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Fair Labor Association Finds Foxconn Factory "First Class," Says Labor Watchdog
Richard.Tao writes "The Fair Labor Association found that Apple's plant where iPhones and iPads are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country. A quote: 'The lead investigator stated "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."' Which leaves the question, what is the acceptable norm?"
It's not Apple's plant. They're the biggest electronics factory in the world and make products for Dell, HP, Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, and more. Seems like a Greenpeace situation where Apple gets singled out because it generates more media coverage. Apple has actually been cited as the most proactive when it comes to monitoring work conditions in the factories they contract with.
Have been there. This factory is way beyond garment factories in terms of attractiveness. The Shenzhen campus, which has about 600k employees, makes not just Apple but HTC, Sony, Panasonic, you-name-it. They are owned by Taiwan, employ management from Hong Kong, employ Cantonese labor , and are governed by Mandarin communist party staff. They are ISO certified. There are so many reasons to run this factory right, it's kind of surprising that activists who are really concerned would pick on a factory like this in the first place, as opposed to say the garment industry in Guangdong. http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/releases/toxics/2010/textile-industrial-pollution/ My theory is that White People have their own "ju ju" words. Like Cameroonians who are scared to death of owls, environmentalists have an exaggerated sense of risk when something is technological and involves anything with toxics. A lot of cognitive risk dissonance over high tech and brown people. Personally, I think it's kind of cool that the Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese, Communists, etc. get along here and run a factory that produces the coolest gadgets ever produced by humans. At the rate they have grown, I'm sure the auditor will find lots of violations. But the headline is accurate... the auditor knows within a few hours that they are NOT in the textile hell-hole up the river, or the smelter, or the copper mine.
Gently reply
Those aren't great examples.
The companies you've listed aren't really "product line" companies. Yes, they have some of their own (rebranded) lines, but their primary business is selling other people's products (Nike, Reebok, Guess, Apple, Nintendo, whatever).
That being said, I once knew somebody who worked as the middleman between a U.S. brand corp and Chinese manufacturers. Their contacts in the U.S. were ruthless and in many cases absolute dickheads. For whatever reason they could find, they'd slam the Chinese manufacturers with extra fees, penalties, etc. It became obvious fairly quickly that they considered the Chinese manufacturers a sort of sub-class... and the workers at said manufacturer weren't even considered at all.
It's not just Apple, or even Foxconn, it's big business in the west overall. Given the way the corporatocracy treats locals as an inferior subspecies, it's not exactly unexpected. So long as the majority of consumers buy their products with no consideration to how they end up here, that's the way it will be.
Don't weep for Apple. It's about time *somebody* noticed this sort of shit going all and asked their favoured corp an important question: "why?"
One can only hope that it will result in some improvement, and - as Apple is currently a market leader - that it will eventually push other companies to follow.