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.
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.
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!
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.
...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.
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)...
>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?
Except for the factory part, it kind of reminds me of the Army.
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.
I disagree with you wholeheartedly. Last I heard, China was a communist state. It isn't capitalism that is causing this high work to time ratio; it's a mixture of things to include overpopulation, unstable economies, high demand for work but short supply and inadequate natural resources. The capitalist monsters you are referring to got to their status by utilizing their abilities, not by simply submitting to the fact that since they're alive they ought to be showered in riches.
Yes, their are inequalities in any stratified social structure, but they all come down to the fact that every life-form must struggle to survive and reproduce. I believe you would prefer a socialist society. However, it does not reward ability, but rather treats everyone as feudal serfs. I for one welcome a reward-based society founded on ability, even if sometimes it seems that such ability goes unrecognized; the alternate is far worse.
I run a large ($1B revenue) multinational company in Korea. We have operations in China. As one of the "virutal slavemasters" you detest, let me offer some observations:
(1) I have not found a single employee out of thousands that shares your armchair view. And no, it's not because they're scared to tell it to the boss - they friggin' strike all the time for various issues, one of which is...
(2) More overtime. Our curret labor agreement meets the union DEMAND for 60 hour work weeks. They will strike if they get less overtime. And they don't strike for higher wages and less overtime with the same net take home pay - they actually want the extra pay in the form of overtime. In Korea the demands for overtime went up when the country eliminated the official 6-day work week about 2 years ago. Employees felt they were getting "screwed" by not being allowed to work weekends, and demanded higher weekday overtime.
(3) In many cases, dorms are preferred by employees to their "homes" which are often tiny apartments holding grandparents, children, etc. You won't be shagging away in front of gramps at home either. The dorms are often an upgrade in standard of living. We often cannot hire employees from the competition UNLESS WE OFFER DORMS.
(4) Sure, we could just be "nice" and pay 10 times average local wage rates (rather than "merely" the current multiple of 2 or 3) so our workers can have equivalent pay to Americans. Then there is no reason for my company to leave the USA. Then there are no more big companies in China. Then the workers in China go back to subsistence farming for 50 years until they develop their own big companies without outside help. Yeah man, great plan. Great plan. Why don't you put it to my unions for a vote and see what they think?
90 Hours a Week and Loving It!
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...:-)
Ah, well, if you consider that the #1 complaint of the "sweatshop" workers was lack of available overtime (read the article!) followed by lack of transportation from dorms after work hours... And that Apple re-opened the Darwin source after releasing the Mac Pro... and that OSS geeks had ALREADY figured out how to make OS X work on commodity boxes... then your arguments hold no water.
Find some better arguments, such as:
1) They like DRM because it ties the music to the iPod
2) They like high margin, low volume sales because it maximizes their resources
3) They continue to dominate the music player scene with attractive pricing and aggressive marketing
All those actions continue to make money for their stockholders. Your arguments do nothing for their stockholders because they aren't true.
GPL Deconstructed
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dude, those things are great! I can fit like 2000 songs on mine, and everything's categorized to my liking. I have one of the newer photo ones, with a sweet 220x176-pixel LCD display. It can receive photos from my digital camera, or I can hook it up to my TV(!) and make slideshows. Although all I have right now are a bunch of pictures of my dog. LOL.
Did you buy one of those sleeves for yours? I heard they scratched easily so I bought a blue one for mine.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
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
Obviously they never saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley" http://imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
except for the factory and no children parts, it remind me of marriage.
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?
Do you think Apple is some sort of tech wing of the Chinese Communist Party?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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
Every time I use my gadgets I think "some of the money I paid for this went to help poor families in China who without my input of dollars would probably be one step closer to starvation." It warms my heart.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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)