits assume.
A self-centered obsession with amenities and benefits is also what makes the BBC's coverage of controversial news stories (particularly the Middle East) so lackluster and, at times, outright wrong. Hiring cheap Arab stringers to cover the news in Lebanon and Iraq means the BBC's talking (and writing) heads can make far more money without working very hard or taking much risk. But it also means grossly inaccurate and distorted news stories. Using Arabs with links to terrorist groups to cover Middle East news is as obscene as using Ku Klux Klan members to cover the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
And the BBC's incompetence has a moral impact lacking in the Apple factory dispute. Because the BBC is concealing just how extensively Islamist terrorist groups are hiding behind civilians (in violation of the laws of war), children are dying in Lebanon.
Hey hey, ho ho. How many children did you kill today BBC?
--Mike Perry, Seattle, Editor: Dachau Liberated
Your qualifications about the immorality of the situation do indeed prevent the above quote from being a totally asinine statement, but you're hanging on by your fingernails. You agree that what is occuring is morally wrong.
:-) Morality is not universal. Each society determines what is moral. For example it may very well be that a worker in China would consider 60 hours a moral option. Stress "option". I also assume that the working environment would be safe, clean, and otherwise healthy. Perhaps these assumptions are universal morals, however a 40 week is not necessarily one.
You seem to have strong fingernails as well.
Since grandfathers are a popular example in this discussion today I'll toss out the perspective of one of mine. He had a decent blue collar job that he could raise his family on given a simple lifestyle. That's about all 40 hours a week offered. However he accepted every opportunity for overtime he could get so that he could send his two kids to college and get a few household luxury items. 60 hours a week was not immoral to him, he was thankful for the opportunity to "get ahead".
It is not "Asian parents". These "Asian parents" are not really acting differntly than the European immigrant great/grand parents of my family and many others. It is not that these "Asian parents" have higher standards per se, it is that normal society has much lower standards these days.
US Asian immigrants today may be better educated, but in the past there were vast numbers of poor Asian and European immigrants and they all worked there asses off to get ahead and get their children educated so that children would not have to work as they did. The impoverished seeing an opportunity *is* a common thread, the difference is merely one of time and location.
Only on Slashdot would Apple not share in any of the responsibility for this kind of thing. It's the old double standard.
If Microsoft had a factory in China producing their likely god-awful Zune thing, and the same thing occured, it would no doubt be because MICROSOFT WANTS CHINESE PEOPLE DEAD IN THE NAME OF PROFIT.
The only reason I bothered to read this article and be subjected to the traditional Apple love-fest that follows is because I saw the story title in my RSS reader and thought it was about their programmers, not the sweatshop labor making their shit products.
http://arc.net.cn/tmp/apple.jpg
Anyone have any insights on how I can get one of these Chinese sweatshop gigs?
At the moment, I'm an 80-hour/week, salaried American software engineer and I could really use the massive cut in weekly hours.
All help will be greatly appreciated.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
No but they'll bitch that Americans want too much money and aren't competitive in spite of nearly 20 years of combined wage stagnation and rising costs of living (particularly in the last 5 years). But they don't dwell on such things too much because the last thing why want to show up on the radar is inflation and salary decreases because - you know - people might start saving or something.
And that is truely frightening.
Why not just post a notice "We Hate Apple" and be done with it. Waste of time writing this because all my posts complaining about the Apple bashing get yanked. You want to nail an offender go after Wallmart. They won 't give a manufactuer a contract if they are making more than a couple of percent profit. That means they have to pay workers the least they can get away with and the company risks folding the first time they run into trouble. The conditions may be bad by US standards but are fairly normal for China. Do I like it? No. I wish they'd push for better conditions. Gee do you think Microsoft is going to be making their player in factories paying good wages with benefits? You want cheap electronics? You want to know who to blame? Look in a mirror. They knew what price the market would bare and they found a source that would make it for that price. I come out of the entertainment industry where 60 hours a week was normal and I've more than once worked 120 hours in a week. They's not an exaggeration it nearly killed me. I don't hear about the sweat shop conditions in the film industry. Back in the 80s no one paid over time and some didn't even pay for hours worked over 40. We're talking the good ole US of A. If you want to bash Apple know what you're talking about. Hey their Mighty Mice are crap and Safari crashes on some web sites like CNN. Complain about that and I'm right there with you. Unfortunately outside of those few things you are left with bitching about how stable and easy to use it is. The lack of computer viruses is another problem. They also don't look as clunky as PCs. That's a real problem. Stable OS, exceptional hardware, secure, innovative desktop design, they must be stopped!!!!
Let us be frank here. Western companies -- European, American, and (to a lesser extent) Japanese companies -- do treat their workers much better than Chinese companies.
Foxconn is a Chinese company headquartered in Taiwan. Most Chinese just do not care about the principles of the EICC. In this very forum (Slashdot), you see a Chinese condemning the 3rd-party who raised the matter (of the abuse) to Apple management.
Notice the total lack of Taiwanese system houses (like Acer) on the list of companies committed to the EICC. Taiwanese companies are far more likely to manufacture their products in China. Notice the total indifference (by Chinese from Taiwan) to worker abuse in China. When was the last time that you read a story about how Taiwanese companies corrected an incident of worker abuse? The Chinese (in Taiwan and elsewhere) just do not care. Hence, Taiwanese companies continue to condone -- and even -- commit worker abuse.
Check out a damning report by the "San Francisco Chronicle". It reported that Taiwanese companies subject their slaves to physical abuse if they do not meet their quota.
"Laziness is counter-revolutionary!" and "Questions are decadent!" -- is played repeatedly to encourage the employees to work harder. (Season thirteeen, Episode twenty.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I read this article yesterday, and I thought the same thing then. When Apple (And I'm typing this from my new Macbook) stated "'We found no instances of forced overtime and employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty..." All I could think of was the interview I had with the health inspectors who visted us durring basic training at Ft. Benning. I was on KP in a kitchen that made the kitchen at the Long John Silvers I had worked at in high school look like a Clean Room. I mean the dishwashing room floor got up and moved when I cut the light on kind of dirty. I remember cleaning a section of floor and scraping a half inch of greese out from between tiles and that dishes comming out of the washer going onto rollers that just made them dirty again. Anyways around my third time on KP these warrent officers come out and we are told exactly what to tell them and what not to say...of course we are also told that should we choose we are free are to say whatever we want without fear of repriasal. Just that we will have to report for KP again the next morning and the morning after that. So I am sure those interviews with the Chinese employees produced acurate and honest responses. As for the turning down overtime...lets see would that be covered under the "Yes Sir, my squad will be happy to go on that mission, you all volunteer don't you." And how many of you all work for companies that have the voluntary charity controbution thing come around once a year? What is the minimum you are expected to give $5.00?
Your philosophical position works out very well for employers, because their end of the bargain is just a cold financial arrangement, whereas our end of it is made into a question that probes the depth of our character, nay, our very decency and worth as human beings.
If they pay us as little as they can, that's just common sense, but if we work as little as we can, then that just says something about our character. Bullshit. Work is an exchange for money, and money is an exchange for work. It's a tradeoff. Find me a financial officer or payroll employee who really thinks they should pay their employees as much as they possibly can, because they take pride in how much they give back, and I'll show you someone who is insane and unemployed. Yes, I realize that we all have to act as if we go to work in ABC Stockyards or XYZ Apple-Polishing because we love it to the depths of our very soul, but that's only because you have to act like a whore to get (and/or keep) the job.
A whore has to eat, but a whore, if they're even remotely intelligent, knows that the sex is for the money, even if they make you feel like you're special. But why would they lie to other whores? That's just stupid. Or maybe you actually believe that the minimum-wage employee at McWorld really, honestly wishes you a pleasant dining experience, and is going to put a bit of their heart into your burger. Do you really think they would make your burger if they didn't need the money? Do you think the guys paving the road in Phoenix, or cleaning out the septic tank, or cleaning up a HAZMAT spill, would be doing these things if they didn't need the money? Yes, they have to do a good job, but only to keep the job.
My work is what I do to get money to live and buy stuff, not a deep reflection on my character. If you're willing to extend that moral obligation to give as much as you can to the employer, as well, then we can talk. But making it a moral obligation on one end while leaving it as a purely mercenary relationship on the other end isn't going to fly.
From Apple's report on manufacturing practices
To sum this up:
1. Apple hires third-party, Chinese supplier
2. Supplier violates Apple's Code of Conduct and the local law
3. Apple audits supplier, learns of violation
4. Apple demands supplier change policy. Supplier promises to comply.
5. Apple publicly admits violation occurred.
6. Apple enlists third-party, nonprofit organization to oversee compliance.
What, exactly, should Apple be ashamed of?
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
The current Slashdot FOTD seems terribly apropos:
poverty, n.: An unfortunate state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
I'm getting the feeling that your primary objection is that by the proposed definition you would be classified as wealthy and you're not happy about that, because even though you have enough to eat you don't own an island.
If such is the case, well, tough.
Wealth is not what you have, it is what you can afford to live without.
You cannot afford to live without food. If you have sufficient, well, as my granny used to say, "Shut up, eat it and be greatful."
KFG
well the 'civilized world', not able to be without slavelike labour for very long, found a great thing in Globalisation: the slaves or exploited employees didnt have to live within their borders anymore.
Look around you. Most of the readers here have sevral electronic devices. Now check how many are partialy or completely manufactured in china. Thats right -- most, if not all of them.
This greedy lifestyle that we call the 'information age', our high tech ivory tower is built, once again, on the cheap exploitation of man by man. This is what you should think a bit about each time you use not only your iPod, but your PDA, laptop, desktop, digital camera, flash memory card...
And this can be extended to so much of what we all take for granted. But our lust for ever faster, ever greater abundance makes us blind to this reality. sadly.s
ant
"It's worth noting that sometimes companies like these will order their employees to lie about forced overtime, with the consequence of firing them if they tell the truth."
umm it's more something like "You'll work overtime/say what we want/etc or we'll take you out back, put a bullet in your head, and send a bill to your family for the bullet."
Obviously they never saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley" http://imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
while gates is now trying to gve money away through the foundation, jobs is finding a way to exploit third world, helping apple's profit
ah, after all, may the msft are not that 'evil' after all. eh?
Steve: May I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there are no sweatshop conditions in Apple factories. Absolutely none. And when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount - more than we are prepared to admit.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
-- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut
But the current USA political policies are reversing America back before the 'Organized Labor':
Clear Cutting Forests, Trading Air Quality Credits, WalMart, Union Busting, etc.
What jobs can be shipped overseas, are shipped overseas - to cheaper labor with fewer laws.
Civilization vs. Globalization.
Hi, >>You are being a little harsh on the capitalists, especially the foreign ones. They may be doing more to protect workers than local industrialists and government. You misunderstand, what I mean is I don't believe Steve Jobs ordered the long working hours, ethically he may be guilty but I believe he even don't know about this. You're correct about China industrialization, what I want to note is "Chinese government fail to control over provinces' local government". Due to communist nature, it should be protect the people but history proved they're even worse than capitalist. >>The Chinese industrialists investigate and determine that the worker violated safety rules and is therefore owed nothing. The government, in the form of local police, beat up for "peasant's" lawyer when the worker wants to take the industrialists to court. Exactly! The desire of having a "world's factory" is greater than "human rights", I guess neither the government have a breakthrough or another revolution from the people.
Hong Kong - International Joke Center (after 1997-06-30)