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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."
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Nice. ... (Wait for the Apple labour inspectors)
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)
4) Profit! (Tuition paid and a monthly stipend for the family)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
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.
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.
Governor Romney, you know you shouldn't be drinking this early on a Sunday.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
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.
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.
Or it discourages them from employing underage workers.
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*.