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Ask Slashdot: Any Smart Phones Made Under Worker-Friendly Conditions?
New submitter unimacs writes "So Apple has been under fire recently for the conditions at the factories of their Chinese suppliers. I listened to 'This American Life's' recent retraction of the Michael Daisey piece they did a while back. Great radio for those of you who haven't heard it — rarely has dead air been used to such effect. Anyway, while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories. Given that, are there any smart phone manufacturers whose phones are made under better conditions?"
No.
I would not be surprised to see reports from China that Foxconn workers are being treated a bit better over the next year... Thus eventually making Apple the most "labor-friendly".
Although, Foxconn manufactures devices for multiple companies, I believe. Doesn't Motorola also have their devices made there?
No, .... well yes. It all depends on how deep you want to follow the supply chain and how much you want to remain ignorant of. And enough of that second part will also lead to a NO.
I don't mean to be obtuse, but worker friendly means something entirely different in the US versus China. I would go as far as saying there are a enough differences between Europe and the US that settling on the terms is difficult.
Pay? Hours? Benefits? Shift?
Can we throw in the type of job and modify those parameters?
To be frank the forty hour work week is an aberration. It certainly sounds great, I haven't had one in a dozen years. For some jobs it might make sense. Yet does it have to be across five days a week or can it be done in four or seven?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Nokia fired 4000 smart phone assemblers in Finland, Hungary and Mexico last month, moving to Asia. Theres a press release from around feb 8th.
This /. article is probably a response, however indirect, to that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Part of the issue is that consumers may want to do the right thing but have no information as to which is the least of all evils. A device/company/plant database that can be checked before buying an electronic device would help solve that particular issue.
The idea is not to tell the consumer which way to go. But instead to simply present all the facts and opinions.
Personally, I would spend a $50 premium over other phones if I knew I were rewarding fair manufacturing practices.
What I would like to know is why all the outrage over Apple? Most Chinese factories have poor working conditions, so this would cover what, 95% of consumer goods.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Nokias made in Finland are. the question is: are there still Nokias made in Finland? I don't know the answer to that.
It may be just me, but if one part of an article is retracted due to false statements or intentional innacuracies, with apologies from the publisher on releasing the story into the wild, I'm not going to base an opinion on ANY OTHER PART of the article or any other material sourced by that author. I'll have an opinion, but I'll base it on other sources.
Listen, Apple's no angel, and neither is anyone else. I think we can all agree on that.
But Apple is the company making the biggest noticeable difference in this space. Whether that's out of the goodness of their hearts (unlikely) or the fact that the know they're under greater scrutiny because they're the big fish in this pond (considerably more likely), it does mean that the workers in the Apple foxconn factories are the ones that are likely to see the benefits of Apple's largess first.
Almost universally, however, workers at these factories feel they're better off than they would have been if they'd stayed in rural China. It IS a choice they make to work there; they line up to apply for jobs.
If that remains unconvincing to you--which is fair--write your political representatives and get them to try and convince the Chinese government to pass better worker protection laws and enforce them. Ultimately, it shouldn't be up to Apple, Samsung, Google or the consumers to protect the people of China.
AFAIK they are made in Mexico and/or Canada
As always mixture of foreign and domestic parts.
As a side note: Depending on how low level you want to go (eg: all the individual parts) you will never find a phone that is made under worker friendly conditions unless you mine the raw materials yourself and go from there. Of course this is NOT realistic!
K Man
I find it a crazy FWP that people are so fixated on workers rights in countries where the work they are getting in factories are much better than the alternative. Yet we ignore the plight of minimum wage workers in North America. In major metropolitan areas where housing is unaffordable and public transit is sadly there, why don't we fix things for our own before aiding those who haven't really ask you for your opinion?
A lot of people works on "good companies" but still hate their job. I'm sure that many Apple US employees hate their job but stay there anyway. The same happens for all the other companies.
The opposite is also true. I'm sure that there are many happy employees at Foxcon.
It is better to buy the SmartPhone that better suits you for your needs, and makes you more productive, and donate money to Amnesty, Caritas, etc. to help the poor.
Your need to use your time to do whatever you are best at, and donate some money to NGOs.
Japanese manufacturers like Sharp are probably your best bet as they do have factories in Japan. Of course many of the components will have been made in China, but that is about the best you can hope for. Unfortunately I don't think Sharp do any phones outside of Japan.
Maybe LG or Samsung. I know they use Chinese factories for some manufacture, but they do have some assembly done in South Korea. That is about the best you can hope for.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Working conditions are relative to the alternative, aren't they? Apple, Foxconn, etc. aren't forcing anyone to work at those factories, and yet people turn out in droves and line up for the chance to be one of the lucky few to get a job there. For them it's a choice between working in a factory under intense, sometimes dangerous conditions or working in a field under MORE intense, and yes MORE dangerous conditions in order to make a life for themselves. Would it be great if they had income and conditions somewhat closer to what those in the developed world enjoy? Of course, but when your nation is run unilaterally by a self-elected body of bureaucrats, the conditions could be a lot worse (see: North Korea).
Going to hell? Yes, i probably am. But it's not like i won't have a lot of you around to keep me company.
If it's not made by machines, the odds are it's made by underpaid and overworked humans in some overseas sweatshop conditions.
North Americans and Europeans aren't willing to pay for the true cost of the labour.
I seem to recall an article estimating what it would cost to manufacture an iPad in North America with the unions, health and safety regulations, and so on respected. They came up with a number in the neighbourhood of $1400.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
...while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims...
Please think about what you just wrote there. He was discredited but he wasn't inaccurate? Um, yes, he was wrong. The majority (and certainly the most notable) of his claims have been revealed to be _lies_. That is pretty much the definition of "inaccurate". Until there are actual, factual reports substantiating the claims, I do believe that his claims were entirely inaccurate.
Was the author going to purchase one of those friendly phones? Nope, more free press time for Apple. And I'll leave with another note. When I say that I'm tired of America, I get people who say, "It's still the greatest country in the world." Really? So, everything they do is OK. NOPE. Any company, crapple or otherwise, has no pride in its products if they make them in this fashion. Still working with the maker revolution.
No quit asking!
But then again virtually nothing made in a factory is made under "Worker friendly conditions."
Very few things at all in fact. Your food, for example. Explore where that all comes from. Anything sold at a Big Box store. Video Games for large companies. Movies.
There are few Worker Friendly products out there because the point isn't to be nice to the workers, it's to make money.
If you want things produced with respect for the workers, buy things produced locally by small businesses or individuals. However you won't be able to find a phone made that way. You have to make your choice: How much is your convenience compared to a few minutes of factory worker's time in another country? A country you probably know nothing about, economically or culturally?
That said, I suspect that globalisation is heading into a lot of flak at the moment. There has always been a conflict between the perceived strategic needs of the US and what American corporations will do. In WW2 they were the begin with supplying both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with arms and technology although it was not in the interests of the USA to do so. You can see the transfer of manufacturing to China as hastening the downfall of the USA, but corporate executives will simply buy citizenship of whatever country offers the most benefits to them; they have no loyalty whatsoever to any particular country.
So no, you will never get any piece of electronics nowadays that can be called "ethically sourced", but it is just about possible to decide which is most in your interest to buy, assuming that you have, or want, to live in one country.
For an inhabitant of CA, that is probably Apple. For anybody else, YMMV.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
My smartphone is made from low-fat granola pieces glued together from wheat reaped by freedom-loving highly-paid yet-still-spiritualistic gay Tibetan monks who are all married to one another and turn all their after-tax profits over to Greenpeace.
Of course it doesn't work, but I feel really good about owning it and it's a great conversation-starter with the cute angry Goth chicks who hang out in my local hipster food co-op in Brooklyn.
Remember the old apple ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjyh2Fhnuk
"State of the art automation with a skilled workforce in freemont CA."
HTC is headquartered in Taiwan, not mainland China. Does anyone know if they manufacture their phones in Taiwan or in China?
Because with all the regulations America has, something like that would never happen.
OH WAIT. That's why all these phones are manufactured overseas, safe labor set ups be damned.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
If Foxconn employees aren't happy with the wages and the working conditions I'm sure they know where the door is.
A converse example is the car industry, where automation is unavoidable because the assemblies are too heavy to be easily manipulated by people. The result is that cars get made in the USA, Europe and Japan.
I suspect that whoever cited $1400 to make an iPad in the US was either manufacturing-illiterate or had a financial incentive to misrepresent the facts. I would be surprised if assembly in the US added more than $25 to the cost, and unsurprised to find it was more like $5 when everything was taken into account.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you are worried about the social and environmental impact of your smartphone, you aren't going to be satisfied by any of the options on the market. A consolation prize, if you will, would be to purchase a used phone. You can get even the latest phones on the used market, and in so doing you prevent it from ending up in a landfill or "recycler" in the third world. Plus, the social and environmental impact of that phone has already been made. I won't say your conscience gets off scot free, but you could argue (to yourself and others) that those impacts are borne more by the original purchaser than you, the second purchaser. You can't fix the harm that originally went into making the phone, but you can prevent additional harm by not purchasing a new one.
This calculus works for lots of things besides smartphones. The one I particularly like is to consider buying a used honda civic that gets 35+ mpg as a replacement for a gas guzzler, rather than purchasing a new prius.
", while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories."
That statement is nonsense.
Michael Daisey was discredited because working conditions were fine for iPhone or iPad factories; none of the horrible things he had reported on were true upon his visit. I've listened to original piece (when it aired) as well as the full retraction. He had to create lies based what he'd heard of previous (outlawed) practices of various Chinese manufactures as well fabricate people, events, and conversations in order to invoke an emotional response. Then he repeatedly, unapologetically used the theater as a scapegoat as to why he could tell people that he was telling a factual account, but in reality, was more lie than occurrence.
That said, the OP does have a good question about sweatshop free phones. I wish there was a list for all goods and services; seems internet searches pull up a lot of hits for clothing and apparel, but not so much for electronics.
Japan: 25 per 100,000
Foxconn: 2.5 per 100,000
Set your phasers on "funky"!
The fact that workers are better off in these factories doesn't mean much, given that China is a brutal, repressive dictatorship. If the Chinese authorities leave conditions in the country so bad that near slavery in towns is better, despite their need for farming, then the desire of workers to escape the countryside is unsurprising. "Encouraging" the population to move to the towns to replicate the Industrial Revolution makes sense for the Chinese global strategy, but giving people a choice between agrarian near-slavery and urban better paid near-slavery isn't exactly validated by their preferring the frying pan to the fire.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There is no ethical smartphone.
Its not just the factory conditions that matter, its the conditions of all those involved in obtaining the raw materials and assembling sub components. A lot of the raw materials will be mined in Africa in conditions which are far worse than Chinese factories.
Many Samsung phones (such as the Galaxy S) are made in South Korea.
Most of your clothes is made by slaved children, processed foods is made by slaved Mexicans, and electronics is made by slaved Asians. And when I mean SLAVE, it really is slavery! These people have no choice but to work in these places.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
By Greedy you mean everybody...
Companies will be happy to give you products and treat their labor like royalty. If you are willing to buy an iPhone for $2,000 and iPad for $3,000 and $9,000 for a standard laptop?
If anybody who has worked in a small business you will see that the cost of operating a business is a lot more then most people think. If you do all the right things then your product will be much more expensive then your competitors. And then you don't make profit and you go out of business leaving all your well treated employees out of a job.
There is really a fine line between greed and staying competitive. Supply and Demand (Always start every problem as a supply and demand problem) If your price is above the supply/demand optimal point then you are loosing sales. If your price is below optimal point then you are leaving money on the table which will prevent growth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Try this: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
Made in whatever conditions YOU decide to make it in. Problem solved.
If someone is desperate enough to take one of those crappy worker-unfriendly jobs, then doesn't it follow that they likely need it even more than one of the workers from a more worker-friendly company/nation? Are you helping them by encouraging the movement of jobs elsewhere, when even they agreed that the job was better than the alternative (ie. starvation)?
Most of the electricity in China are generated by coal, so your One True Worker-Friendly factory (assuming existance) there is likely using that. And we all know coal mining is oh so human right-friendly.
Chances are your Proudly American-made Patriotic Local Product's production involves petroleum, with high chance being imported from paragons of freedom such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, or bought from God-fearing, Mohammet-loving kings of Arabia.
And the Coltan mine, which produce the tantalum used in your recent worker-friendly phone, was operated by the most peace-loving nations of the world since the fall of Rome.
Apple issues a monthly report of working conditions throughout for all it's suppliers.
From the report regarding indentured migrant labor...
"As a result of our expanded audits in 2011, suppliers reimbursed $3.3 million in excess foreign contract worker fees, bringing to $6.7 million the total that has been repaid to workers since 2008."
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/code-of-conduct/labor-and-human-rights.html
Watch those corners
They may be severe by US labor standards. But in China they are considered among the best by workers. With all the foreign pressures there is some attempt toward safe conditions. They actual pay their workers instead of disappearing some random Sunday. Applicants line up by the thousands for these relatively desirable jobs.
According to this article, "Apple fully traced its supply chains for the four conflict minerals—tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold—which is further than other companies have gone."
http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/blog/post/new-report-apple-strong-supply-chain-tracing-weak-certification
You can make them with robots like Nissan do with cars, I would suggest that this is the best way forward anyway.
The purpose of existence is to make money.
In a world where Google can find anything there's one area that's sorely missing.. where products are sourced from. Pick any item or product you purchase regularly and try to find out where the bits come from. It's surprisingly difficult. The best you can usually come up with is the (public) shipping records for imports, and even then you only know the one hop before it hit the coast here in the U.S. I try to purchase goods that are sourced from high wage countries.. I'm happy to purchase a product from Germany, Russia, UK, etc. But it's quite difficult to find out where most of the money was spent making a thing.
Thousands line up for jobs at Foxconn. It wouldn't be so if the working conditions weren't relatively good.
From 2009 to 2011 you could buy a Garmin-Asus phone in the US. The nuvifone G60 was designed mostly by Garmin in Kansas, and hardware and low level software engineering and manufacturing was done by Asus in Taiwan. Asus is known for good working conditions, fair labor policies, and a refusal to work with suppliers with who do not share their ethics. While the software left a bit to be desired, the quality of the device was superb, and had an extremely low failure rate. However, because the device had software written by American engineers and was manufactured by an ethical Taiwanese company, it was expensive. The same could be said for the G60's successor in the US, the A50/Garminfone.
And you know what? People didn't want to pay for these. They wanted iPhones. So excuse me for laughing when I see everyone here saying "oh I would've paid extra for a phone that wasn't made by unethical companies". The proof is undeniable. People didn't buy these phones because they were expensive. Today, neither Garmin nor Asus sell phones in the US anymore. You had your chance to support companies that produced equipment made ethically, but in the end you proved you just wanted something shiny.
Posting AC since I was one of the engineers who worked on both of these phones.
I wonder if its possible, though, for *everyone* to get skills and move up the job ladder. It seems to me that there's a natural (enough) bell curve involving pay and jobs that statistically means that a lot of people will be at the low end of the job curve, regardless of their skills.
There's only so many jobs in the economy for lawyers, doctors, etc. Not everyone can be an executive.
Even ignoring this, there are structural issues such as regional unemployment and job opportunity disparities, and then there's questions at a national level as to total job opportunities.
There's tons of people trained to be lawyers who can't find work, for example. I doubt you'd classify someone capable of graduating law school and passing the bar exam as dumb or lazy or incapable of "hard work".
In the US in the early days, we had slavery and child labor and all sorts of things like this. And prior to all of this globalization, we managed to get rid of slave labor, child labor, set higher working conditions and lots more and still somehow managed to raise the standard of living for just about everyone across the nation. What we have even today is way better than what others have in other countries though that may change for us in the US before long. But if the world were to make a change as the US did, how would the world go about accomplishing that feat?
The fact is, the way we have society set up and corporations set up, there aren't any good options. We're all allowing this current paradigm to continue...basically corporate rule. With the goal of business being maximum profit at all costs, externalities be damned, there aren't any good options until you start to think outside the current economic paradigm. What I'm saying is that the way corporations/businesses are set up, we can't help but do evil as a society. So the answer to the original quesiton of this post "Any smart phones made under worker friendly conditions"....of course the answer is no. In fact, everything we do is basically evil. When you show up to work at the fascist corporation that elslaves you and collect a paycheck, you're part of the evil. No good can or will come from a society that is based on the current goals of the entities that rule it...profit at any cost. Just pick up a newspaper....every awful thing that's happening is rooted in that one goal and it's not going to change until people act to change it. Greed isn't good. Greed doesn't work. You'll never find an ethical smart phone, or anything else for that matter, until things drastically change. And for those of you who are going to say that some companies are ethical...yeah maybe .5% and the rest that seem less evil just have a great PR machine. Oh and the only reason people are keying in on the Smartphone or Apple is because America's PR machine has accidentally caught a snag and has caused the bewildered herd to think. You probably spend a heck of a lot more $ every year on non-smartphone items that are made under similar or worse conditions, but since the media/American PR has allowed you to think of smartphones, you're thinking of them. Don't think you're thinking outside the control of PR. It really is amazing and must take amazing discipline to be so blind. Just smartphones? Really?
they are all basically made under the same or worse conditions as Apple products in China--why all this outrage over 5% of the problem?
As usual with energy/environment/social related questions, it's easy to answer but hard to accept. /. is heavily gadget-oriented, and I also love to play with techy new stuff. But the truth is that nobody *needs* a smart phone. It's cool to have a linux kernel in the pocket, it can be fun and convenient to always have Angry Birds and emails on the go, but people can survive without it.
Here are some facts :
*) You probably don't need it. I know
*) It uses gold, silver, tantalum, platinum, palladium, lead, tin, copper, oil, aluminium, etc. Some of them are getting rare, some of them are linked to conflicts for extraction.
*) It will be a piece of junk in a few months/years. Planned obsolescence is a bitch.
*) It's hard to recycle. It's so hard almost nobody bothers to try, and just dump it.
*) As you mentioned, the production process isn't really worker-friendly.
And the list goes on and on. The obvious answer is not to buy it.
The real question is if you wanna walk the walk.
If you want to vote with your dollar, and you don't want your dollar going to slave labor... Don't buy a new phone. Don't give your money to a big company. Give it to your neighbor, or some random person on EBAY. Get a used phone. Yes, likely, that other person will turn around and give their money to a big company, but they were likely to do that anyway. At least you voted with your principles.
Also, it's a lot cheaper. Yes, you won't get the latest and greatest. That's the price you pay. Seriously, it's not the end of the world.
Or, I suppose, you could look up the OpenMoko project. Or get a raspberry pi and hack something together yourself using VOIP.
Tony
My phone was built by well compensated earth ponies in Manechuria. The batteries were charged by unicorns and are everlasting. The phones delivered to localm stores by pegasusususes in gluten-free, dolphin-free, carbon-free, fat-free, Beiber-free packaging. I am therefore morally superior to you all. BOW TO ME!
... is not to play. Don't buy a phone (smart, feature, dumb, landline). Don't buy a computer. Don't buy a TV. Don't buy a microwave. Don't buy a stove. Don't buy a microwave. Don't buy furniture. Don't buy clothes.
Really, go look around your house for something that's made in a non-third-world county. I bet you'll be looking for a long time.
Mexico has good minimum employment standard laws protecting workers: http://natlaw.com/pubs/torrient.htm
Nokia and Blackberry used to manufacture some of their products in Mexico.
A couple of years ago I bought a ruggedized Kyocera phone. Strangely it was made in the USA (and the battery was made in Mexico).
"rarely has dead air been used to such effect."
just listened to it last night.
I looked at my player a couple times to make sure it wasn't paused.
When you continually claim record profits, along with record sales, the people who man the production lines come under the whip to get more done faster. It's the simple law of the production line. Also, with Apple's premium on all their gear, that premium translates into premium status with the supplier (they get their stuff run before everyone else because they pay more). Again, another simple law of production.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The conditions in China *are* basically good for the workers. I remember an interview with a Chinese worker in some factory that the Western media was trying to criticize. The worker put it very succinctly: The job he had was a heck of a lot better than the alternatives in his area.
These jobs may not be what you would expect in the West, but look where China (and other up-and-coming countries) were a couple of decades ago. They are making huge progress, both in working conditions and in their average standard of living. Stuff like this doesn't change overnight, or even in a few years - it is a generational thing.
Who knows, if China keeps improving at the current rate, in a couple of generations, they may well be chiding the West about our working conditions!
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
My personal standard of living is nothing great but is probably way better than that of the factory workers. But the way things are going, I might not have a job in a few months. If that happens, I'll be subsisting until I find a new job, which I know will be very difficult.
I'm all for improving worker conditions but I have to admit that if it costs me my job then I'm a lot less enthusiastic about it.
At this point the question should be is there anything that you're buying in stores like Walmart, Best Buy, or the Dollar Stores which are starting to supplant them, that doesn't involve a sweatshop in it's production. I suspect that the question is something that not many people are going to want to search the answer to. It's pretty hypocritical to suddenly launch on Apple for Foxcomm, when we've been tolerating far worse conditions to get our Nikes.
No.
Since the raw materials used in the manufacturing - minerals in particular - usually are not, then by transitivity no electronic devices are.
But then again, do people check that e.g. the fruit they buy at the grocer's is picked at worker-friendly farms?
ever think that this guy met her AFTER she was dumped by someone else? of course not, you already made up your hypocritical mind
Yes the conditions in China factories are worse than in the US. Yes Apple makes their devices in China. So do the majority of manufacturers these days; almost everything in your life is either made in China or has parts made in China. Your shoes, the laces, your shirt buttons, jeans zippers, the hangars you put the jeans on, the coffee maker, your TV, car stereo, etc.
I don't deny there are labor practices in China that don't live up to western ideals. Different culture, different standards: deal with it. But why is all the focus on Apple and not Dell, Nike, Toatmaster, etc?
If you want all those Chinese workers to make $10.00US per hour and have separate apartments and commute to work then please don't' complain when fuel prices shoot up 300% as a result of the additional demand.
If you're concerned about the way something is manufactured, don't buy it new. Yes, by buying a used item you're increasing the resale value of it, which makes a tiny difference in how much the company can charge for it new. But otherwise you're not supporting the manufacturer.
This is helpful in all sorts of areas, not just with tech manufacturing. If I find an authors to be loathsome in his politics -- I'm looking at you, Mr. Card -- I'll buy his books used. That way I get to read what I want, but don't have to give money to someone whose ideas I find repulsive. Sure, I have to hunt around to find a copy, and maybe deal with dog-eared pages and someone else's underlining, but if you feel strongly about something you should be willing to live with minor inconveniences.
I have no info on this one, but this one might be OK.
Are there that many people in the first world, that really even care one way or the other about things like this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Seriously. Apple and its fans have no problem with Apple being more-or-less synonymous with certain segments of the market (MP3 players, smart phones, tablets). Then, when the market is revealed to be built on controversial business practices, they whine about how they are getting all of the negative attention?
Here is a question: do you feel no obligation to conduct yourself with integrity as long as you can point to someone else who is worse?
I don't know about the production chain for chips materials, etc. But for European designed, assembled and tested smartphones
with open hardware (from closed hardware chips) and as much free software as they (Golden Delicious) could, you could look at
www.gta04.org (basically motherboard replacements
for openmoko GTA02 phones, but they're very close to having complete phones, with 3d printed cases you could customize,
and the rest of components of a phone sourced so they could sell complete phones without using refurbished neo frerunners).
If enough people buy the motherboard this month they may get cheaper prices.
The real problem is that these factories, operating under very poor conditions, drive down prices by competition.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
yes, but you'll need deep pockets. http://www.vertu.com/
Hand made in the UK
Please define "fair manufacturing practices".
true: Apple, directly or indirectly, uses child and slave labor to make consumer electronics.
true: So does everyone else.
true: You don't care.
If you want to cause change: Either mass-protest ALL of these companies and their products (good luck!), or do a startup if you have a better idea.
Otherwise: Stop pretending and continue loving your "precious" at all costs while screwing underage Chinese girls, you disgusting pedophiles.
Nothing is stopping Apple from refraining from using business partners where workers are treated poorly
Apple is the ONLY FUCKING COMPANY that does exactly that. They fire suppliers who do not meet criteria for humane treatment of workers. They are slowly ratcheting up worker conditions within FoxConn. Given there is no-one else on the planet who can produce these things at the scale Apple needs, Apple is doing a huge amount to try and change conditions especially given they do not own FoxConn.
At this point I buy only Apple is I can, for any given consumer electronic item. Wireless router? Airport. They even produce batteries. Buying from Apple means I can be pretty sure they are at least trying to make the lives of those who produced the product better, which is more than I can say for products from any other consumer electronics companies.
It is vastly unfair that Apple takes heat for not caring when other companies just as large do nothing and have not one word said about it.
Instead of complaining about Apple where is the movement to demand that every other company "be like Apple"? That might actually have an impact, a cascade of change. But by focusing on Apple you will only get as much change as Apple alone can institute, and I am pretty sure they are trying to get manufactures to change as quickly as they can.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am pretty sure that Samsung workers in Korea (where phones are assembled) would not switch place with Foxconn workers in China...
Really? Why is that? What makes you so sure they are treated any better, given so few people look carefully at labor practices there?
I mean, 13 deaths in 16 months, when people freaked out over similar numbers in suicides at FoxConn.
How do you know things are really better there for factory workers?
I hate to break it to you man but factory work SUCKS in any country, not just China.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yet we ignore the plight of minimum wage workers in North America.
That's because even the poorest of people working in North America, even the HOMELESS here live like kings compared to the truly poor in China and elsewhere!!!
I have been to Africa, and in fact even a few villages way outside the main cities in China. You want a loaf of bread? Well get on the GRINDSTONE WHEEL YOURSELF. Because that is where the bread is going to come from.
There I speaking about the relative rich Chinese peasants of course, because many African villages are not nearly so well off technologically speaking.
To claim anyone in the U.S. who has any job is in a "plight" is so selfish and ignorant as to be mind-boggling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They have a right to work (or not work).
If they think the conditions at Foxconn are too harsh, let them get better jobs!
There are solid business reasons to have electronics manufactured outside the US. A lot of it comes down to the fact that workers in those places can not expect the same level of compensation, benefits and workplace safeguards employees and unions have fought so long to get in the US. There was a time when normal factory working conditions in the US were just as bad as in a Shenzhen factory if not worse. However, the fact that workers there do not enjoy the same working conditions workers in the US do doesn't mean they are not happy to have the job or that it's anyone else's responsibility to make things better for them. After all, it wasn't rich foreigners who improved working conditions for US workers. I doubt I would enjoy working in any factory, whether in China or the US, but I don't feel guilty for buying things that were built in them.
From videos from garment industry factories, showing "dorm & social life" in the little free-time workers get, I seriously doubt that anyone employed by one sweatshop would have any practical way of learning about & comparing the conditions of other sweatshops.
I further doubt that other sweatshops would even hire any of the would-be "job-hoppers" unless they were bringing skills that would cost the employer RMB's to train into new "fresh from the country" employees.
China, if you haven't heard, has no unemployment benefit or other safety nets. I doubt companies publish their working conditions, nor (if they did) would they necessarily always live up to their ad contents or agreements with employees.
It might change, someday, but - while there are waves of country girls/boys coming into cities every day - I don't see any incentive for employers to improve their conditions of / at work.
Let's hope, but while we - who have way too much already - try to save money, by buying cheap, push our vendors to sell at bottom-basement prices, China's captains of industry can't cut their costs any more, except by trying to swindle their newest crop of country employees, eg, by tossing out agreements & demanding more for less.
Apple won't pay any more for their products, as they've got "more important" things to do with [a small portion of the cash from] their excessive profits: Buy back Apple shares.
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Then they'll buy the land under the Vatican, & evict the Pope. ;-)
My older Nokia e65 was made in Finland.
My newer e71 was made in (oopsie... tossed out its box...)... dunno.
My Sony Ericsson W705 -doesn't- give a hint as to where it's made...
(Its box might, but it's elsewhere).
I've got a Casio G'Zone Commando, it's made in Japan. It runs android and is also waterproof.
From Janary to Feburary of this year, Apple increased compliance of the 60-hour workweek from 84 percent to 89 percent.
I know it's all the rage to simply hate companies regardless to impress the ladies, but what happens if no-one ever acknowledges when a company does, in fact, takes steps that help why would any company bother going forward?
In fact if I had a non-Apple company I would take a clear lesson from the public reaction to Apple actually attempting to make things better - take no steps whatsoever because any action will be attacked as insufficient, and if you just let the workers suffer with no action you will be ignored.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh, wow, they increased compliance of a 60-hour work week (which is pretty bad by itself) by 5%! /golfclap
Over only a month, at a time when they were pre-producing the iPad2...
You are an idiot, that much is plain. And unwilling to admit any good even from substantial improvement.
Look, if you want to call that "real action" that's your problem.
Your problem is you seek the unobtainable.
In the main time I am sure you happily purchase non-Apple gear, furthering worker suffering in China. But then you never really fred about that anyway, you only wanted to tarnish Apple and are pouting now that I have upset your plan.
You may have the last word as I've found Apple Haters have nothing of value to say once unmasked,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm a Japanese. I haven't heard bad rumors around sharp but if it is a typical Japanese company, workers should have lots of unpaid overworks.
I have worked at several companies. All of them were the same. At one company my workmate had 100 hour unpaid overwork, at another an employee stayed 2 weeks at the office and could not go back home. There are full of those stories around me. I heard China doesn't have a culture of illegal unpaid overwork in general. I guess it depends but if it's not common they are lucky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RqxYiXtzKd0
The N9 is actually made in Finland.