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 use to work 70+ hour weeks at Apple in Cupertino, and I see no reports about my situation! lol :-)
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.
Which would be correct if they were being paid a living wage.
"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.
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.
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
Seriously, though... the problem is the hourly salary _compared_with_ their cost of living. Their hourly salary is so little, that _even_with_ working 60 hrs/wk they live several people to a room, and have, I suspect, unreasonably little in terms of possessions. No one is saying that they should earn as much as we do in the West, for then - you're right - their standard of living would be extremely high, given their cost of living. However, _given_their_cost_of_living_, does it really seem to you that they are making a reasonable salary, especially given how much profit is likely being made on each ipod? Thus, although their cost of living is much less than ours, their salaries do not adequately make up for this happy circumstance.
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
Except for the factory part, it kind of reminds me of the Army.
I used to worh 3-4 months straight for my business.
Good God, Daengbo, what did you do to keep awake?
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.
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.