Workers Poisoned Making Touchscreen Hardware

SocResp writes "A chemical called n-hexane has been poisoning the nervous systems of Chinese workers who assemble touchscreen devices for Apple and other companies, an investigative journalist from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates. For companies with soaring profits and share prices, and elaborate product development and marketing, it seems they should be all the more culpable if they fail to take care of the production workers."

Comments

They're Chinese

[drumcat]

They have extras...

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.

Less profit flows, fewer people get paid.

Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.

Then they sell to other people who don't give a shit. Meanwhile, fewer people have jobs at all because of lowered demand.

They have an excessive supply of labor. That is not our problem to solve and it is not one we CAN solve without buying heaps more stuff.