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."
In the pursuit of cheaper and cheaper goods you're going to have this kind of thing. Sadly, China lowered the price-point so much that it's hard to find many products made in an environment with a reasonable amount of safety and a livable wage for the workers.
That's what happens when you have a population feeling that they need 54 inch TVs, enough food to kill themselves with, clothes they wear twice before they pitch them in the trash or out grow them, every Pixar film in their home library and two of the biggest three video game consoles for each child.
People have made a choice between quantity and quality and China is taking the brunt of this along with the spoils.
There's over 7 billion people on Earth. I've been contemplating this:
If you had a company with a concentration camp business model and assuming word never got out, I think you could literally work people to death an never run out of workers - ever. And I would expand that further. If every manufacturing company did that, I think the population of the World would stabilize.
It's just a game I play to try to fathom how many people there are on this Earth - all wanting to live like Americans - consuming like Americans - wanting jobs like Americans ...and in the meantime, businesses have learned to produce with less and less workers ... the wealth of the US is spewing out of her .... see where this is going?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
China has always been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. Every year thousands of Chinese miners die in all sorts of mine-related accidents. Factories can dump toxic chemicals into rivers and get away with it. Harmful materials are regularly used as cheap substitutes in manufacturing. Better yet, most reports on these horrible practices are quickly suppressed. Welcome to the harmonous and prosperous society of Middle Kingdom.
It's pretty common in production facilities, particularly manufacturing lines, to start out with good chemical control: a fireproof safe from which people have to check out material, and over time, as the manufacturing process evolves, people keep finding they need to wash stuff up at one step and pretty soon a jug of solvent just gets left there and people start splashing it around. Gloves get in the way, or get caught in machinery, so people stop using those, too. Then, in the US, OSHA makes more and more drastic rules about allowing solvents of any sort, to try to prevent this happening, and manufacturers have to find another solvent, which then gets used in the same way with the same results.
Point being, it's not particularly OSHA that's the problem: they're trying to stop people poisoning themselves. The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves. In China there's less concern over workers endangering themselves than in the US, although the difference is primarily in degree, but the same general problem is seen in most manufacturing environments.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
the citizens have no right to elect their own government, and so they are basically slaves to a few grumpy technocrats in beijing
and the shame is, americans are happy to support this human rights quagmire, because they get cheap plastic crap in the bargain. all the while, they let their own manufacturing sector rot and their economy go to hell, because slave labor is obviously cheaper
who cares about human rights, who cares about my own country's economy, as long as i get my fucking shiny smartphone
blame corporations all you want
i blame the fat, lazy, ignorant american consumer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Whenever I mention something about Apple being subject to the laws of business like any other company, people often come out of the woodwork to say something like, "Oh no you dint! Apple is the largest purchaser of in the WORLD, and they can do it faster, cheaper, prettier... etc. etc."
So, since Apple be the largest X of Y in the WORLD, and first in market share and mind share, I find it entirely appropriate to drag Apple's name into the negative aspects of consumer electronics, including suicides among poorly treated workers, and outright poisoning of them. After all, with the Zune's laughable market share, how many workers could be dying assembling them?
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
The powers that be in China basically view the working class as economic cannon fodder. They couldn't care less what happens to those people because they don't think their lives are important. In other countries, someone is expected to provide health care to people as a consequence of this, but in China it is OK if they die because the only externality they have to consider is a loss of productive capacity (and they don't presently have a shortage of that).
The solution is not that US companies should take their business elsewhere, that's not how the system is supposed to work. The solution is we should take our business elsewhere, because we are the ones who care about the human cost. We can't afford to be so complacent. There will come a day (or perhaps it is already here) when our "leaders" will view us the same way. This is a situation that can not be tolerated.
So, what is the solution? What should I do in order to improve the lives of factory workers in China? Please be specific.
"Stop buying Chinese consumer products" might sound good, but I'd make two points: I buy relatively few consumer products that are made in China, and if we (the West) stop buying their products it will cause their labor conditions to *decline* not *improve*.
When I got on this anti-China high horse a while back I did some investigation. I ended up with a shirt made in Thailand, an oil filter made in Israel, printer cartridges made in Ireland, food grown in California, Texas, and Ohio, it just went on and on -- all the stuff I assumed was made in China, wasn't. I was shocked.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There's much truth to what you say. Yet talk of populist uprisings are met with sounds of derision by the Birchers (the Glenn Beck set) as well as the religiousiters. Phrases like "workers of the world unite" are viewed dimly by most governments.
So what does one do? I'm asking this question in all earnestness.
The sheep need shepherds, but egads, what shepherds?
Without secondary shepherds the choice is very simple: become your own shepherd or fail to prosper. It so happens that being your own shepherd is the very best way to influence others by your example, while trying to coerce them only encourages defiance. The best implementation of this known to me is the minimal government that can protect civil rights but does not ever isolate anyone from the results of their decisions. It's fertile ground for what could be called enlightened self-interest.
Properly understood, it's an attempt to benefit the whole by doing what is best for the individual. The real problem with even the well-meaning political ideologies of today is that they put the cart before the horse. They amount to a variety of spectrums and schemes that try to benefit the individual by doing what is best for the collective. What are called Liberalism and Conservatism share this flaw. Though it isn't called that, any such collective or group identity is like a corporation in that it takes on a life of its own and seeks to justify and perpetuate its existence. That life it takes on is larger-than-life and tends to overshadow any individual voice.
Improperly understood, it's every-man-for-himself manifested by ruthless competition. This caused the terrible working conditions, exploitation, child labor, etc. of the early Industrial Revolution and causes the same in sweatshops today. It's all about the bottom line because that competition is first and foremost.
All the debates about "regulations vs. free-market" are tainted by the many who incorrectly view that as two opposing sides seeking to settle this question. There is no opposition or contradiction and the reason is simple. Any regulation or lack of regulation comes from an understanding of how it really should be. The concept of how it should be is not derived from the regulations, what the letter of them states and what loopholes one can get away with. Rather, any regulations are kept as simple as possible and come from an enlightened self-interest view of how things should be.
An understanding of this would reveal that the sheep should transcend the need to remain sheep instead of trying to find the ideal shepherd. Without that understanding, the whole world is divided into two opposing factions. It's Left vs. Right, Democrat vs. Republican, Regulation vs. Free-market, etc. None of them ever have a complete and completely sustainable solution. That's how you recognize a flawed understanding.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The powers that be in China basically view the working class as economic cannon fodder.
What exactly is it that makes you think that the powers that be in the USA are any different? Did you forget about shooting veterans on the white house lawn? Did you forget about the mass graves of Panamanians on the military base in Panama, people killed in our name? Have you forgotten that only a few of us have strong labor laws (union members) while the rest of us are being pushed further towards poverty by an economy which includes ever more part-time and ever fewer full-time jobs? Did you notice that the banks received bailouts instead of the creation of public works projects which would actually have produced genuine benefit instead of simply permitting execs to take home huge bonuses, bonuses which will be converted to foreign currencies as rapidly as possible?
We can't afford to be so complacent. There will come a day (or perhaps it is already here) when our "leaders" will view us the same way. This is a situation that can not be tolerated.
You're tolerating it right now.
Giving bailouts to the bankers is WAR
Dumping currency to produce inflation is an act of WAR
Putting you on the watch list for your political views that's WAR
Exporting our pollution to China is a strategy of WAR
You don't even fucking know that you're losing the WAR.
It's lonely out here in the left-of-left position, but at least I can't be conflated with half-asses.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe instead of the straw man about how we shouldn't be dictating other countries' policies, we should think about our own moral obligations. I may not have a moral obligation to change China's policies—in fact, I have a moral obligation not to—but I certainly have a moral obligation not to enjoy the fruits of their ill-gotten labor, and not to enrich and empower them for the privilege.
Discretion in one's own behaviors is far from revolutionary, and it's also far from hegemonic. It's frankly a pretty basic foundation of minimal human decency.
We all have to walk a rather fine line in this regard, particularly as most of us (commenting on Slashdot) depend on violating this basic decency in some form or another for our own livelihood—as a matter of operating in an economic environment that's largely out of our immediate control—but it's not a matter to take lightly or dismiss with conveniently naïve rationalization. And it's not a matter that we can take greater responsibility for without a much more honest and sobering look in the mirror.