Slashdot Mirror
Repercussions of Reporting on Apple 'Sweatshops'
PRC Banker writes "Following the media attention over Apple using 'sweatshop' tactics to manufacture iPods, facts were disseminated making things seem not as bad as first reported. However, recent developments suggest that 'Apple Computer's iPod supplier FoxConn has decided to sue the media for mis-reporting on working conditions in their factories. Rather than sue the British tabloids, FoxConn sues a Shanghai newspaper. The reporter has a translated version of his personal experience and thoughts.' Powerful Chinese company threatens local media. Worrying indeed, especially given this company's track record. The president of Foxconn is the richest man in Taiwan, and the company has attempted to use coercion in the past."
It's Apple-related, so it's ok.
Foxconn is also Dell's largest supplier of system components. The only thing foxconn doesn't make that is in a Dell business system is the plastics and chassis (and even then, most are Foxconn)
Does this mean that corporate america is funding political terrorists?
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
Apple associating with an evil company? Oh, no, this is so unexpected. ::rolls eyes::
Yes, it really is true is that Apple is one of the worst corporations in the world. From lawsuits designed to destroy people to lying in their advertising to screwing their customers to screwing their shareholders via accounting fraud. When are people going to wake up?
Pick up a Steve Jobs biography some time. This is NOT a good guy.
In the USA, truth is always a defense against libel. In China, the truth is what the government says it is and if you're the media there is often no defense if someone powerful is out to get you. The Taiwan connection is interesting, but not surprising: people living in free societies can be pretty feckless when it comes to depriving those in non-free societies of those same freedoms.
Chinese media, especially newspapers, are a popular target for retribution. Report on something damaging to a major company or the government and you could find yourself out of a job or worse. It seems you're expected to totally ignore any potentially damaging news and stick to safe topics (ex: what the gov't tells you to report on.)
My guess is that this company figures they have a better chance of exacting revenge on a newspaper in China than on British tabloids.
-Parallax
The media tries to damage a company (and all the people working there, and all the stockholders and suppliers) with a distorted drive-by hit story. It's a little refreshing to see someone hitting back for a change.
...maybe they were just aware that no-one believes British tabloids.
That is held in lower esteam by society. Lawyers dig themselves pretty low, but so do reporters with a bias against somebody, or just trying to sell their media.
...we pass the slavings on to you!
Actually, we just keep most of it for ourselves.
They could always quit and find another job.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I couldn't help noticing that you're lubricated.
So mostly we benefit from these sweat shops. The low income have an opportunity to buy products. Everyone who has investment feels rich because companies can keep costs low, so the stock market isup and investors will buy more expensive things, like houses. People with houses feels better off than they are because they can leverage paper gains into real cash. The economy appears to be doing better than it is because in addition to the fake house cash, we also get loans from Asia so that we can afford to pay them for manufacturing in their swear shops.
But at the end of the day, it is the average persons desire for cheap stuff that drives the cycle. I wonder if Apple produced the 68K Powerbooks in sweatshops? I wonder if Dell could survive without sweatshops. Would we tolerate, would the american economy survive, the lack of sweat shops?
I certainly would want Apple to have a bit more dignity than say, Nike, but I don't hold my breath. As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down. But think of this. I saw a documentary last year in which a european cell phone manufacturer audited their asian manufacturing facility. Overall it was not terrible. Many safety issues, but not unlike what one would see in the US. Most girls, cramped housing, but again not unlike the way young people live in the US. These workers were there earning a living and saving money, which, if you believe that a hard days work imbues dignity, could be a good thing. One interesting thing was that since the employees were living in company dorm, the company was officially much more responsible for their workers, like being liable if a girl got pregnant.
Which is simply to say that the simplifications made by most are simply useless. I believe we are in much more trouble than most will admit, and the solutions will require much broader adjustments in behavior, which will either be done voluntarily or by necessity. While much of this simplification is done to make it accessible to the common person, and the bias may often be unintentional, the fact that so often the blame lies elsewhere than the writer seem disingenuous.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
i think i'd sleep a little better at night if my mac mini was made by a person who was paid fairly for the work they put in.
Has to be, in order to be ready for when we adopt Chinese business practices out of a need to do so in order to compete with them.
According to Forbes World's Richest Person, the richest Asian is Thomas Raymond & Walter Kwok (Hong Kong) at $10.9 billion. If you think that's unfair with 2 people, Lee Shau Kee (Hong Kong) is next at $9.3 billion. Terry Guo only has $3.2 billion:
l ?passListId=10&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&u niqueId=X28Q&datatype=Person
http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/LIRX28Q.htm
HD Trailers
An interesting print article last week in the Globe And Mail, A major Canadian newspaper, reported that there were an estimated 600,000 to 1 million worker deaths from exhaustion in the year, the article was titled "The graveyard shift". Interestingly the online version doesn't state the number of deaths.
If this number is true, and combining it with industrial accidents, and other work place related deaths and illness (poisoning, repertory illness ect...). One can't help but wonder how long the Chinese Economy is going to keep running without workers to fill the sweat shops.
Combined with the growing dissent that is brewing due to the gap between the relatively few extremely rich and masses of extremely poor. China may have a major shake up in the next decade. And if it does I shutter to think how the economic impact is going to play out in North America, were the model of corporate sustainability and prosperity has been based on a race to the bottom.
you fucking idiot
...and American?
Before you mod me flamebait please realize that no one here has attempted to define what a "sweatshop" is,
or how these jobs compare to others in the Chinese economy.
I own a company that manufactures in China. We pay well above average, and there is always (and when I say always I mean 24/7)
a line of people at the gate looking for work.
None of this changes the fact that most people on this board would call the factory a sweatshop, because the hours are long,
the pay is low by US Standards and the working conditions are below ours in America.
But we're not talking about the US. We're talking about the entire rest of the world which is poorer than we are.
Yes, we have a moral obligation to provide clean, safe working conditions. But we do not have an obligation to elevate those
we employ abroad to US standards of living. And to wealthy Americans (if you're reading this you are comparitively wealthy)
those standards would seem terrifying.
Right now you are sitting in front of a computer surrounded by the products of cheap (and arguably exploitative) labor. Everything you own. Everything
you've eaten today. Everything you're wearing.
By what amazing gift of self-denial do people here condemn the system which makes them so wealthy?
The difference between American capitalists and those who would condemn them that the latter make weak protestations as they consume with the same gusto.
Flame away kids.
karma whore http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195098&c id=15985775
Your points are not only well taken but hit the nail on the head, I'm not sure why no one has commented back to you.
;-)
It's hard to put things in perspective when none of us have been there or seen what life is like elsewhere.
Very well put, you should write for a newspaper somewhere
During the 1950's everything was made in the US with labor unions and a strong middle class followed. That was true prosperity and nothing was too far out of the common man's reach besides luxuries items.
To me this proves that the excuse to exploit people is to make more money and is based on greed. THe middle class is suffering while the upper middle class is getting rich and the gap is widening. Gas prices and rent more than doubled in 3 or 4 years yet our salaries have not and more and more factories are closing and heading to China for cheap labor.
Money trickles back with demand side economics.
http://saveie6.com/
Why doesn't Apple just sell two ipods versions -- one made in "sweatshops" and one made by well-paid americans in the bay area.
Folks who don't want to support "sweatshops" can buy the "made in USA" version (for around $900 probably), and others can buy the $300 (sweatshop) version.
And they should make it visually easy to distinguish which version you have just by looking at it (just to keep us all honest).
You do understand that there is a fair trade market, right? That not everything you can buy is made thorugh terrible working conditions? Don't get me wrong, I know there are companies out there like American Apperel that claim "Sweatshop Free" yet still don't respect worker's rights (AA is notoriously anti-union, to the point of staging anti-union protests by forcing workers to pose for the media as being anti-union), but the fair trade industry does exist, and many of us relatively rich people do buy from them. Granted, America is slow to adopt ethical purchasing into our currently poor ethical boundaries, but we are making some progress.
And yes, it is hard to introduce worker's rights into an anti-worker environment. However, you don't have to have your shop in China. You could set up shop somewhere else, where the laws allow you to respect the workers. Don't blame the consumer when you haven't even tried everything you can to solve the problem.
hear, hear!
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
Claimant's don't even have to prove actual harm, only that a story would *tend* to cause harm in the eyes of right thinking people. That four letter word is what makes the UK's defamation law the most pernicious in the free world.
And there's the rub: I suspect this has more to do with Asian politics than libel.
"Flame away kids."
With maximum pleasure!!
"Right now you are sitting in front of a computer surrounded by the products of cheap (and arguably exploitative) labor. Everything you own. Everything you've eaten today. Everything you're wearing."
You hear that, Mr. Consumer, IT'S YOUR FAULT, NOT OURS!!!
It's your fault many companies (not yours imparticular, fellow anonymous coward), chase quarterly results, and will do absolutely anything (cheat on accounting, fuck their employees pension plans, hide health problems, pay people in foreign countries wages that amount to less than a pile of shit) to get those numbers.
"Before you mod me flamebait please realize that no one here has attempted to define what a "sweatshop" is,
or how these jobs compare to others in the Chinese economy."
I'll try:
Sweatshop: (n) A working place where the conditions are shitty, the pay is shit, and, unless you want to eat shit, you have no choice but to work there.
"I own a company that manufactures in China. We pay well above average, and there is always (and when I say always I mean 24/7)
a line of people at the gate looking for work."
Hmmm...maybe their there because they want to eat, and have no alternatives? I just want to know, would you want to work in one of your own factories? How would you feel about trading places with one of your workers?
"By what amazing gift of self-denial do people here condemn the system which makes them so wealthy?"
Uhhh...in case you haven't noticed, the people who consume a lot of those goods are getting screwed by the companies that they work for. The middle class is evaporating. Your statement is like saying, "Hey, American people, look I've got slaves that'll make cheap shit for you! (Only you won't see those savings because I'll keep my prices the same and pocket the difference in labor costs) And sure, the quality of the good will go down, and there are no jobs left for you, but this shit costed like a penny per unit to produce!! Wait, why are you mad at me? Don't you see the benefits of my stock price rising? You're in denial!!"
What you call self-denial is also called guilt. It's called the realization that something is wrong. You know, those abolitionists back in the 1800's were in self denial too!!! Geeeez, all those cotton clothes they wore, what HYPOCRITES!!! Why didn't they appreciate what those slaves did for them? Oh, I forgot, they actually had a little thing called empathy.
The Chinese (in both mainland China and Taiwan province) simply do not care about workers' rights. Foxconn is a Chinese company based in Taiwan.
To understand how horribly Chinese (from Taiwan) treat their workers, read a shocking article by the "San Francisco Chronicle". According to the article, the Taiwanese managers beat up their Central American laborers when they could not produce their assigned quota of blue jeans.
Sweatshop: (n) A working place where the conditions are shitty, the pay is shit, and, unless you want to eat shit, you have no choice but to work there.
Try pulling your head out of your ass long enough to read _The Jungle_ by Upton Sinclair. Then follow it up with _The Bitter Cry of the Children_ by John Spargo, and _How the Other Half Lives_ by Jacob Riis. The defining characteristic of a sweat-shop is its lack of even the most basic health and safety considerations. We're talking 'arms ripped off in machines with no guard rails' and 'dropping over dead from heatstroke' conditions.
Those conditions were normal here in the US a century ago. If you can show me documentation of conditions at the FoxConn factory that are even vaguely like the ones New York garment and factory workers tolerated in the 1900s, then I'll grant you the use of the word 'sweatshop'. If you can't, I'll call you a pompous little jackoff throwing loaded words around to hide the fact that he doesn't have an argument based on actual facts.
The fact is that, regardless of local median wage, the people working at this factory are picking up marketable skills. If they do decide to go look for another job, their time at FoxConn will A) allow them to acquire enough money to move to a different job market, and B) give them a much better chance of finding a job after they leave.
To understand that statement, you have to stop thinking in first-world terms, where we devote significant resources to instilling basic marketable skills into anyone who makes in through 8th grade. In third-world countries, poor people survive by picking recyclable materials out of garbage dumps.. and we're not talking about EPA-regulated American landfills. We're talking about miles of mixed household, medical, and industrial waste, complete with toxic fumes and sludge. 80-90% of waste-pickers are women, and most are the primary source of income for their family. Most have husbands who are alcoholics or drug addicts. Most support themselves, their husbands (and his habits), their children, and one or more extended family members. They have no marketable skills, they gain no marketable skills from picking garbage, and they can't stop picking garbage long enough to acquire marketable skills and still feed their families. To a person in that situation, the prospect of working for a company that provides housing, food, medical and recreational facilities, a climate-controlled non-toxic working environment, and gives them skills that will give them a fighting chance to maintain that standard of living even if they decide to leave the company.. well, that's a definite step up.
It's also a fact that the only documented 'abuse' in this whole story was a FoxConn policy that allowed workers to sign up for more than 60 hours of work per week, rather than capping their overtime at a maximum of 60 hrs/week. That's not "60 hours mandatory," it's, "not stopping people after they've volunteered to put in another 20." And that policy has now been changed, at least in the 15% of the plant that serves Apple. A related fact is that the biggest complaint among workers was that there wasn't enough overtime during the off-peak seasons.
Gas prices, yes. Rent? No way, unless you count that my wife doesn't work, so I'm missing out on the dough I'd have from a roommate.
OTOH, she washes my clothes, cooks, cuts the checks/balances the books, and gives a great BJ when I ask it.
8 years ago, my rent was $600 in the midwest for a 3bedroom by myself, with heat. Moving across country to SF, my rent increased to $1200 a month, WITH a roommate (so $2400), and then no heat (yeah, you'll have a gas bill in SF - it's mostly always cold at some point).
Location is what matters for rent. Nation-state is what matters for gas prices.
Apple and the Chinese Government I suspect.
As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down.
Branded products do not cost a lot to buy, yet have to be made astonishlingly cheaply, because they are better. They cost a lot, and have to be made cheaply, because much more money is spent on advertising the product than making the product. This is the simple reason why unbranded products can be rediculously cheaper than branded ones - partly because the corporation that makes the cheap product doesn't want to insinuate its product is better through having a high price, and partly because it doesn't need to advertise its product because its target market knows where to get it, likes the fact it's cheap, and doesn't need to be told repeatedly that it's good.
If you're anti-union, what does that have to do with workers' rights?
Either the workers fulfill their contract, or they can leave. You in turn are free to buy from AA, or take you business elsewhere. Or you could open up competition to both China and AA, but if you pay your workers much more (I assume you mean that by workers' rights), you'll see how it works out.
It's hard to say any environment (ok, unless supported by fascist government, as partly the case in China) is anti-worker, as we are all workers of some kind (the exception being a very few rich asses).
By using your logic, you could also have slept soundly at night when the there were slaves in the south knowing that they had better information about their life, and were better suited to make one of the following choices regarding his life:
Things aren't as simple as you make them seem, by the fact that you are buying an iPod or a Dell, you are indirectly making someone richer over there, someone which might not give a fuck about other people, and that would use the power that money grants him to maintain his position by bribing, violence, etc. (I believe US mining firms used violence against miners, way back in the days)
However, the companies that do business with the likes of Foxconn can make some demands, and by that promote progress of the working class. This doesn't mean there would be a price hit -- not as long the company is willing to do the responsible thing, and take some cut in its profits, or perhaps limit the amount of stock grants to Stevie Jobs.
Unions cost money. They take money out of worker's paychecks to run the Union infractructure and pay the Union leadership. Like any other organization, the Union's #1 goal is to extend it's existence, including trying to attract as many members as possible.
Is the price of having a union worth it? The answer, like all things, is SOMETIMES! If your working conditions suck, joining a union may be worthwhile. If your working conditions are pretty good, joining a union may just increase the costs of labor to the company without increasing any benefits to you since the increase just ends up in union coffers. That puts the company YOU work for at a disadvantage to another company without a union, ultimately making it more likely your company goes out of business or moves your job to China to avoid going out of business.
Remember, the Union does not care if you need help. It only cares if you are paying membership dues, and will do whatever is necessary to make sure you pay membership dues. That includes offering help, but it also includes the same tricks any other megabusiness uses: Distorted marketing, false promises, etc.
Employers will use the same tactics to discourage unions forming at their companies. There is nothing good about a Union for an employer. Just like the Union is going to tell you you need them whether you actually need them or not, the employer is going to tell you that you don't need a union, whether you need them or not.
Sometimes the Union is right, and sometimes the employer is right. But anyone who says something like "The company is anti-union, so they must be evil!" is either a union shill or a union brainwashing victim. It is quite possible that unionizing is NOT in the best interest of employees. It is quite possible that when a union engages in a media blitz to slandder a company that doesn't want their employees unionized that the workers are actually fine - the Unions problem is just that the union employees arn't paying dues to be fine.
paintball
What is wrong when poor people work in UNION sweatshops in New York City. They work long hours and do not get their pay. The Union blasts "sweatshops" in China; however, the people had a clean working environment in the chinese shops. They were paid better, when you compare their standards of living.
China mandates three "Golden Weeks" for its workers.
But a third of American working women are given no paid leave, and a quarter of men get no pay from their employer if they take a week or more off for rest and recreation.
At least thats what the media is telling me to think this week.
The current defamation and libel laws in China are regularly used by companies to stifle criticism.
ANY Google News search with terms like, say, "china company defamation" will turn up dozens of stories with this subtext.
China is writing its legal system even as we speak, and making great strides towards the rule of law, but the results so far have been patchy. From 6,000 years of imperial rule to rule of law in under a decade? Unprecedented, but China's trying it.
This story is another example of this particular area of law being misused, and the person pointing it out gets "Troll" slapped on their post?
Shame, slashdot, shame.
They just can't "do the right thing" to "The rest of us", it seems. http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy.html
What is here to flame about? Who would flame such a clear representation of truth?
You are right on the money, pal. I would also elaborate more, but then the REAL flame will start.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You are off-topic, sir. The subject is Apple is BAD BAD BAD for Chinese. What YOU are saying, is Apple is BAD BAD BAD for Americans.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
GP just elucidates what REALLY bothers critics of American companies off-shore and it ain't poor over-exploited (who are more Commies here , Americans or Chinese) Chinese workers.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
the ones made by the high-paid Americans would look trashy enough anyway.
One of these days, the world will change, and people will be motivated by things other than immediate gain and loss. I don't want to advocate bad working conditions, but the worker motivated to get rewarded for putting out a good product does a better job than the worker who is guaranteed good enough conditions, whatever he thinks are good enough.
(Of course, a worker paid enough to keep self and dependents at least in good health is going to be able to focus better on doing a good job than one who is starving or worrying about starving children.)
In other words, both overpaid and underpaid workers generally do not perform as well.
And managers think that it costs less when an underpaid worker does a bad job.
I wonder what I am trying to say.
However, you exagerate. The west is rich *partly* because of the large supply of cheap labor in other countries, but not *only* because of that.
In actual fact, your claims are wrong.
A *lot* of what westerners wear, own and eat are made by poorly paid 3rd worlders. It's not even close to the truth to claim "all" though. Indeed the house alone is more than half of my net-worth, and it has less than 5% foreign components. (mainly the glass in the windows (the framing for the windows is locally made) and the electrical switches and fusing (not the cabling, that is norwegian)
During the 50s, the world outside the US was divided into Communist nations, nations ravaged by a recent war, and nations that were either actively colonized or still dealing with the aftereffects of colonization. The US could afford to work inefficiently, because the US was the only game in town.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The original reporter is not accurate enough. It is not "Powerful Chinese company threatens local media". It is "Powerful Taiwanese company in China threatens local reporters"! The translated content in the first link is correct. FoxConn wants RMB30,000,000 (US$3,750,000) of compensation from two reporters. It is simply ridiculous.
Side comment: The worst labour conditions can occur in the Taiwan, Hong Kong, or foreign invested factories in South-East China. It is really the "blood and dirt" period of capitalism.
The lawsuit has been amended so now the company is only seeking, like ten cents from the reporters.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA