Slashdot Mirror
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."
Production lines in other countries don't incur the cost of US worker-safety regulations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates."
Gee whiz, can it be this is the first you've ever heard of a sweat shop?
How is this news? Why the fuck do you think things are made in China? Do you think the Chinese have a skilled work force, or higher technical skills, or something of the sort?
Human life is cheap there. It always will be.
does this mean there will be a price hike?
Only if these lines are owned by outside companies. If they are owned by CHinese nationals, or by the Chinese gov, then no. There will be no extra protection and no extra pay.
You know...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod, which is irritating as hell.
The same thing happens with tablets now.
It's nice that they still drag Apple into a conversation like this...but it's still bullshit.
Quit saying Apple, ipod, ipad, etc unless it is a story actually about just them.
THL phish sticks
How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire nationality is expendable. Shame on you.
Fixed it for you
Extras implies that some are expendable not the entire race.
It's insensitive, but it's essentially how the Chinese economy works. Chinese companies can afford to pay substandard wages and ignore safety concerns because they have a basically limitless supply of labor as a continuous stream of Chinese peasants make their way from the farmland into the cities in search of a better life. If one worker drops or quits, there are fifty more waiting to take his or her place. It's analogous to the US during the Industrial Revolution, except on a much much larger scale.
And what the fuck are you typing this post out on? An Apple 2?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When one of the parties has much higher environmental and safety regulations. Of course, this why the wingnuts will tell you we need to dismantle our regulatory systems. Yay! Race to the bottom!
Try a 7 year old ThinkPad. I have older machines too but none newer. Is that good enough for you?
My bigger point, which you gladly skirted, is that China gets away with this because of the volume of product that they produce. If people would reign their consumption habit in a bit we may not have this issues.
Actually, a very large number of Americans (and other westerners) ARE asking that China do JUST THAT.
In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
And that China will quit subsidizing.
And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.
The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.
The market will fix this. Nobody will buy iPhones when they hear about this. And all iPhone consumers in the market will hear about it.
Right?
--
make install -not war
British Petroleum has been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. China doesn't give a shit about basic safety requirements. Providing major ports like Shanghai are heading to North America and Europe a bazillion pairs of Nike Asskickers, iTubePhone and lead-based children's wear, China and the Chinese manufacturers could care less about safety. In China, whether you died to make the Kuomintang great, or died to make Mao's insane steel output quotas great, or died so that Marxist purists could funny hats on anybody who had anything approaching independent thought, or died so that the world could fill to the brim with Chinese goods, one thing has always been clear, and that is that the average Chinese citizens has been completely expendable.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well however many it was, it was less than the number that died fabricating and assembling 7 equivalent devices that some other person bought yearly.
The only comfort I take in the Global Economy is that eventually every part of the world will be industrialized and we'll run out of cheap labor hellholes to have our gadgets made in. I still remember in the 60s when Made in Japan was synonymous with cheap plastic crap. The process that has taken place in Japan since WWII is repeating at a faster pace in places like China and Mexico. Now those countries have a growing consumer class that is looking for cheap labor in other places. After the cycle happens across South America and Africa, the party will be over and so will the culture of endless business growth based on cheap labor.
The problem is that there are enough actual proponents of this mindset out there that it isn't necessarily taken as over-the-top.
Just that it is that way. And I agree, I've been there.
When you have a lot of labor to throw at a problem, the relative value of that labor becomes less. If you can get more workers for cheap, you'll use more of them and less expensive equipment and you'll use less expensive safety equipment too.
And I've seen this in China myself. Even if the process is supposed to be safe, the line managers are rewarded for running the lines fast and at low cost, so shortcuts that don't seem to hurt anyone lead to bonuses at the end of the quarter.
And yes, some of these shortcuts do hurt people long term, but its not obvious. That's why we have safety rules in the US. It's why China has them too, but never enforces them.
Let me give you just one example. In China I saw a guy welding stuff using an arc welder and no mask. He had a piece of cardboard to shield his eyes and he'd move it aside and squint when he needed to see what was going on. Yes, he was destroying his eyes. And complaining about what people post on slashdot isn't fixing the problem.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Dear China,
You have a unique and valuable natural resource. You have been selling it at a deep discount so you could get a firm grasp on the balls of every modern nation on earth. Let's call that mission accomplished. You can now start raising the price, and using the increased profits to clean up your country before you kill off the very resource that has created all this wealth. Sure, some bottom-feeders will go elsewhere, but those who stick with you will pay more, and allow you to actually improve your country.
Don't do it all at once - just practice boiling a frog by slowly warming the water. A small increase every quarter will do. However, don't let me catch you pocketing the profits. If you don't start buying scrubbers for your smokestacks, and water treatment plants, I might have to come down and smite your ass.
With Love
God, Buddha, or whatever higher power is in style this week
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
wrong. Even if we cut it in half. They would still be made in China, Chinese companies would still have horrid working conditions. The only change would be that there is even MORE demand for those jobs, and less of an incentive to treat the workers like human beings.
The only fix is to get China to have some decent labor laws. The best way to do that is add a large tarif for any goods coming into the US from a country that doesn't meet our basic federal laws.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What was that about hypocrisy? Do did you use an Apple II?
I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player who is as large a twat waffle as Apple fanboys.
I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player, period. Which I think disproves the GPs point more immediately.
Motorola Droids have touch screens.
McDonald's ordering computers have touch screens.
Why not say "Chinese manufacturers of Motorola's Droid..."
or "Chinese manufacturers of McDonald's Touch screens"?
GP is 100% valid. It was the *exact* same deal with the "horrible suicide rates at 'Apple's manufacturing plant".
Does anybody know that the suicide rate there is less than the national average in China? Does anybody know that Apple accounts for about 3% of the business at the plant? No. But Slashdot, CNN, and every other news site, just like this story, reports it as "Apple and others".
Why they do it? Buzz words attract attention. I *really* doubt it is any kind of conspiracy to hurt Apple. Its just the news sites trying to get people to see the headline and go "ooo I know what that is."
I'm pretty sure that a guy using a 7-year-old laptop is not the kind of hyper-consumer who tries to e.g. eat enough food to kill himself. But don't let me get in the way of your hyperbole...I know you're just dying to hate some stranger on the Internet.
:(){
I am not advocating people being poisoned, but I do think it is unfair to judge China, a developing industrial nation, by US safety standards today. The US has had many decades to develop its manufacturing base before these types of concerns even existed. If you think about it, one of the reasons why these types of devices are built in China and not the US is because the US has so many regulations that it is too expensive to manufacture almost anything in the US. While I do think US companies should be pressured to some degree to require their source companies to follow decent safety and labor practices, if we insist that China match the US level of safety, manufacturing will become too expensive there too. Then manufacturing will simply move somewhere else where people are poorer and the Chinese people will be without jobs. Long-term the world should work towards having standard safety regulations world-wide, but there are too many poor people in the world for that to happen anytime soon. In the meanwhile, careful thought needs to put into what type of safety regulations should be expected of China and other developing nations. While China is mostly a dictatorship, the government is not immune to pressure from the US or its own citizens. I do believe that the best way to help China ultimately become a democracy is by increasing its middle class, which mainly happens by having good manufacturing jobs widely available. While it is easy for upper class Americans to complain about the horrors of industrial poisoning, the workers in China probably only appreciate the outcry if the solution also involves them keeping their jobs. It is also worth considering that the companies involved may be trying to protect their workers from these solvents, but individual workers may not be following safety practices and becoming poisoned.
If that's not a typo I wish I had mod points.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
And is anyone asking companies to pay for the costs/injuries from reclaiming materials from the waste stream?
Actually, a very large number of Americans (and other westerners) ARE asking that China do JUST THAT.
And in America, waste cleans YOU.
In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
And that China will quit subsidizing.
And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.
AFAIK China is the world's largest producer of pollution filters, and of green energy devices.
China is the last country on earth to still have the US$ as lead currency, and strangely the US has a problem with that.
China stopped dumping rare earth metals on export markets. Happy now?
Various African nations are asking the USA to stop subsidizing.
China honors the treaties and agreements it has. Unlike the US, it never needed to get out of the Kyoto protocol.
The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.
Meanwhile, Milton Friedmann something something greed is good and pure.