Chinese Supplier Gets Dumped By Apple For Fraudulently Using Underage Labor

jones_supa writes "Another report from Apple regarding Chinese labor practices surfaces. After conducting its 2011 audits to 339 sites, the company found that cases of underage labor had jumped from 6 to 74 in one year. It was concentrated in a single circuit board manufacturer, which Apple says was willfully conspiring with families to forge age-verification documents. According to a new report, Apple didn't find any cases of underage workers at its final assembly suppliers in 2012, but it plans to continue going deeper into the supply chain to ferret out violators. We are talking about Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co., with which Apple has now terminated its relationship."

Comments

it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray, instead of working they now can live on the street and starve to death.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Indeed. The choice in places like this isn't slaving away for 22 hours a day in a Dickensian nightmare vs. kicking balls around in a field with butterflies and songbirds.

It's working in a factory vs. living in grinding poverty that makes Appalachian nightmares look like Bill Gates' guest house. The West lifted themselves out of this, now China is.

Imagine someone from the Galactic Federation pulling into orbit in 1850 and hauling out vicious criticism of England. No friend of humanity, that's for sure. If what you care about is actual measurements of well-being, which exploded thanks to factories at that time...vs. grinding poverty, not vs. imaginations of butterflied fields.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While it is undeniable that a combination of superior machinery and fossil fuels kicked off an era of unprecedented prosperity for humans on average, there are a couple of complicating factors to consider, both boiling down to distribution issues:

The most obvious one is that child labor(since it is usually cheaper, and since children in the workforce raise the total supply of labor) tends to depress wages and reduce the slice of the industrial prosperity that accrues to the workers(especially in per-labor-hour terms). Certainly, it will generally be the case that a given household will be better off with an additional salary(especially if something prevents one or both parents from working, like being unskilled, infirm, dead, etc.); but workers as a group are better off if children are removed from the labor force, reducing labor supply and allowing children to accrue education and other human capital. Part of the "West lifted themselves out of this" process was precisely the eventual success of the working class and any allies swayed by moral sentiment in legally forcing restrictions on child labor across the board. Since, structurally, such restrictions are essentially a cartel arrangement(since any individual defector will be better off through violating the agreement; but the group as a whole wins if nobody violates it), it more or less had to be done by force of law.

Second consideration involves looking at whatever conditions in the agricultural sector are sucking so much that a ready supply of child factory workers exists. England had its 'Enclosure Movement', which helped swell the supply of impecunious urbanites. I'm less familiar with the Chinese case; but the disparity between urban and rural conditions there is pretty remarkable.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[ernest.cunningham]

Read the article idiot!

When new violations are found, Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know wtf you're saying. I don't think you do either.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Copper Nikus]

Hooray, instead of working they now can live on the street and starve to death.

Not necessarily. According to TFA:

When new violations are found, Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.

Of course I have no idea if those lofty goals actually happen or not.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

those factories where fed in plenty and cheaply by raw materials that were practically acquired for free from enslavement of africans and looting of the rest of the world raw materials.

Re: it's the children that suffer

[JaredOfEuropa]

Nice.
1) Forge your child's birth certificate (maybe bribe a local official, not uncommon)
2) Send your kid to work at a supplier to Apple
3) ... (Wait for the Apple labour inspectors)
4) Profit! (Tuition paid and a monthly stipend for the family)

Re:it's the children that suffer

[poity]

China is a bit behind, but it isn't in the 1850's. Child labor (defined as employment of people under 16 years of age) is illegal, and there exists compulsory education for children (as best as can be implemented in practice, of course), the same as any modern country* I'm quite certain that Apple and the Chinese government are on the same page with regard to their moral/legal stance on child labor. What bugs me is that there's no mention of the local government taking charge on the issue, and that Apple is tasked with doing what the government should be doing.

*Translate with your preferred service:
http://china.findlaw.cn/laodongfa/zhuanti/tonggong/
http://baike.baidu.com/view/63809.htm

Re:it's the children that suffer

[v1]

this level of unemployment cannot be fixed by manufacturers moving jobs around. stopping the populace from breeding like rabbits is about the only useful solution. There's a very good reason china is pushing for "one child per family". Their bean counters know how to do math, and see what's coming. It's a problem that takes a generation to manifest. They're already trying to head it off, yet they're already getting their feet wet in the problem. I'd say they took action right on time.

I also find it ironic that the thread has turned in this direction. Employ underage? you child-slaving monster! Don't employ underage? throwing them to the gutters to starve! damned if you do, damned if you don't.

It's not the employers that created this problem, and it's not within their power to fix. All they can do is move the shells around and make it look a little different from a static viewpoint.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[clarkkent09]

The question is whether the situation of the those children will in reality get better or worse by being "fired". It may well be that those children will still end up working, just in some other sweatshop that has even worse conditions, or that they will not go back to school but will be starving on the street. I can tell you for a fact that child labor in some African countries saves their lives from starvation or begging on the street (yes, those countries also have laws against child labor and compulsory education) and that same was true for example during the industrial revolution in Britain. I am not sure about the situation in China, which presumably is not as bad, so I can't make a moral judgment and, unless you have better evidence than I do, neither should you.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

1. Very few arguments apply 'without limit', and this one certainly doesn't. In broad strokes, it starts to break down once the supply of jobs available(given the narrowed definition of the labor pool) falls below the number of economic entities who need incomes(depending on the prevailing social arrangements, such entities might be individuals, nuclear families, extended families, or other). Exactly what equilibrium point is reached in practice is mostly empirical: child labor, at least outside the family, seems to have few moralists on its side and tends to significantly retard education, so it often gets the chop. Limits on working hours are another means of reducing the labor supply that has achieved broad adoption and popularity.

Restrictions on individuals within the adult population definitely exist; but tend to be carved out by much more idiosyncratic means; formally-illicit-but-common discrimination against certain groups, various professional exams and licenses, that sort of thing. Because they tend to badly fail the 'number of jobs roughly equals number of economic entities' rule, wholesale restrictions typically only achieve support if the group excluded is supposed to be a member of some already employed entity(exclusion of women, say, becomes deeply problematic if single-income families are not the ideal and the norm) or if the exclusion is from a specific profession rather than from the workforce entirely.

2. As with sellers of any other good, sellers of labor who wish to maximize their slice of the pie are striving to hit the optimal compromise between units sold and price per unit: If you simply gave labor away, you'd sure see a lot of new factories; but it wouldn't help you much. If you charge $1,000/hr, you probably won't have a job. Some number of new factories is clearly beneficial to workers; but the returns aren't unbounded: If the additional demand for labor produced by lowering its price doesn't make up for the lower price(and loss of time you could be using for other things) it isn't terribly helpful. Exactly how many factories constitutes a local optimum is, naturally, a messy empirical question.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides children like chimneys!

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they shouldnt have chosen to be born property. Oops I forgot it's the US were children are considered the property of the parents.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[sjames]

So, since we know that drinking 50 gallons of water in a day is fatal, the only rational conclusion is that we must never consume water in any form?

Likewise for point 2, there is a balance to be struck. Workers never breaking even while owners never want for anything ain't it.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[SuricouRaven]

China isn't exactly unified. The cities are, but much of the country is still rural - small villages, far from central government, where the law is a distant force and the local officials can easily look the other way.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[frosty_tsm]

China isn't exactly unified. The cities are, but much of the country is still rural - small villages, far from central government, where the law is a distant force and the local officials can easily look the other way.

Add to this the well-known practice of bribing officials in China, the local government might already have been in the practice of looking the other way.

As bad as child labor is in the West, laws against it plus compulsory education ignore the real-life challenges such as starving while growing up or not having skilled jobs available in the area (which is a chicken / egg issue if there isn't skilled labor in the area to begin with). I do think Apple's efforts would minimize the practice and hope to see them continue seeking ethically-sourced (by Western standards) manufacturing.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[AlphaWolf_HK]

There's no "pie" to slice from, unless that pie dynamically shrinks and grows (it's not a zero-sum-game.) If you're a regular slashdot reader, I'm sure your familiar with the concept that a pirated song isn't a lost sale. If somebody didn't want to spend the money to buy it anyways, they still wouldn't have bought it. When you lower the price, you increase demand. In the case of a song, free is a pretty low price. As an anecdote, I recall one time a soda machine was misconfigured to sell sodas for 5 cents, and when people in my class found out, they all went to buy a soda where they wouldn't have otherwise. Anyways, if you accept that principle, then lets carry it over to physical luxury goods (which are what these factories produce, such as iphones.)

These same rules apply to labor, and likewise, decreasing the supply of labor doesn't (typically) result in higher wages when it comes to luxury goods, rather it most often results in lower supply, therefore higher prices, and therefore less demand (remember, people who already didn't want to pay the cheaper price still wouldn't have bought it anyways, and now even fewer people will buy it.) Overall, your revenue declines, and you still have the same number of employees, so you can't raise their wages even if you wanted to (and remember, you have lower demand, so your demand for more workers is also reduced.)

Often times even in short supply, the price won't go up. A real-world example of that is when e.g. the iphone, or the nexus 4 as a more recent example, although there isn't enough supply, they don't raise the prices because the demand will fall (that and it spells bad PR for the company.) And remember, these are Chinese made, so taking the kids out of the workforce again doesn't help wages any.

Now increasing the supply of labor does lower the prices for necessities that people are willing to buy with almost no concern of the price, like petroleum, but China doesn't deal in many of those goods. And if they did raise the price that much, they wouldn't hold their position very long. The reason why is because China holds their position entirely due to how cheap they can make stuff, and if they couldn't make stuff as cheaply, then other countries would compete (and readily so due to the west's general distrust of Chinese goods.) So in any case, you still don't increase the wages.

To add to that, in rural China there isn't much in the way of education.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's working in a factory vs. living in grinding poverty that makes Appalachian nightmares look like Bill Gates' guest house

So why doesn't daddy go to work in the factory? Oh, right, they can hire his one child for half the price.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, one of the reasons child labor existed during the Industrial Revolution was because there was a widespread expectation in the existing agricultural society that children would be working. One of the reasons school was not in session during the summer was so that kids could go work on the family farm during growing season.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Marxdot]

Bollocks.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if some little asian kid starves to death, as long as WE FEEL GOOD ABOUT OURSELVES for making meaningless gestures that won't do a thing to better the lives of the children we claim to care about.

Now apologize.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Limits on working hours are another means of reducing the labor supply that has achieved broad adoption and popularity.

At initial glance you'd think something like that increases wages and reduces unemployment, but in practice it does neither, and in fact results in the opposite in all cases of implementation. It's pretty easy to see why when you consider a few things:

As I explained in another post, the economy, and even resources in general, aren't a zero-sum-game. There is no "pie". By artificially decreasing the supply in labor, you're also decreasing the supply of goods produced. For necessity goods, this generally results in higher prices and therefore lower demand. In the end, the supplier will probably see the same revenue as they did before, only now there are fewer goods produced. But that's just for that one closed system; it also impacts the economy in other ways.

Due to lower availability of necessity goods, say capital goods like construction equipment, the construction companies will now find that it is harder to get contracts due to higher prices that fewer people can afford. This means that they have to lay off employees. Now that we have increased unemployment, we also have reduced consumer spending, which eventually ripples back around to the original company that made the construction equipment.

Now you might say that since these people work less, surely other people will take over where they stopped working. It doesn't work out that way in practice. I'm sure you've run across your fair share of people who either simply don't want to work, or just downright do their job half-assed. What you're doing is pushing these people into jobs that they otherwise wouldn't take, and likewise your production doesn't increase in the same way it would if the other workers could simply work as many hours as they wanted to.

This is why, for example, after France instituted the 35 hours a week limit, their GDP saw a decline and their unemployment rate increased. It absolutely did not result in what they had planned on.

Re: it's the children that suffer

[davesag]

From TFA

âoeWhen new violations are found, Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.â

Sorry to rain facts on your parade.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Months ago, when talking about underage workers was all the rage, people were decrying Apple for profiting from child labor. Now that Apple is taking a strong stance against it, they're causing the children to suffer. Right, that's not biased.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[ChrisMaple]

So Apple requires all the children to stop working and go to school, and requires the supplier to pay them their previous wages. That just does wonders for the affected supplier, who now has a huge incentive to close down and start up under a new name. Or just take their existing profits and run. Ignorance of economics does not imply immunity to its laws.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[vakuona]

Or it discourages them from employing underage workers.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus somebody mod this up. The slashdot double-standard in place here is nuts.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Dahamma]

I assume you do realize that you sound pretty much exactly like the rich factory owners of 19th century England and America criticizing the attempts at labor laws and unionization at the turn of the century and are making an ironic joke?

Re:it's the children that suffer

[node 3]

Hooray, instead of working they now can live on the street and starve to death.

Gotta love Slashdot. Its hatred is for Apple runs so deep, there are many here who would rather children be forced into labor than admit that Apple does something non-evil, or even (dare one say it!) something *good*.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[shentino]

It's still good business sense to drop them.

Quite apart from the economics of child labor, there's also a pack of very finicky customers who will turn up their noses at Apple if they don't crack down on this.

Sales that are poisoned by bad PR can outweigh cost savings quite easily.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[MagusSlurpy]

And the company soon goes under because the children to whom they're paying half-wages only do 1/3 of the work of adults because of their little girly arms and having to drive two to a forklift, one at the wheel and one on the pedals.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no double standard. The standard is that the slashdot lemmings hate Apple.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Nonsense. The teenagers have a choice to make. They either fake their age and make some quick money working in a sweatshop, or get education and make a better life later. This has a similar version in America too. Young girls can do porn and make a lot of money.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Sabriel]

However, the GP's metric of "prosperity" is not solely dependent on increasing wages and reducing unemployment, and the popularity of limits on working hours isn't necessarily because of a belief it will promote the latter two metrics. Other factors apply, particularly health, safety, quality of service and quality of living. There are numerous professions where sleep deprivation due to long work hours is an immediate hazard to life and limb of themselves and/or others, and other assorted professions where long work hours can have long-term health consequences.

Or to nutshell it: the popularity of making sure your neurosurgeon is properly rested has nothing to do with their wages. :)

Re:it's the children that suffer

[thoughtsatthemoment]

I believe in the minds of most Americans China invokes the images of mass starvation because of the man made disasters in the 1960's. Those were the crazy years because a lot of production was simply not allowed because of ideology. Despite those years, in Mao' era, China's population actually doubled from like 400m to 800m. China's problem has always been ideology, causing man made disasters time and time again. This time I think Apple is doing the honorable thing, at least setting an example for doing the right thing.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[thoughtsatthemoment]

True. But in China parents consider their children as properties. Can you see the difference?

Re:it's the children that suffer

[uvajed_ekil]

Gotta love Slashdot. Its hatred is for Apple runs so deep, there are many here who would rather children be forced into labor than admit that Apple does something non-evil, or even (dare one say it!) something *good*.

Did they fire the company when they caught them with only 6 child laborers? THAT would have been doing something non-evil. They're not looking harder for illegal labor practices now because it is the right thing to do, they're doing it to cover their own asses because other people caught them using contractors who break every rule imaginable.

And dislike for Apple predates Slashdot for a lot of us. Chronically malfunctioning Apple II floppy drives were enough to turn me against his highness Jobs back in the 80's.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[BasilBrush]

Yes, the hypocrisy here knows no bounds does it?

When the news was that some of Apple's suppliers employed child labour, then Apple was evil for indirectly implying child labour.

Now it's clear that Apple is doing everything to combat the child labour in these companies, now Apple is evil for putting children out of work.

(Even though the children aren't suffering financially at all.)

Re:it's the children that suffer

[BasilBrush]

They're not looking harder for illegal labor practices now because it is the right thing to do, they're doing it to cover their own asses because other people caught them using contractors who break every rule imaginable.

Even though every other tech company also uses those same Asian contractors. What computer did you use to post? For sure it was made using those same contractors.

Apple's the company doing the most to get the child labour problem fixed. But because you hate Apple (going back to the 80s), rationality no longer plays a part in this for you. You still believe Apple is the problem. You are a hypocrite.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Jessified]

There are also fine economic arguments in favour of slavery. What's your point?

America should legalize slavery and then we can kidnap these poor children from developing nations, feed them, shelter them and clothe them and put them to work in American factories. Then they'd be better off!

Re:it's the children that suffer

[rs1n]

Unfortunately I have no mod points to mod the parent down, but author of the parent post clearly did not read the article. From TFA,

Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[aevan]

Think you're confusing hatred with idiocy. I hate Apple, loathe them for many reasons. Will never buy their product, mock their fanbois, and try to steer people away from them. Doesn't prevent me from thinking they took a good stance here and it being laudable. Hatred is fine, blind hatred is dumb.

Still... the only thing I walk away from this is the idea some parents will abuse Apple's attempt to 'do the right thing'. No pity for the companies involved mind you. Just law of unintended consequences.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Runaway1956]

You may rationalize child labor and slave labor all you like.

I don't need to know how these children may survive outside the factory. I know for certain that unethical SOB's will take advantage of the kids, given the chance.

I know for certain that Apple has taken full advantage of Chinese practices. They have taken the fruits of these children's labors, given the items produced a thousand percent markup, and sold them on American and European markets.

Now, today, they are doing damage control, trying to distance themselves from a practice that most of the world knew was going on.

You, the consumer, are just as responsible for little kids slaving away. You're the ones who clamor for cheap, cheap, cheap. That stupid iDevice might actually be worth $800 if it were produced in a North American or a European market. In which case, Apple would mark it up to at least $1200. But, you want your thousand dollars plus worth of technology for less than a thousand dollars, thereby encouraging companies like Apple to subsidize slave labor and child labor.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[node 3]

Did they fire the company when they caught them with only 6 child laborers? THAT would have been doing something non-evil.

In other words, whatever they do, you just define "evil" as that. Got it.

They're not looking harder for illegal labor practices now because it is the right thing to do, they're doing it to cover their own asses because other people caught them using contractors who break every rule imaginable.

Blah, blah. They are go far above and beyond what anyone else does to try to do the right thing, but to you it's them breaking "every rule imaginable" (really? I can imagine quite a number of rules they aren't breaking. Perhaps your imagination only works in one direction?).

And dislike for Apple predates Slashdot for a lot of us. Chronically malfunctioning Apple II floppy drives were enough to turn me against his highness Jobs back in the 80's.

By "a lot of us", you mean "almost none of us". Of course that's neither here nor there. The fact remains there are plenty of you that hate Apple and don't really care much about the facts when they get in the way of that hatred. It's quite sad, really. Apple's just a company. Better than most, but not perfect either.

The odd thing is you are confusing opinion with evil. They do things you probably don't prefer, but others do. Stylistically and practically. But instead of just realizing, "hey, I don't like X" (walled gardens, slimmer products, non-removable batteries, whatever it is you dislike), you think, "oh, they are evil!"

Then, when they do something good, like this, you need to find a way to twist it into something bad. It's truly laughable. Your example for why you *HATE* Apple? Because a floppy drive failed on you? My god man, you are truly odd.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[node 3]

Think you're confusing hatred with idiocy.

I think they go hand in hand. >90% of the people who hate Apple are being idiots in that particular matter.

You hate and loathe them for many reasons. I bet if you outlined them, you'd look at least a bit like an idiot. Let me guess, walled-garden, lawsuits, and, um... non-removable batteries? For sure, you've every right to not like those things and avoid them, but *hatred*? And calling people "fanbois" (with the extra-gay i variation, how dreadfully clever you are!) for liking Apple products, and steering people away from something they might prefer just because *you* don't prefer it? How odd! You are like the very "fanbois" you so valiantly think to rail against!

I personally don't care what products other people choose, other than that they at least choose products which they like and suit their preferences. Why should I steer you to or from something just because it might be *my* preference? What matter is that to someone else? By your logic, do you think I should try to convince you to buy iPhones and MacBooks? Wouldn't that be a bit arrogant and presumptuous on my part?

So why would it be any different with you? You appear to be a thoughtful and logical person. Don't you see something's amiss here?

Re:it's the children that suffer

[khallow]

However, the GP's metric of "prosperity" is not solely dependent on increasing wages and reducing unemployment, and the popularity of limits on working hours isn't necessarily because of a belief it will promote the latter two metrics. Other factors apply, particularly health, safety, quality of service and quality of living.

On that aspect, I think such metrics should be considered by the worker themselves since they are all personally relevant. For professions where there are substantial hazards due to overwork, these are dealt with via liability and higher pay. I see no argument there for a universal reduction in how many hours a person should be allowed to work.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Dopeskills]

From the article: "When new violations are found, Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report."

Re:it's the children that suffer

[steelfood]

Goodbye acceptable working conditions and decent pay, and say hello to sweatshops and brothels.

When you need to survive, you'll be willing to do anything.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[smash]

Except the employer is being forced to pay them out after they are let go with the same wage they were earning whilst they go back to school.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you step back a bit, Apple basically fired America back in the 80's and never came back.
So is China > America?

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that, as distasteful as young children working may be to your delicate western-industrialized sensibilities, this is very much a modern "first world" issue?

We would be better off accepting that, in developing nations, children WILL enter the workforce because their alternative is a short, nasty life on the streets until they die to malnutrition, disease, or violence. Instead, we'd be better off pressuring the governments to enact safety regulations to make sure the children aren't being worked to death in sweat shops filled with toxic chemicals, and pressuring those same governments to ensure that there is some educational path available to these children as well.

You realize that our "summers off" school sessions were a direct result of the fact that children were expected to work their family's farms during the summer months, and so allowances were made to let them do that... right?

This whole "oh god, poor little Ping, he shouldn't have to work," is fucking stupid. Ping is from a poor-ass family barely making subsistence wages. His wages help support, feed, clothe, and shelter his family. And you want to deny that to him because the idea of a child having to do some work is abhorrent to your delicate sensibilities? Fuck you. You can't make billions of people around the world to magically achieve comfortable middle class status in a month because you "really want that to happen." Economic development takes years - generations, even - to achieve those results.

This doesn't mean we do nothing - it means that demanding immediate, comprehensive bans on any "non-American labor practices" anywhere in the world is a fucking stupid, regressive way to achieve your aims. It will not work, and in fact, it will actively make life worse for a large slice of young workers, who will not get much of an education, and also will end up with little to no marketable skills.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[BetterSense]

You're closer to the truth than your mods would admit.

Contemporary crusades against minimum wage by economic libertarians are often shouted down as racist, but when minimum wage laws were enacted, they were obviously racist against blacks. You see, before minimum wage laws, blacks commanded lower wages, largely because Americans at the time were racist fucks. In old silent movies you can see signs in the background that say 'colored waiters wanted'. Guess what, they didn't want 'colored' waiters because they liked black people, they wanted them because they would work for less than white people (due to less competition for their services).

This resulted in a predictable tizzy of 'deytukarjabs' by the empowered white majority, who instituted minimum wage. With minimum wage, if you have to pay X dollars per hour anyway, you hire a white person for X dollars per hour. The practical effect: no black people get any jobs until every white person who wants a job has one. This is all politically 'sold', of course, as an empathetic measure which will benefit the disadvantaged.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[maxwell demon]

1. Your argument that removing children from the labor pool aids workers because it raises wages and reduces labor supply would apply without limit to the adult working population as well. Removing women from the labor pool,

While children later turn into adults, women don't generally turn into men. Therefore removing women would only benefit half of the population, namely the male half. But of course, it would benefit the workers which by definition would then be only the men.

removing half of all men from the labor pool,

That's exactly why jobs needing higher education get better pay: The supply is lower. Now whether this is good or bad depends on whether everyone can get a better education if he wants to. It definitely benefits those with higher education, though.

reducing everyone but a few from the labor pool, would follow the same argument that this benefits the workers.

If you remove everyone but a few, then it is clear that not everyone will eventually belong to the few. It would definitely benefit the chosen few, though.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[gnasher719]

Did they fire the company when they caught them with only 6 child laborers? THAT would have been doing something non-evil. They're not looking harder for illegal labor practices now because it is the right thing to do, they're doing it to cover their own asses because other people caught them using contractors who break every rule imaginable.

You could have read the article. It happens quite often that someone under the age of 16 tries to get a job by forging papers showing their age (whether it's the child, or the parents, or some agency being the driving force), and Apple educates companies how to spot this and avoid hiring anyone under 16. Mistakes happen. Apple conducted a few hundred audits and found about 30 underage employees at 10 companies, plus another 74 at _one_ company. _All_ the kids were sent back to school, with the companies paying plus paying them income as you may have read. For 10 companies where it can be assumed that the hiring was due to mistakes at the company, there is more training to improve things. At the one company Apple found there were no mistakes made, but the hiring was intentionally. So their contract was cancelled.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[gnasher719]

Months ago, when talking about underage workers was all the rage, people were decrying Apple for profiting from child labor. Now that Apple is taking a strong stance against it, they're causing the children to suffer. Right, that's not biased.

Just saying that Apple has taking this strong approach against child labour for at least six years, and this is not the first company losing an Apple contract (and the same situation, more than 2/3rds of all underage employees found at a single company). And that Apple has never _profited_ from child labour. It seems that most of the companies employing one or two underage workers didn't profit, because these workers were hired with forged proof of age, so they were paid the same money as legal workers were paid. And at the company whose contract was cancelled, surely they didn't go to Apple and say "you pay a little less for the parts if you let us use underage workers"? If there was profit made, it wasn't made by Apple.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[citizenr]

These same rules apply to labor, and likewise, decreasing the supply of labor doesn't (typically) result in higher wages when it comes to luxury goods, rather it most often results in lower supply, therefore higher prices, and therefore less demand (remember, people who already didn't want to pay the cheaper price still wouldn't have bought it anyways, and now even fewer people will buy it.)

This is not how luxury market works. Also affluent market != luxury market. Iphone is NOT a luxury, 7 year old electronics of a feature phone wrapped in diamonds and marketed by Vertu is luxury.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Sabriel]

I can't see any argument either, for a *universal* reduction in how many hours a *person* should be allowed to work. I do however see arguments on historical, sociological and physiological grounds for *professional* limits on how many hours *people* should be allowed to work.

No amount of liability insurance can resurrect the dead. Perhaps someday that may change, but not today.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Muad'Dave]

It looks to me like a great incentive for parents to try as hard as possible to get their child employed; free money once they're caught!

Re:it's the children that suffer

[pnutjam]

Yeah, because there aren't other suppliers waiting to get a deal with Apple.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

And the company soon goes under

History would like a word with you.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

On that aspect, I think such metrics should be considered by the worker themselves since they are all personally relevant.

They always have. People have always been very capable of thinking for themselves.

Employees thinking for themselves is how unions got into power. Employees certainly weren't thinking of their business owners when they formed unions. Why should they? It's not like the businesses would think of them.

People thinking for themselves is actually the problem. Workers should all just be obedient slaves and "take one for the team" whenever businesses wishes them to.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, trust me, slavery is alive and well, even thriving...and I actively seek out information and boycott products of anyone appearing in the press. Never have owned an Apple product, but I may in the future, dependent on if Apple can convince me that they are indeed serious about eliminating slavery, fair wages, decent working conditions/hours, etc. Good luck, Apple.

Sample of slavery in the world today:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_glimpses_of_modern_day_slavery.html

Re:it's the children that suffer

[TheLink]

Every human needs a better education.

1) So they can hopefully vote slightly better
2) And they can compete better against the upcoming robots, and hopefully buying enough time for society to figure out a not too crappy way of dealing with what happens after that.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[TheLink]

How can Apple ensure the supplier does all that if according to the title the supplier has been dumped by Apple?

Still haven't read the article - is it really worth reading? ;)

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Space cowboy]

Apple's position is somewhere between a rock and a hard place on this one. As stated by Tim Cook, their goal has become to produce a seismic shift in the way things work - since Apple is the poster-child for child-labour in Chinese sweatshops, they've decided to turn this around into an advantage (for the workers) rather than just let it be a whipping post for Apple when lazy editors need to fill some column inches.

They're making *all* the reports available, even when it reflects badly on Apple. Then they fix the bad bits. Lather, rinse, repeat. Their goal is to try and drag the industry kicking and screaming along with them; to have the questions become "why do *you* not provide this level of transparency?" to the Dells, the Samsungs, the (insert any techie brand you care to mention here)... In the short term, sure, there'll be families worse off because they need the kids income. In the medium-to-long term, by making this an open, public conversation, other suppliers will start to have to do these audits, and the working environment within China will benefit as a result.

No matter whereabouts on Apple's 'ooh shiny (smirk)' -> 'gotta have this' scale you happen to be, I think you have to support that as a laudable goal. I also think it has a good chance (possibly one of the very few) of working and thereby reducing the painful period when a country starts to apply minimum wages and look after its citizens better. I think that's a good thing too.

Simon

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Dahamma]

And once again almost EVERYTHING you just ranted about was true 100 years ago in the US. Do you disagree with the child labor laws established since then in the US, too?

And we are talking specifically about CHINA here, RTFA. Have you been to China recently? Or ever? It's now the world's 2nd largest economy, has had a sustained GDP growth over over 10% for years, and is creating thousands of new Chinese millionaires every year. China's "undernourished" population has fallen under 10% (in the US it's still about 5%).

The China you seem to be picturing ("eat your vegetables, there are kids starving in China!") is long gone, and they are poised to be the biggest economy in the world in 20 years. They are long overdue for some changes to their human rights policies, and attitudes like yours (and many American businesses and consumers) is what has been propagating the current lagging of social vs. economic progress far longer than it needed to be.

Besides, China has already enacted child labor laws - it's been illegal to employ minors under 16 for years. The problem is people (including govt officials taking bribes) ignoring/breaking those laws. I don't see what's wrong with Apple dropping a supplier who is breaking the law. Last year the Chinese govt fined and/or closed down a bunch of Walmart stores in China because one of their suppliers broke the law (labeled non-organic meat as organic). If Apple has knowledge of *illegal* underage labor use by their supplier, dropping them (or demanding they fix it) is not only the right thing to do, it's the right business decision.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so grateful that someone else has the empathy to not immediately denounce those who don't follow our own particular child labor practices. Few people are willing to set ideology aside and instead put themselves in the shoes of poor people who have yet to have the investment in capital which multiplies the productivity of labor that we enjoy and take for granted. For that awareness, you have my respect and appreciation.

Mises wrote on this in the 30s. He noted that those nations of the 'Orient' that tried adopting the regulations of the west ended up starving many of their own people. Children were included in farming and other manual labor because they were not productive enough to do without it. The only places that had successful stories of ending child labor were those that no longer needed it. The regulations followed on the success of increases in productivity that permitted less work even as more wealth was generated. The myth that labor laws and unions gave us the 40 hour work week and no child laborers ignores the fact that it was our rise in productivity that was the necessary(and sufficient, I would argue) factor. Child labor was already being phased out in the 1800s and work hours were decreasing before politicians stepped in to 'save us'. They took credit for what they did not solve.

I have no judgement on child labor in itself one way or another. I worked my ass off as a kid in a very dedicated music group for very little pay(got some royalties for recordings and concerts and such). It was significantly harder than anything I've ever done since in my career or education. It was purely voluntary and I could have left at any time. I loved it. What makes me see red is not poverty nor child labor, but involuntary poverty and child labor. If some Chinese peasants are escaping poverty by doing tedious factory work at a young age, I say 'hell yea'. I have nothing but respect for them. If on the other hand the Chinese government is contracting with the schools and corporations to round up kids and ship them off to some slave labor sweat shop then that is downright evil. If some well meaning activists and bureaucrats from the US bribe some 3rd world dictator into violently banning children from working the fields with their parents and 2 years later we hear about starvation, then again, that shit is pure evil. Peace should be our goal, not some arbitrary standard of labor practices that may not have any connection to a particular economic group. So long as these people can peacefully choose how best to meet their desires, then that is by definition what is right.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[JakeBurn]

Third world isn't even the issue its location and opportunities and it happens in the USA every day. I have family in Kentucky and most of their kids work with them. They do construction, auto repair or farm work after school, before school, on weekends and any other time they're out of school, and while a kid can't do as much as man, that kid, who's family lives nowhere near a university and couldn't pay anyways has to make a choice. Do I turn 16 and drop out of school already knowing enough to run heavy equipment and work on engines, all the while helping my family, or do I keep going to school until I graduate with little to no skills gained in employment options available where I live? People who grow up not having to work as a kid because their parents make enough to put food on the table don't worry about these kinds of things. Its too easy for a person to act high and mighty when its not their family who's options to survive are slim to none.
And to the guy below me, step out of your suburban home and take a trip outside of town. Those same conditions that you're ranting about that affected the USA in major cities 100 years ago, still remain anywhere outside of money centers.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. The choice in places like this isn't slaving away for 22 hours a day in a Dickensian nightmare vs. kicking balls around in a field with butterflies and songbirds.

It's working in a factory vs. living in grinding poverty that makes Appalachian nightmares look like Bill Gates' guest house. The West lifted themselves out of this, now China is.

Imagine someone from the Galactic Federation pulling into orbit in 1850 and hauling out vicious criticism of England. No friend of humanity, that's for sure. If what you care about is actual measurements of well-being, which exploded thanks to factories at that time...vs. grinding poverty, not vs. imaginations of butterflied fields.

Hyperbole much?
Where are all the glowing reminiscences of childhoods past spent carefree, working in the factories? I mean, you've got the Dickensian nightmare to go along with thousands of other nightmarish accounts vs. whatever else, it doesn't really matter.

You've got to be some real pile of shit to think child labor is what made the West powerful.

Re:it's the children that suffer

[aevan]

Nah, my dislikes go farther back, much farther than this stuff. Nothing to do with i-anything, or this topic really. More of an 80s hate that lingers and gains a few elements over time. It's also towards the company and not products themselves (though one apple computer I have at work I despise personally :P).
Used ''fanbois' as opposed 'fans' because while I have no issue with someone liking their product, I've issue with blind adoration, same with Linux ('Wow, your friend wrote it so it must be better? And if he made a scalpel, would you let him do surgery?'), same with M$, same with anything actually. I'll mock anyone that refuses to admit their faves have flaws.
I also don't walk up to people with an iPad and try to convince them to change. The scenario is "I was thinking about getting a computer. How about an iPad?", to which I will steer them to... well actually, nothing in particular. Make your own computer (which pretty much means PC), run what you need, what you want, etc. But someone wanting an gaming laptop for their kid... when asked an opinion I'm definitely going to push them towards a PC and desktop instead. If at the end they still want an Apple-something *shrug* I'll not be offended. Amused, but it is, like you implied, their choice.

Again, my point is merely just as something you love can have flaws, something you hate can have admirable qualities as well.

Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Jeremy Erwin]

That's got to be a mistranslation.

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is it's written as (chinese character) Real Faith (chinese character) to appeal to foreign investors.

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Greyfox]

Or a very ironic name, apparently!

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[DNS-and-BIND]

No, that sounds right. It has the city name and the type of business. Some of the words in company names describe abstract concepts that don't translate very well. If you shove them, they'll translate, but then you end up with Chinglish-y sounding names like this.

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Anonymous Coward]

chinese_company_name = $geo_location$ + $auspicious_word$ + $industrial_sector$ + "Company Ltd."

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has clearly lost faith on Real Faith.

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Anonymous Coward]

Auspicious. Apparently, the Chinese like to portray themselves as superstitious morons. Fucking poachers.

Re:Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but this is nothing like rain on your wedding day.

My concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple ends their business relationship with this manufacturer.

Does the company fold because Apple was their main client, everyone loses their jobs?
or
Does the company fire all the underage workers for failing to pass inspection?
or
Something else?

I'm assuming the families of these kids put them to work out of necessity, so what happens to these kids and their families now?

Re:My concern...

[0123456]

I'm assuming the families of these kids put them to work out of necessity, so what happens to these kids and their families now?

Most likely they starve. But at least they'll die happy in the knowledge that they're not being exploited by evil capitalists, and so long as they don't get on TV while they're dying, rich Westerners will tell each other how wonderful it is that they're preventing evil capitalist exploitation.

Re:My concern...

[Tennguin]

Some other hungry family gets to eat only this time an impressionable and vulnerable child isn't exploited in the process. There is a lot of need in the world, even right here in the United States.

Re:My concern...

[Kjella]

Long story short, would you be equally concerned if Apple chose to discontinue their business relationship for any other reason? Apple will still need the products so those jobs will reappear other places that follow the rules. The only ones that really will be out of a job are those who are so young they shouldn't be working in the first place.

Re:My concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

And if we dind't buy the niggra slaves, dey mammy and pappy'd put 'em in the cookpots and eats dem all up. Dat's just how it is, so's you mights just as well buy you's dat sweet little niggra gal right dere as you's bedwarmer.

We've heard *exactly* this kind of excuse for slavery throughout written history. Try to find a new one.

Re:My concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck is going to make the typical slashdotter happy then? first you all complain about how apple uses chinese factories which exploit child labor; now you're saying they should do the opposite?

i'm convinced everyone on slashdot just likes to blast corporations they don't like for any possible reason, even if they don't actually believe in their supposed convictions. when you've got it good, complaining is easy because there's no consequences.

go ahead and mod me down now. fucking slashdot nerd filth.

Re:My concern...

[PopeRatzo]

what the fuck is going to make the typical slashdotter happy then?

Companies paying a living wage, here and in China.

2012 was another record year for corporate profits, and a record for how little the people who actually do the work share in those profits.

Since 1979, worker productivity has increased by several hundred percent and their incomes didn't measurably increase. Somebody benefited from that increase in productivity.

go ahead and mod me down now. fucking slashdot nerd filth.

Governor Romney, you know you shouldn't be drinking this early on a Sunday.

Re:My concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, i agree with all that (i'm a liberal, thanks). the person i was replying to didn't make those points though.

Re:My concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be surprised to learn that "typical slashdotters" disagree with one another, so what makes one happy will piss another off.

Also, some slashdotters write posts that they don't actually agree with, but that they know will push the buttons of other slashdotters.

Once in a while a slashdotter will point out the unpleasant consequences of an action while still endorsing that action, too, since the good outweighs the bad.

Re:My concern...

[Marxdot]

Having lost Apple's blessing, the company found to be using child labour goes out of business. Labour force of that former company generally moves to the new Apple-approved factory because that is where a glut of vacancies will open. [Adult] labour in that particular supply chain becomes more valuable because fewer workers are in that labour force (due of course to the absence of children), so the adult workers are paid proportionally more, so the adult workers needn't send children to toil in another factory in order to obtain a subsistence income.

That is what would happen if [labour] markets were as rational and smooth as the capital fetishists assert. It would be a flawless demonstration supply and demand. However, real life rarely demonstrates rationality, particularly not where exploitation is the rule; we can be sure that the managers and capitalists involved with the new factory will find other ways to take the piss, even in the absence of child labour.

Re:My concern...

[Plumpaquatsch]

Apple ends their business relationship with this manufacturer.

Does the company fold because Apple was their main client, everyone loses their jobs?
or
Does the company fire all the underage workers for failing to pass inspection?
or
Something else?

I'm assuming the families of these kids put them to work out of necessity, so what happens to these kids and their families now?

Don't worry about them. http://www.gd-realfaith.com/en/displayproduct.html?proID=100990419

Pingzhou electron becomes the largest global sub-contractor of TDK who is the world-famous electronic industry brand, it products occupy global market share of 13 %, and the products are wildly used on scopes of mobile phone, computer hard disk, automobile, digital camera, air-conditioner etc. In Y2006, Pingzhou electron started to develop own brand in new and high-tech markets according to Real Faith Group reform strategy, start with R&D, production and sales for LED driver, packing and assembling, and have gained matured markets. At present, the LED driver had already been applied to the Egongji tunnel Guangwu highway, Linjiang tunnel Pearl River New City Guangzhou, Wulongshan tunnel Guizhou, Dongmiaochong tunnel Guihuang highway, Caoyuan tunnel Quansan highway Fujian etc. Packing load products had been selected as A grade supply by TDK Japan.

Pingzhou electron is always adhere to the "innovation for breakthrough and innovation for development" company spirit. Established a strong R&D team, cooperated with colleges on manufacture, learning and research, obtained many inventions, utility model patents, became a high-tech enterprises in Guangdong. Pingzhou electron had gained the ISO9001 and ISO/TS16949 quality management system, ISO14001 environment management system, OHSAS18001 career safety management system, IECQ-QC080000 without harmful substances management system, and CE certification of EU.

Looking for the future, Pingzhou electron will uphold "become a competitive well-known enterprise" as the target, adhere to "green manufacture, green products" the environment-protecting concept, will be devoted to develop green technology, with practical action to contribute to the community and society, to gain enterprise lasting business.

Looks like the kids' jobs will be safe.

Re:My concern...

[maxwell demon]

what the fuck is going to make the typical slashdotter happy then? first you all complain about how apple uses chinese factories which exploit child labor; now you're saying they should do the opposite?

Not only that, but afterwards you complain about your own inconsistency! How inconsistent!

Or maybe ... there are different people on Slashdot, with different opinions on certain topics?

They wouldn't be hungry if they learned how to

[Anonymous Coward]

wok the dog.

Re:They wouldn't be hungry if they learned how to

[Anonymous Coward]

What dog?

My doctor has family in his old country. He goes home from time to time, to visit his loved ones. The man tells me that nothing lives in the city, except for humans. No birds, no wildlife at all, no pets. Everything has been eaten. If a living creature stirs, someone sees it, and throws it onto a fire to cook.

There are no dogs to wok, they were wokked generations ago.

Maybe that helps to put China's population control measures into perspective. The earth cannot support all of our billions. The ecology just goes to hell with a billion Chinese, plus all the other billions of people on the earth.

Re:They wouldn't be hungry if they learned how to

[TimeandMaterials]

that is sick......these kids suffer and u make joke

Re:They wouldn't be hungry if they learned how to

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet there are still rats and roaches, since the rate of rat and roach consumption and elimination is lower than the reproduction rates.

People make fun of the Chinese eating "everything" but there are also problems if you only consume a few species but at correspondingly greater quantities.

what's "underage"

[rubycodez]

how old were they, if poor teenagers want to help their families by earning some extra coin, better that than being punks in a street gang

Re:what's "underage"

[Anonymous Coward]

Article translation: Apple PR demands supplier be dropped as child labour uncovered.

In other news: Apple would have done fuck all had it not hit the media.

Re:what's "underage"

[Goaway]

Exactly, except for where it is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

Re:what's "underage"

[gl4ss]

well, probably old enough that forging the papers is an option.

but there's the kicker.. they're kids, not detached drone workers of the family.

Re:what's "underage"

[node 3]

How exactly is that supposed to be the case when it's Apple themselves that found the violations?

Re:what's "underage"

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is that supposed to be the case when it's Apple themselves that found the violations?

Simple. When you find a violation, you can either risk having someone else blow the whistle and look like a bunch of dicks. Or you can blow the whistle yourself, and use political pressure to get the offender to pay for some school for the kids. Then you can sit back and reap the positive PR benefits while not taking a single penny out of your massive wallet to actually compensate the people who got fucked along the way. Not to mention all the adults who are now out of a job since you canned the contract, and who will be the ones footing the childrens' education through reduced wages and increased working hours.

Sorry, no matter how you try to polish this turd, Apple were the ones who chose to outsource to shady factories in places well known for abuse of workers. They're trying to clean up their image because their stock is falling, so until I see a REAL effort to clean up their act I won't believe they actually care about anything other than their bottom line.

Re:what's "underage"

[rubycodez]

treat a 16 year old like a baby (like our society) and you get babies. other places they're a young man. if a young man wants to make some money, let him. now a ten year old, that would be a problem, but maybe that's not the issue here.

Children rejoicing

[Anonymous Coward]

They will now no longer be held captive in those factories, but can enjoy freedom and a good childhood!

they go back to school , not on the street

[Inigo Montoya]

Did anyone who's already posted even read the article? Apparently, the children are placed back at home and their education is completely financed by the violator. Apple follows-up regularly to make sure they are complying.

The child probably went to work in the first place because the family could not afford an education, so they had to choose between sending the child to school or putting food on the table. So now they can put the child back in school, and someone else in the family can work to put food on the table, and not have to worry about paying for an education for the child anymore.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Nyder]

Did anyone who's already posted even read the article? ...

In case you haven't logged on Slashdot in the last decade, we don't read the articles before posting anymore.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /. we don't come here to read the article.

We come to rage at the idiocy of others. We stay for getting a +5 Insightful.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[ernest.cunningham]

If you read the article further yourself, not only does the company have to pay for their education, but also pay the child the same wage it was earning!

To quote the article:
When new violations are found, Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.

I don't think anybody who has posted read the article at all.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[__aaltlg1547]

In China, isn't education free (government provided) and compulsory? Or did that end with Communism?

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[areusche]

China is only communist in name, but not in practice. A lot of schools have "fees" associated with attending and the cost of which is generally not affordable for many people. A lot of children do not complete the compulsory 9 years of schooling. Take a look here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China#Compulsory_education_law

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in countries like Spain school is free and mandatory, but then you have to pay for books (yeah, they make new ones every year here too so you can't recycle), food and transport. During the last decade in Spain many children went to work in the construction sector as underage labor force, and now that the construction sector blew up into crisis we have a good chunk of unemployment below ages 35, especially since many 20-somethings who lived great during the construction boom now can't even apply for a job due to lack of basic education.

Of course the reality of Spain's crisis is much more complex, but there you have it, mandatory school actually means "the government can't reject you from public school, but we don't care if you actually don't show up".

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[KiloByte]

Having lived in communist Poland, I can tell you that this is what communism is about. The works of Marks and Lenin were pure lies even according to their authors. And since every single implementation of communism in history resembled the Animal Farm, you can't say they weren't "true communism". The whole design is wrong, not merely "good but broken by corrupt leaders".

Communism has only one real purpose: to give every layer of the Party power according to which layer you belong to. For example, the very top lives extravagant lives that puts western spendthrift celebrities to shame, and even lowly cogs whose loyalty was somehow important (like law enforcement) got much-envied privileges -- like so-called yellow drape shops that included goods you couldn't purchase elsewhere (compare with typical shops of that era).

Such fees like those people pay for reasonable schools in China are not some perversion of communism, they're something ubiquitous.

Of course, most of "capitalist" countries today are far from democracy or rule of law, with those in power doing anything they can to skew the system further in their favour, but as communism shows, things can go worse. Much, much worse.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[gl4ss]

though now they terminated with that company so what does the company care?

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

completely financed by the violator

Who Apple has severed business relationships with, meaning they have pretty much no leverage to enforce any of these agreements. Meaning, "yeah sure, we'll pay tuition," *wink*, and 3 weeks later, the kid's out of school, working in another factory, because his family's need doesn't evaporate just because Apple and some rich westerners who think every kid should be treated as well as their little special boy Johnny is feel bad that the kid decided to make some money.

"Someone else in the family can work to put food on the table" - you assume that mommy and daddy are selling the kid into slavery so they can sit home and smoke crack. This is likely not the case. Likely, the family simply NEEDS the extra income to put food on the table, a roof over the family's head, and clothes on the childrens' backs. But don't let the fact that you're essentially sentencing a family to a life of poverty make you feel bad - i'm sure they'd greet you as a liberator if you got off your ass and actually went there to see how your economic imperialism has improved their lives by putting them in cardboard boxes under a bridge somewhere.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but to get this free education + continued income they have to first violate the labor rules and go to work for Apple.

Call me crazy, but doesn't this resolution basically encourage more children to do just that? In the hopes of being discovered and getting this neat little severance package. In the worst case, they aren't discovered and continue to have a paying job, and either of which are preferable to their previous standard of living which made child labor appealing in the first place. What this arrangement does is discourage *employers* from hiring child labor at all (as intended), but if successful in doing so it only serves to hurt those kids/families financially. All those people living in poverty are not covered by Apple's restitution policy if they never go to work in the first place.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[KiloByte]

The whole design is wrong, not merely "good but broken by corrupt leaders".

s/wrong/working as intended by their authors rather than victims/

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

The company cares because they want Apple's business, and Apple cares because they don't want bad PR about using child labor.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

The weird thing is.... It's a school where they learn how to put together iPhones.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

But will this ultimately help poor families who need their underage children to produce income? If Apple is discouraging child labor through heavy penalties, then underage children who need the money won't be hired in the first place meaning poor families don't get to profit from the penalties.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anybody who has posted read the article at all.

Some of us did read it, but it's obvious that you and most of the others didn't actually understand it.
Apple is not paying anything to those kids, even though they are the ones who profited from the under-priced goods the kids produced. It's the adults still at the factories who are footing that bill, and at the ones which Apple terminated the contract it's the other customers of the factory (i.e. Apple competition) who are indirectly paying for all of this.

Basically it's a clever PR move by Apple in order to look good without actually paying back any of their ill-gotten profits. When I hear that it is Apple themselves paying the kids, and paying compensation to the workers for their shitty wages and working conditions, then I might change my mind. All this is, is a spin campaign designed to try and halt their sliding stock value.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

Having lived in communist Poland, I can tell you that this is what communism is about. The works of Marks and Lenin were pure lies even according to their authors.

The United Soviet Socialist Republic did not call themselves the United Soviet Communist Republic for a reason. It's not like they were exactly hiding the fact.

Of course, most of "capitalist" countries today are far from democracy or rule of law

Capitalism is an economic system, not a form of government.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Anonymous Coward]

communist Poland? Where? When? I used to live in socialist Poland, don't remember any kind of communism here. We used money, and wives weren't common property of working class.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Ash Vince]

The works of Marks and Lenin were pure lies even according to their authors.

If you ever bothered to read them you might know his name was spelt "Marx" not "Marks".

I actually think he has some very good points about labour, especially when taken in the context of the time he wrote in. Of course this is very different from saying any real world example of communism is a good system, since almost all examples of communist countries came about long after he was pushing up daisies.

I guess Marx is like anyone trying to do any sort of social commentary about systems they themselves are part of. They are not able to look through truly impartial eyes as they have invariably had both good and bad experiences of the system they are commenting on.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[KiloByte]

If you ever bothered to read them you might know his name was spelt "Marx" not "Marks".

... or grew in a country that spells it "Marks" (surprising as we use the Latin alphabet just like the original, but that's probably because most communists who invaded us spoke russian natively).

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Ash Vince]

If you ever bothered to read them you might know his name was spelt "Marx" not "Marks".

... or grew in a country that spells it "Marks" (surprising as we use the Latin alphabet just like the original, but that's probably because most communists who invaded us spoke russian natively).

Wow, wierd. In my country we pretty much always spell peoples names the way they were actually spelt be the person we are referring to and try and guess the pronunciation correctly based on country of origin so in my case I would try and pronounce his name in a slight german accent :)

I guess it is because we have so many foreign words and place names in our vocabulary already, the same thing that makes English such a sod to learn I believe.

Of course none of this changes my central point: That his writings actually do have a lot of truth in them, and that the communist system that was built later was only very loosely based on his ideas. I actually think it was more of a dictatorship than anything else that was ended up with after Stalin had his way.

The interesting thing I find though is your sig: "Copyright is not merely theft. As a form of censorship, it's a crime against humanity."

The concept of intellectual property (ie: copyright) is a cornerstone of capitalism, if you do not support it then you are probably more of a socialist than you realise. Or do you believe that capitalism should only apply physical items and resources but that ideas should always be communal?

Copyright was only really invented when the printing press was born and we suddenly had an easy way to replicate other peoples ideas cheaply. It was solely designed by capitalists who wanted ensure they had a way of monetising their writing or art. As we have developed the ability to replicate more and more things without the original creators involvement copyright has been naturally extended to those products too.

Within our lifetimes we may have the ability to do this for any physical product too, copyright will naturally be extended to cover this. This is essential to ensure that people who come up with books, music, films, software, etc are still able to make a living from their creations. The idea of only selling services based on freely available inventions is simply not enough to ensure people carry on inventing new stuff.

Some people argue that copyright should be more limited in term, and I believe the are correct. But in a capitalist system the concept of copyright must still exist in some form.

Of course I actually think we must ultimately out grow capitalism, which is the core of Marx writings that I agree with. Until then though, while any private property exists, the privately owned ideas (where they are shared for some monetary reward) must also exist or the people who do most to benefit society (by coming up with new ideas) will be the least rewarded.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[KiloByte]

The concept of intellectual property (ie: copyright) is a cornerstone of capitalism

Hell no! The cornerstone of capitalism is free market. So-called "intellectual property" is state-enforced monopoly, something that's an anathema to free market, about as antithetical to it as bailouts. It deprives people of freedom to use their own actual property, just because someone obtained monopoly rights.

And even actual property is not that important for free market, all that matters is that no one can deprive you of what you have. Copyright and patents destroy the right to create things while not protecting anything that already exists.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Ash Vince]

And even actual property is not that important for free market, all that matters is that no one can deprive you of what you have.

With no legal concept of private property then how else do you prevent it?

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[KiloByte]

You're confusing property with "intellectual property", these have nothing in common. The former is an existing, scarce, tangible item, the latter is a monopoly that deprives others from using their property as they wish. Any artificial scarcity is harmful to the society, while actual scarcity needs some means to fairly distribute and protect one's share. There are many means of distribution of scarce items, you can argue which ones are fair -- free market is one of such methods, with a rare property of not needing any outside regulation. As for protection of these shares, we need some way to ensure no one tries to game the system by taking what belongs to someone else by force. This obviously applies only to scarce items -- copying something or using a patented recipe does not deprive anyone else of their property, it's only disallowing such copying that is, effectively, theft.

Re:they go back to school , not on the street

[Ash Vince]

You're confusing property with "intellectual property", these have nothing in common.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood you you said "actual property is not that important for free market". What did you mean by the two words "Actual Property"?

In before Olympics reference

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all.

Lose-lose for Apple

[Concerned Onlooker]

Apple stops using a supplier that employs underage workers: Apple is guilty of putting kids back on the mean streets and depriving families of much needed income.

Apple uses a supplier that employs underage workers: Apple is guilty of supporting child abuse.

Take your pick.

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[metrometro]

Gosh, being the most profitable company in the world sure is hard work! Why bother?

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[Goaway]

Well, except for the option where Apple makes sure the kids get money and education and don't have to work.

I wonder if the article might tell us if they might have happened to do exactly that?

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[Marxdot]

Read the article. It isn't an "oh no those kids are going to starve now so Apple should continue to exploit them because it's Morally Right and god bless child labour and god bless murrika" situation.

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[Concerned Onlooker]

OK, let me spell out exactly what I meant since everyone missed the point.

No matter what Apple does they are going to be criticized here.

Was it really that difficult?

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[jo_ham]

OK, let me spell out exactly what I meant since everyone missed the point.

No matter what Apple does they are going to be criticized here.

Was it really that difficult?

Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of you furiously back-pedalling trying to make your argument fit now that you realise it doesn't match reality because you blew your wad without reading the article first.

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[BasilBrush]

He's not back pedalling. What he explained he meant is exactly how I read his original post. Just because you thought he meant something else does not mean he did. Just that his post was open to misinterpretation.

Re:Lose-lose for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works if you completely ignore: "Apple is guilty of putting kids back on the mean streets and depriving families of much needed income."

He's backpedaling furiously on that one. I'm sure he'd really like us to believe that wasn't in his first post. But it's incredibly stupid of both him and you to argue that he wasn't wrong when a statement of his is directly contradicted by the facts. He presented 4 statements and said "Take your pick" at the end. Well, we picked that one, and it's completely wrong. There is absolutely no part of that which is open for interpretation - it's a false statement. And there's no room to argue that he didn't mean it - "Take your pick" does not, in any way, imply that one of the preceding statements is not meant to be taken seriously or is an invalid choice in some way.

Just because you can't read doesn't mean that he can write.

On the other hand

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that their economy sucks and people are starving doesn't automatically justify us buying products that were built in a manner that directly conflicts with our values.

If we are willing to pay more for products built in accordance to our concept of fair labor practices (regardless of where they are built), then it makes sense that someone would provide such a product. In this case it is Apple, and they are just being dilligent about keeping their production process in line with their public claims.

Why the odd headline?

[DNS-and-BIND]

OK, why is the angle on this story not "Apple caught using child labor"? It was the last time this story happened.

Re:Why the odd headline?

[gnasher719]

OK, why is the angle on this story not "Apple caught using child labor"? It was the last time this story happened.

Would be a bit unfair considering that the information comes from a report created by Apple. Not that that would stop anyone...

Re:Why the odd headline?

[Goaway]

Because Slashdot for some strange reason decided not to lie this time? I don't know what this place is coming to.

Re:Why the odd headline?

[Plumpaquatsch]

OK, why is the angle on this story not "Apple caught using child labor"? It was the last time this story happened.

Because it was Apple that caught the company employing children as well as the labor agency supplying them and who reported them to the authorities.

Oh, and they did this a year ago.

"Real Faith"

[__aaltlg1547]

I don't have real faith in any company that chooses to insert religious references in the name of their business. To me it just seems like a cheap attempt to get you to think they must be virtuous because they call themselves godly. And we know how reliable that has been, historically.

Now I suppose I'd make an exception if they were "Real Faith Bible Printing" or "Real Faith Clerical Vestments." Then it's just plain old marketing because you expect the name of the business to have something to do with the product. But when the product is circuit boards or auto repair... not so much.

Re:"Real Faith"

[Pseudonym Authority]

Perhaps it made more sense in Chinese; perhaps they are like the Japanese and insert random English words that they find lying about into things they want to look trendy.

Re:"Real Faith"

[SuricouRaven]

I'm not sure it even means that. A poster above raised the question of translation, claiming that Chinese company names often include abstract concepts that don't translate well. The word given as 'faith' might really mean something different, but that cannot be concisely rendered any other way. Only a fluent Chinese speaker can answer this question, and I am not one.

Re:"Real Faith"

[__aaltlg1547]

Yeah, that's reassuring. Makes me want to use them for contract assembly all the more!

Re:"Real Faith"

[unixisc]

This is CHINA. Maybe they were referring to faith in Chairman Mao, or President Hu Jintao or whoever their current 'god' is!

Re:America, see your conservative future

[__aaltlg1547]

Right now the Americans see themselves on a moral high ground for opposing child labor. Currently, that is one of few labor laws that means anything. However there are plenty of politicians - slashdot idol ron paul amongst them - who would like to overturn those laws as well. In the name of "liberty" they want to remove "market restrictions" to "grow industry". This will, of course, only reduce the wages across the board for working class people while making companies more profitable and increasing executive compensation. They also want to increase the rights of the wealthy and reduce those of the poor. While some conservatives claim they want to stop the "class warfare", this pushes it to a terrible conclusion. In other words, under the guise of liberty - but with the true goal of profit - some people aspire to bring fascism for the people.

I wouldn't call that facism, exactly. Just an undoing of labor laws taking us back to the working conditions of the late 19th century

But I wonder who these people think their customers would be in their brave new world of economic freedom.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

It will also increase the productivity of the society resulting in lower prices for the poor. Get off your moral high horse and learn some economics.

Central economic planing doesn't work, no matter how good you think your "plan" is, the market is better. Using the violence of the state to restrict voluntary trade IS "fascism". fool.

about those schools, too..

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do we know that the kids aren't now attending the "Guangzhou greater prosperity training school for future factory workers" where they notionally teach readin',ritin','rithmatic for an hour, and "hands on assembly training" for 6 hours.

Disconnect in step...

[SuperKendall]

2) Send your kid to work at a supplier to Apple ...which does not work because policies like this make most suppliers check for age before hiring anyone.

Re:Disconnect in step...

[SuricouRaven]

You just need to find a supplier that believes their document forging procedure is foolproof.

If it actually is foolproof, you can always tip Apple off about it.

Re:Disconnect in step...

[citizenr]

2) Send your kid to work at a supplier to Apple ...which does not work because policies like this make most suppliers check for age before hiring anyone.

Yes yes, just like Olympic committee
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2010-04-28-olympic-medal-underage-gymnast_N.htm

Re:Disconnect in step...

[Anonymous Coward]

You just skipped right over step 1, didn't you...

Now granted, if step 1 is too good, the process may fail at step 3.

subcontracted work out this is the isses as well

[Joe_Dragon]

subcontracted work out this is the issue as well the main supplier / contractors should get fined as well.

In usa cable co's do this some times it ends up very bad.

http://consumerist.com/2011/10/05/couple-sues-cox-after-cable-guy-kills-their-son/

we're Apple, and we're cooler than you

[Anonymous Coward]

74 cases?
Probably more Apple holier than thou public relations horseshit.
Depending on age, tasks, and hours, "underage" workers are not necessarily bad.
In the absence of any useful details, the cynical view might be more accurate.
If Apple(insert any profit oriented corporation) really wanted to do right by, they would shift their operations back to the stifling litigious bureaucracy of America/Canada/Western Europe...but how do you feel about $2k iPhones?

Re:we're Apple, and we're cooler than you

[toruonu]

From what I've understood from Tim's interviews on this topic (and he's asked that frequently) is not the point of taxes or more expensive workforce. It's the lack of expertise. You guys don't seem to have enough experts to do the R&D and product and material development because of reducing standards in education in comparison to China. Sure they could do the final assembly by drones in US, but why do all the production of high end components in asia, then send the items to US for assembly and then distribute globally. And they do have some parts made in US already (wasn't the gorilla glass part a US development or smth similar).

So according to Tim there aren't enough experts in material science etc to build the factories and keep developing them in comparison. That's the bottom line. Not the assembly line drones. There are plenty of those globally, currently employed by fast food restaurants.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[fascismforthepeople]

Central economic planing doesn't work, no matter how good you think your "plan" is, the market is better. Using the violence of the state to restrict voluntary trade IS "fascism". fool.

There is a common misconception that fascism requires central planning, which is does not. Fascism is not about central planning or intentional manipulation of the economy. Fascism is about division of power - specifically the concentration of the majority of power in the hands of a select few.

Taking power from the economic underclasses, and giving it to the wealthiest minor fraction of your population is indeed fascism. When it is sold under the false pretense of liberty, it is just fascism for the people.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[fascismforthepeople]

I wouldn't call that facism, exactly. Just an undoing of labor laws taking us back to the working conditions of the late 19th century

Right century, wrong era. The goal is to bring back the society of the early 19th century, when people bought, sold, traded, gave away, and discarded other human beings on the open market. That is exactly what will happen when all the labor laws are thrown out the window along with all corporate regulations. The libertarian dream state will leave us wishing for Hoovervilles.

But I wonder who these people think their customers would be in their brave new world of economic freedom.

They expect that once they turn the united states into a slave colony they can get by with selling exports to other countries at a profit. They of course overlook the fact that at that point "made in usa" will be a far less valuable label than "made in china" has ever been.

Ultimately they just want to push the current cultural war to the extent that favors their aspirations the most. They aim to concentrate power in the hands of very few and hopefully find a way to place themselves in that circle. By doing this under the guise of liberty they aim to roll out fascism for the people.

Samsung Contract

[Anonymous Coward]

1 Section 1: "Do whatever the fuck you want to children or other workers, we don't care at all".

Cases "Jump" from 6 to 74 in one year? RTFA

[retroworks]

And that "Jump" was from an audit of the second year Apple did the study, 2011. For 2012, "According to Apple's new report, the company didn't find any cases of underage workers at its final assembly suppliers in 2012". Of the subcontractors audited, only one was a serious violator, and that company was terminated as a supplier to Apple. My conclusion is that all of this Slashdot hyperbole and handwringing over Chinese supply chain is kinda 2003. 74 cases out of tens of thousands, concentrated at one subcontractor, which probably had a handful of bad managers. I don't think this is 1850 England we are discussing, this is closer to 1970 Bentonville Arkansas.

Re:Cases "Jump" from 6 to 74 in one year? RTFA

[Plumpaquatsch]

And that "Jump" was from an audit of the second year Apple did the study, 2011.

Actually, they've been doing the report annually since 2007.

They are making a living wage in China

[SuperKendall]

Companies paying a living wage, here and in China.

That's what Apple is doing already.

Apple is the ONLY company to give workers in China bonuses, and to make sure they don't work too much overtime. Workers in China are making less here, yet they are providing not just for themselves but for whole families.

Just how ignorant do you have to be to not understand that a living wage can differ drastically between countries?

Lol Suck It Apple Fanboi's

[Anonymous Coward]

-replaceable humans

Apple knew about this. I'm sure they didn't do anything until someone made a stink. Its probably why their phones suck and how they get designed too.

There was this sci-fi book about missiles using kitten brains as a guidance system. Oh brave new world that awaits us, I cannot wait to see what kind of humans live in it. I hope I reincarnate as a Xenomorph or some kind of alien predator though.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Marxdot]

A shame that this is presently (-1, Troll), because it is essentially correct.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

The right honorable Anonymous Coward thinks that banning child labor across the board is 'a centrally planned economy'. He is on the edge of having a rant about 'socialism' as well. I have come to the conclusion that the honorable gentleman is none other than the ghost of Ludwig von Mises in one of his more emotional states.

Everyone picks on Apple...

[ilsaloving]

Apple gets a lot of flak for 'letting it happen', but Apple is the only company I know of that is actively trying to do something about it.

If this is happening to Apple, you KNOW it's happening to everyone else. And I have yet to hear a single report of Samsung doing a similar thing to what Apple is doing now.

Re:Everyone picks on Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

patagonia?

Re:Everyone picks on Apple...

[10101001 10101001]

Apple gets a lot of flak for 'letting it happen', but Apple is the only company I know of that is actively trying to do something about it.

Yea, it's almost as if you just listed cause and effect.

If this is happening to Apple, you KNOW it's happening to everyone else. And I have yet to hear a single report of Samsung doing a similar thing to what Apple is doing now.

So, now that Apple has shown that enough criticism can and will lead to action to stop (or at least curtail) child labor, Apple and the media can level a lot of flack at Samsung and others pointing at how Apple is addressing the problem. The first step, of course, is finding examples and not just throwing out "you KNOW it's happening to everyone else" because it's much harder to rally around a point without an actual example. That's a large reason why Apple was burned so much, as a combination of (a) their high profile luxury goods lead to investigation on the point and (b) clearly the factories in China hiring the underage labor being very bad at covering their tracks.

But, yea, *boohoo* "everyone picks on Apple" *boohoo*. I don't have sympathy for Apple at all. I do have sympathy for the underage workers and their plight. And I don't have a clue what to say about the journalists, as for all I know they've done the due diligence at trying to undercover any underage workers for lots of companies and Apple's supply chain just happens to stand out in a bad way. If you have some actual reports of other company supply chains that should be noted for such issues, please give links to the stories. Similarly, if you have some actual proof that journalists are shirking their responsibility and focusing on Apple near exclusively, I'd like to hear it. It won't sway me from feeling Apple gets what they deserve--as clearly it's motivated them to make the sort of changes people wanted--but it would point at other companies who should make such changes too--and not just from the truthiness of it.

Re:Everyone picks on Apple...

[gnasher719]

So, now that Apple has shown that enough criticism can and will lead to action to stop (or at least curtail) child labor,

Just saying that Apple started doing these reports in 2007, years before anyone criticised them. And a huge amount of so-called criticism was one American actor who blatantly lied about what was happening - he claimed that he personally saw hundreds of children, as young as twelve, working at Foxconn, which was just made up to further his career.

So forgive me for believing that criticism didn't do anything, but Apple's long standing efforts to improve working conditions did.

Re:Everyone picks on Apple...

[tlhIngan]

If this is happening to Apple, you KNOW it's happening to everyone else. And I have yet to hear a single report of Samsung doing a similar thing to what Apple is doing now.

Samsung is also under fire for this, but because they use Android and make some of the best Androids, they're the darling of the tech world, so it was mostly buried.

Thoug, to be fair, Samsung looks to be starting to also audit their supply chain to prevent an Apple-like thing from happening to them. Then again, Samsung does have the benefit of experience after seeing what happened to Apple.

Re:Everyone picks on Apple...

[10101001 10101001]

From the article, "Apple has come under fire in recent years for its suppliers' labor and safety practices after the publication of a 2006 report highlighting poor conditions, followed by another in the New York Times in early 2012. The latter prompted Apple to become the first technology company to join the Fair Labor Association (FLA) in order to check its own reports against independent audits. The FLA's audits began in February of 2012, followed a month later by a report that revealed more than 50 violations of FLA standards and Chinese law, largely related to the way overtime was handled among employees. But as of August, the FLA reported back to say that Apple and Foxconn (in particular) were indeed improving factory conditions and were actually ahead of schedule in implementing the recommendations from the FLA."

So, yea, on the one hand it appears Apple did search out such issues. But the fact is they didn't really act much on them until after the NYT story and finally try to get a more independent analysis--since apparently Apple was being scammed by its suppliers*--and work through the problems. Now, I have no idea if all of this was Apple with intent to do good and being duped or Apple looking for other issues and basically looking the other way until pressed upon the point--I'd tend to believe it's more towards the latter, without much intent to hide anything outright but certainly not real gumption to find potential social problems and fix them. Meanwhile, I don't think most other companies would behave much differently. But, then, that's precisely why there's a need to push companies to a higher standard, in part by exposing what they allow or indirectly support.

*This is no different than just about any regulatory-like behavior from a superior organization or supervisor, that people don't tend to go out of their way to highlight the problems that appear and try to look better than usually when they know an inspection is coming. If it's as bad as self-reporting, then it's really something to be expected since most companies aren't going to mention anything bad they don't feel they have to. In short, unless there's some reason to believe Apple's really went out of their way to avoid being scammed in these ways, I'd just assume that shucking off the responsibility and effort to an independent group would be better all around, especially given how much "anything bad they don't feel they have to" mention there is compared to what Apple really does want to know.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[fascismforthepeople]

That is because reality has a liberal bias, and needs to be punished accordingly when shown on slashdot.

child labor builds work ethic

[sir-gold]

I think an outright ban on child labor (at least in the US) has led to several generations of people with a huge sense of personal entitlement and no work ethic. They spend the first 16-18 years of their life having all their wants and needs just handed to them on a silver platter without having to expend any effort to get those things, then they turn 18 and don't know how to deal with the real world.

One example of this entitlement effect is people who start a business, run it for only 8-10 years before hiring a manager to run the business for them, and then think that those 8-10 years of "effort" somehow entitles them to sponge off the company profits for the rest of their life (I worked for a guy like this once, he tried to get me to run his business for him so he could retire at age 37 and never have to work again). Another example is teenagers who turn 18, get kicked out of the house, and start robbing liqueur stores and dealing drugs to survive instead of getting a real job.

Let the kids work, pay them the same amount per hour as an adult (to prevent the value of labor from dropping), and set strict limits on working hours (8 hours a week or something). Child labor has worked just fine for thousands of years, and only became a problem in the 20th century when greedy business owners started taking advantage of the children. The problem isn't child labor, the problem is child exploitation (and exploitation can be fixed without banning labor completely)

Re:child labor builds work ethic

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you are entitled to profits from a business just because you are paid a salary to help run it??

Re:child labor builds work ethic

[unixisc]

In this story, the subject is kids working in factories under conditions that most would consider exploitative. I agree that they don't belong there, but given how much work has diversified, it's time to reconsider what sort of labor would be okay, vs what sort should remain banned. Yeah, factories are out of the question, but given how a lot of jobs nowadays are desk jobs at computers, and that too sometimes virtual, it seems that kids, who anyway spend hours in front of TVs or computers, could use some of that time in the same comfortable set-up, but actually working. And like you suggest, they could be paid regular, but hourly wages, be required to clock in their times (like blue collared workers) and not be allowed to work more than 2 hours a day. Rest of the time can go into study, homework, play and so on.

WTF is WRONG with Apple?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like they've never even HEARD of Ayn Rand!

This is why liberal-run companies such as Apple will never know prosperity.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd guess he probably also didn't have to work at age six on an assembly line.

If every asshole had to drink their own medicine, it would be a brighter world.

But the truth is, people want their slaves and they'll use any contorted logic to make it seem right in their minds.

It's sickness.

Wait... what?

[uvajed_ekil]

After conducting its 2011 audits to 339 sites, the company found that cases of underage labor had jumped from 6 to 74 in one year.

So when they only got caught using children 6 times before that, presumably in 2010, that was okay? Disgusting. I wonder what the real number was, since even shady Chinese companies know better than to use child labor (or allow themselves to be observed using children, rather) when contracting with foreign companies.

Know well the numbers associated with child labor, Chinese factory managers. The limit of children you can get caught with is somewhere between 6 and 74, apparently.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

It will also increase the productivity of the society resulting in lower prices for the poor.

Which is different than how the productivity of society has increased over the last few decades while prices didn't go down? Oh wait, those gains were lost to "inflation". After all, corporations don't crash themselves, so we have to pay the CEOs 100x what they were paid prior to all those gains in productivty thanks to the government.

Good on Apple!

[DirtyLiar]

You don't hear much good comming out about businesses anymore. Usually it's stuff like Nike claiming free speech rights after fraudulently taking out a full-page ad claiming they didn't use slave labor.

Nothing new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Underage child labor?
Reminds me of the Chinese women's gymnastic team in the Summer Olympics of 2012.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is biased against liberal ideals?

You're joking right? Tell me you're joking.

This site is asshole-deep with idiotic "deep thinkers" who watched Pres. Obama give a couple speeches and heard something about the Communist Manifesto, and now think they're the second coming of Noam fucking Chomsky because they can be anonymously sarcastic on an online forum.

This is capitalisms problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism causes this kind of exploitation in the first place. Capital can ignore sovereignty and race straight to the bottom leaving us humans to fight amongst ourselves

nothing wrong with voluntary child labor

[0111 1110]

I started working at around the age of 10, but no one was forcing me. I had saved up several thousand dollars by the age of 13. I could work as much or as little as I wanted, and I was able to keep the money. As long as the child has the freedom to refuse and is allowed to keep the money for themselves (if they want) I actually think forbidding child labor is what is wrong. Like adults, children tend to be happier when allowed to do what they want to do. If they want to do some useful work to buy themselves stuff (i.e. food) and learn about the real world at a young age I don't see anything wrong with it. I think some of you are forgetting what it is actually like to be a kid. Either that or you don't want kids stealing your job.

In this example I would just want to make sure that working is not something that the parents are forcing on the child. When I lived in Asia there was a small family owned Chinese restaurant that I went to most days. The owner's little girl, a tween, often took orders and accepted payment. She was a cute little thing and perfectly capable of those tasks. As long as she wasn't being forced I don't see anything wrong with it.

Hmm..

[Kashgarinn]

Does anyone else think that this is just great advertising for Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co. : "We use children, so we're cheap, and have manufactured products for Apple, so we're top quality. Money-grubbing CEOs of the world, we're open for business. To the Olivers of the world, consider yourself at home in our large, secure lodgings with our banqueted 1 ration of glorious food 3 times a day, you're welcome to stay here."

Overcapacity warrants for searching new excuse

[Skinkie]

Is it the current overcapacity in production that warrants a better look at the labor done for Apple? As the demand is lower, it sounds like a perfect excuse to ditch a factory, which otherwise would have been unreasonable.

Reminds me of a similar case in Pakistan

[ryzvonusef]

You may recall, there was a child labour scandal about footballs in Sialkot. The Companies reacted by implementing harsh penalties for child labour, and that was that. Or was it?

You see, while indeed there was child labour involved, it was still preferable to the alternative. It was quick clean work, nothing more dangerous than needle tip, which was easily remedied by a thimble. There was no dangerous chemicals involved, no dangerous work place environment. People used to pick up the materials from the factory, stitch them at home, and return the finished goods next day.

Since it was at home, there was no risk of exploitation, and it was a flexible schedule, which meant that people had the time *and* the money to actually go to school. Women could also join in, without fear of social ostracization. All family members with a free hand could join in, even if they were otherwise immobilised.

Now, however, things are different. People must go to factory grounds, and have age verification. This means that suddenly, a large part of the workforce is unable. Therefore, either they must find other jobs, or be unemployed. The other main industry in Sialkot is leather, and I don't need explain just how bad a tannery is.

Even worse, kids who used to support their education with football money are now left with a job *or* schooling. House wives are now unable to travel to distant factories. People are angry that they are being denied good, clean jobs. Football stitching doesn't pay enough as a main job, but as an extra income, it was invaluable.

I am sure the west was assuaged of the guilt of child labour, but that means that 15 year olds in sialkot are now left with nothing to do.

Re:Reminds me of a similar case in Pakistan

[Anonymous Coward]

The infidels not wanting child labour is their way of doing things and it works in many countries that aren't rich - children go to school and learn to read and write amongst other things. Pakistani 15 year olds not being able to go to school is Pakistan's problem and responsibility to fix[1]. When the technology gets better, you're not going to be able to make better and cheaper footballs by hand. Unless you are really cheap - which is not a good place to be in this world.

[1] The dismal state of Pakistan is mostly due to Pakistanis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/attackers-in-pakistan-kill-anti-polio-workers.html?_r=0
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/09/us-pakistan-schoolgirl-idUSBRE8980EB20121009

And why are Pakistanis getting money, help and jobs from infidels? Why not get money and help from rich muslim brothers in the Middle East?

Re:Reminds me of a similar case in Pakistan

[ryzvonusef]

Look, if you want me to take you seriously, stop spouting "infidel" like an ignorant berk.

Under 18

[jopsen]

the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.

From Wikipedia citing The International Labour Organization.

So we're not talking about teenagers sweeping the floor in a factory after school.

Hiding child labor is immoral

[yt8znu35]

The issue was that they fraudulently used the underage labor instead of legitimately using underage labor.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[fascismforthepeople]

Slashdot is biased against liberal ideals?

I have some rapidly down-moderated comments that support that notion. Do you have anything that supports yours?

they can be anonymously sarcastic on an online forum.

Oh, you were making a funny! Well played sir.

Fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they hired adults and lied about them being children?

happens in US often enough

[peter303]

Plenty of high school students drop out to earn money due to family encouragement. Staying in school is viewed as unproductive.

Re:America, see your conservative future

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some rapidly down-moderated comments

My guess is you were modded -1, Troll on those because you read like an obnoxious, self-important cunt who enjoys lobbing stupid, incendiary comments that are only tangentially related to anything in TFA -- like one of those fucktards who manages to turn every discussion of politics into, "OBAMA IS A MUSLIM KENYAN TERRORIST DERP!" or "BUSH HURR LIAR WARCRIMES!"

If you approach every discussion as a chance to proselytize, don't be surprised when people find you obnoxious and mod you so.

How about just dumping the Third World entirely?

[sethstorm]

The most likely occasion is that this just repeats with a nominally different supplier. Just cut to the chase and cut out the areas that pull this stuff.

Sounds like FDR knew of this kind of threat well before business even thought of it as an opportunity:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

China not only has hundreds of millions of such necessitous men, they also have women and children of that variety as well. That, and they have the dictatorship as far as the workers are concerned - where critics disappear or get smeared (in the case of Apple & Foxconn wrt First World-side critics).

worst time-out ever

[Anonymous Coward]

at least most kids arent welding and working with heavy machinery anymore.. i hope.

screw that definition

[rubycodez]

I don't have any problem with a 16 year old doing hard labor for money.