Independent Audit Finds Foxconn Violates Chinese Work Rules

doston writes "The first independent audit of Apple's supply chain found excessive working hours and health and safety issues at its largest manufacturer, piling more pressure on the technology giant. This investigation targeted Hon Hai Precision Industry which is known as Foxconn. The company says they will try to stop their overtime criminality by July, 2013. Will the public ever sour on Apple devices in light of the constant media attention on supplier working conditions?"

Comments

Bullshit Anti-Apple Screed

[jjohnson]

Will the public ever sour on Apple devices in light of the constant media attention on supplier working conditions?

No, because they'd need to sour on all electronics to avoid Foxxcon's (and its ilk's) moral taint.

It's not an Apple problem, it's an industry problem, and Apple does better than most at identifying and correcting these conditions.

Equal pressure?

[NiceGeek]

Anyone going to apply the same pressure to ALL the other computer/phone companies that use the same facilities? I know Slashdot has a extreme anti-Apple bias, but does it blind you to the obvious? The computer you're using right now has parts that were made by Foxconn.

Re:Equal pressure?

[artor3]

While it's not particularly fair for Apple to take the heat for this, that's the price you pay for being the biggest and most influential company in the industry.

Besides, flamebait-y summary aside, people aren't souring on Apple. What they are doing is pressuring Apple to pressure Foxconn. Foxconn then hires more people, pays better wages, and requires shorter hours. The result is that the best workers will go there, and there will be indirect pressure on other Chinese companies to improve their conditions. I know my company is giving across the board ~30% raises to our Chinese workers this year, even though we haven't been in the news at all.

The end result is a good one -- the Chinese working class gets better pay for less work, the working class in the Western world faces less offshoring as Chinese wages rise, and the only drawback is that iGadgets and Androids will cost one or two percent more to manufacture. If Apple has to take a disproportionate amount of blame to achieve these results, so be it. I'm sure their executives are sobbing all the way to the bank.

July 2013 = 487 days (1 year, 4 months)

[PatPending]

So the company known for its ability to immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, ... and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day is now going to take 487 days (or 1 year, 4 months) to make this change?

No not really

[Sycraft-fu]

Turns out you can have your electronics made elsewhere. China is not the only place. They are the cheapest, but when you start paying for higher quality goods, they can be made in other places, often ones with not only better worker conditions but higher quality controls. For example my receiver is made in Japan. The lower end models are made in China but the high end stuff is made in Japan (it is a Japanese company). My speakers were built in Ohio (with the drivers themselves made in Denmark) or the UK (with UK drivers) depending on which ones you are talking about. My TV is less high end, but it was still built in Mexico.

Well guess what? Apple charges high end prices. Don't try and say they don't, their massive profits, massive amount of money in the bank is evidence they do. They can afford to move their production somewhere else if they want. It would mean less profits though.

I'm not saying they need to, I'm not playing morals here. I'm saying that this bullshit of "Oh they can't do anything!" is just that: bullshit. They charge the kind of prices they can produce their shit elsewhere and have the kind of money that they could set up their own production lines presuming they couldn't find anyone who could meet their needs.

However it would mean trading off some profits.

Close, but no cigar

[rsilvergun]

You're right that apple gets singled out due to it's extraordinary profitability. But the reason they're singled out is, you'd think a company with a profit margin like that could let the workers live like humans, wouldn't you?

Re:Oh fucking Christ

[Genda]

Yeah, but look at what unions are fighting for now and what workers are going on strike for. People are striking for a living wage and to be able to take their kids to a doctor and not be financially ruined by doing so. American workers are quick becoming third world workers thanks to a corporate monolith that is reducing the global work force to the lowest common denominator. I too would fight tooth and nail too to be able to get a high enough wage to only have to work one job and have both a roof and not starve (or have my family starve.) Look at Walmart, a company that trades heavily in China, and pays its worker so little that their health plan is Federal and State Health Care plans for people below the poverty line and these folks get food stamps. Americans subsidize Walmart's bottom line by paying their employees their basic benefits. What part of that isn't obscene?

Americans are desperate. We've been taking a beating so long, we'll settle for just not standing in food lines or having to ask for food stamps. That's not a rampant sign of unions out of control. Corporations have pushed the American worker to the edge of extinction. If we lack an infrastructure for production its not because we lack skilled labor. Its because American Corporations abandoned American for higher profit margins and bigger bonuses for their Boards of Directors. The United States has been in economic free-fall for most of 3 decades. American corporations have been cannibalizing America making trillions as they siphon off the flood of wealth leaving our country. How long before America has been bled dry. From what I can see, not long.

Global Corporations are now predicated on the fallacy that they can do unlimited social, moral and environmental damage without ever having to pay the price. This doesn't seem crazy only because they've gotten away with it up until now. There is a carrying capacity, and human economies are quick reaching that barrier. There is no indication that those who steer our economies will address the insanity of their behavior until they succeed in crashing the world. Therefore it is up to men and women of vision and conscience to say enough. It is time to re-engineer society, humanity and global enterprise.