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Apple Faces New China Worker Abuse Claims
AmiMoJo writes "Technology giant Apple is facing fresh allegations of worker rights violations at Chinese factories of one of its suppliers, the Pegatron Group. China Labor Watch has alleged that three factories of Pegatron violate a 'great number of international and Chinese laws and standards.' These include underage labour, contract violations and excessive working hours. Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, claimed that 'our investigations have shown that labour conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories.' The campaign group said that it had found that average weekly working hours in the three factories investigated by it were approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively."
Are you sure it was a Chinese company? It could be mine...
If it wasn't for all the false reporting about conditions at Foxconn, I might take this seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey
not enough to stop buying ipods and whatever other trendy shit is important to social status right now
In China, workers don't need unions, they just need to be an Apple supplier, and get China Labor Watch to give them a poor report on workplace conditions. Then, the world will force Apple to force the supplier to address the issues (or hide them better).
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
No. Apple does not. A supplier that Apple uses, Pegatron, does.
I know Apple generates more page views than Pegatron but can we please try for a vague hint of accuracy in the article summaries.
What the world needs to realize is that no pun intended, Apple is rotten to the core. They are just as evil as Monsanto. They are just as evil as every other evil company. Just because Steve Jobs was awesome does not make Apple awesome. They abuse their workers.
::Apple Faces New China Worker Abuse Claims They sill are reeling from the old claim!! Apple = Evil
Came to see comments about EA developers flooding into facility to work only sixty hours a week!
Several other computer manufacturers use Foxconn and Pegatron. H.P. is one of them for example. We get the behavior we measure. Cost cutting is the constant mantra of U.S. corporate management. We turn a blind eye to such practices. I won't even get in to the pollution issue they cause in China.
So Apple has only one worker in all of China?
If not, then surely it should be "Chinese worker abuse claims".
The wages of deindustrialization in La La land ....
One wonders if outfits like Pegatron have been growing as a result of Foxconn scrutiny.
If it wasn't for all the false reporting about conditions at Foxconn, I might take this seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey
"All the false reporting" was one nutjob who was confusing journalism with stage performance. A stark difference between Mike Daisey and China Labor Watch is their falsifiable report that, unlike Daisey's heart wrenching anecdotal stories, can be checked.
Examples:
At Pegatron, over 10,000 underage and student workers (interns), from 16 to 20 years of age, work in crowded production rooms, doing the same work as formal, adult workers. But some students are paid lower wages because schools deduct fees for the internship, while other students will not have their wages paid to them on time.
CLW’s investigations revealed at least 86 labor rights violations, including 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations. The violations fall into 15 categories: dispatch labor abuse, hiring discrimination, women’s rights violations, underage labor, contract violations, insufficient worker training, excessive working hours, insufficient wages, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, difficulty in taking leave, labor health and safety concerns, ineffective grievance channels, abuse by management, and environmental pollution.
Did you read the report? It's got hard numbers and straight up accusations with defined conditions that can be checked. It's not like "I met a little girl who polished my iPhone." Instead it's like "A dorm room at Pegatron can accommodate 12 people. From Monday to Friday, residents have to clock-in within 24 hours or else they will be considered checked out of the dorm." or "The Pegatron factories had a list of discriminatory hiring practices, including refusing to hire people shorter than 4 foot 11 inches tall, pregnant women, those older than 35, people with tattoos, or people of the Hui, Tibetan, or Uighur ethnic groups."
My work here is dung.
Not saying Apple is not doing things wrong, but they are doing it better then most of their competitors.
Yeah, iPods are *really* trendy these days. So are fax machines!
That aside, everyone knows that "being trendy" is the only reason that people would buy Apple products. It doesn't have anything to do with preferring the way a product works, what an OS does, the design of the hardware, or actually being okay with the dreaded Walled Garden (Bzzzzzzt! Not allowed for Orthodox Slashdot Readers and Posters).
Nope, it's just to look like a hipster.
These are the actions of the Pegatron Group, a separate company from Apple that like FoxConn is a contractor. So why is it claimed that Apple that is mistreating workers? And why the exclusive focus on Apple when other high profile tech companies, including direct competitors who use these same companies with workers receiving the same treatment at those plants?
I suppose the most likely reason is because Apple is seen as the lead brand in consumer technology, and by slamming Apple in the press, they prompt Apple into action, but it also seems that by focusing on Apple, they unfairly saddle Apple with the cost of fixing this than the industry as a whole.
The country I live in (USA, you may have heard of it) once counted abundant, low cost labor as a comparative economic advantage. At that time, we exploited this advantage, which resulted in a sustained economic boom, accompanied by exploding output, and eventually the creation of a middle class. Our middle class then organized themselves and enforced much better working conditions. This eliminated our labor cost advantage, but we were able to make do with productivity improvements and a shift to services.
Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed. A well-meaning effort to improve the lives of a few then would have hurt the quality of life for many later.
Those who criticize Chinese working conditions are either ignorant of economics and history or have an agenda to hold China back.
Further Reading:
http://www.hamiltoninstitute.com/the-problem-with-sweatshops-is-that-there-are-not-enough-of-them-discuss/
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
yep only reason
Nope, it's just to look like a hipster.
Pretty much.
I think a lot of this hand-wringing is just masturbation unless we can see what something like an iPhone completely made in the USA or under Fair Trade conditions would cost. It's easy to for a Westerner to feel righteous indignation about these working conditions in China. However, I want to see how many people will put their money where their mouth is when they are required to pay based upon first world manufacturing costs.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the company, but it's not really their fault.
And to those that insist that they should make sure everything that goes into their product is perfect and wonderful and everyone's happy, when's the last time you looked into if the food you put on the table was harvested by someone making $3/hr that works 80 hour weeks?
Focus on the factory owner, the one who set the hours, not the buyer of the materials.
What the world needs to realize is that no pun intended, Apple is rotten to the core
Why?
Apple is the only technical company to actually provide reports on factory conditions, and impose worker limits on factories assembling for them.
If you think Apple is rotten, why are you not out complaining about EVERY other technical compan, which is far worse?
Whatever you are typing on was produced under worse conditions than Apple assembly workers face. The same is true of whatever display you are looking at, and the computer processing your words.
If you really meant what you said you would throw out everything and crawl into a forest. But you don't, you apply one standard to Apple and a far, far lower standard to every other company on earth.
Did you every stop to think that by demonizing the only company that is trying to improve worker conditions that you are actually screwing over the Chinese workers? If Apple went into a bug decline Chinese factories could go back to horrendous overtime and lower worker conditions as they pleased, because they would be back to working only for companies that did not care about how things were assembled...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Those who criticize Chinese working conditions are either ignorant of economics and history or have an agenda to hold China back.
Well, yes. Many of the people demanding 'better working conditions' in China seem to believe that, if they can increase manufacturing costs in China, manufacturing jobs will magically return to America. In reality, they'll go elsewhere in Asia, and most work that does return to America will be done by machines.
If I'm sitting in a dorm miles from home to work with nothing else to do, I'd rather have more hours too.
While on face value such violation seems grave comapred to our standard of living in the west, the better question is , do there violation represent a better way to get money for the worker involved, and a better life, or is this under the local standard of living ? Imnea yeah at face value being 15 or working 60 hours seems a lot, but if the pay is higher than the average local, and otherwise the teen would have no hope of getting a better paid wage or would be starving, then the picture is different.
Yeah, but the typical opinion here is that low cost labor in China is a bad thing (throw in low quality and other negatives to taste).
Love this part: Are either ignorant of economics and history or have an agenda to hold China back.
Too True.
The company name is Megatron, and they didn't expect evil?
Oh, Pegatron.
Always eager to do Apple's PR work, aren't you?
Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed. A well-meaning effort to improve the lives of a few then would have hurt the quality of life for many later.
Your equation is faulty, because you use words like "few" and "many" on a very ad-hoc basis without quantifying them. Why, exactly, would "few" be affected, and not the entire worker base? And why should those "few" be forced to sacrifice their life quality for the sake of some other "many"? If you know anything about the history of sweatshops in US and Europe, those places were real hell; we'd probably consider them outright torture in some cases, in fact.
And the abundance of cheap labor, aside from a "sustained economic boom", has a lot of externalities, since in many cases it is cheaper for a capitalist to buy the disposable labor than to actually invest into safety practices or better automation. And then you get stuff like this. Again, who are you to decide that those people need suffer such for the sake of future generations?
Several other computer manufacturers use Foxconn and Pegatron. H.P. is one of them for example.
We get the behavior we measure. Cost cutting is the constant mantra of U.S. corporate management. We turn a blind eye to such practices. I won't even get in to the pollution issue they cause in China.
To blame things solely on US corporate management is erroneous. Consumers have a huge role in this. Over many decades consumers have rewarded companies that cut cost by off shoring jobs and external costs like pollution and punished companies that tried to maintain domestic manufacture where there is better regulatory oversight. Over these decades a darwinian process took place, only those managers willing to off shore jobs and external costs "survived", by being rewarded with sales. But who decides which company gets rewarded with a sale, its is the *consumer*.
Its a classic tragedy of the commons example. My little purchase won't make any difference ... look this t-shirt/flashlight/frying pan is a few dollars cheaper.
This includes us geeks. When you buy that inexpensive motherboard or video card today do you look beyond the specs and into the employment and environmental practices of the company? Most do not. Most reward companies whose practices they would disapprove off. Just as most US consumers have been doing since the 1970s.
Those who try to blame it solely on the CEOs are in denial. Consumers drive the system through their purchasing decisions. Consumers chose which CEOs will succeed and which will fail through their purchasing decisions. Until consumers recognize their role in the current situation and the power they wield nothing will change.
Daisy was not a "nutjob", he was just less careful than others doing the same thing.
Since when is intentionally fabricating evidence "just less careful"?
Plenty of dirt poor Asian countries full of workers who aren't going to cry about better treatment. If they're willing to wait 10 years, I'm sure they could relocate to Michigan for even cheaper!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
We cheer on labor rights in China, but complain about unions in the US. Maybe it's the balance, I don't know. But, it seems hypocritical.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Apple is in far better position to know what actual hours worked are than a third party group.
Yes, and they also have a vested interest in lying. While it's unfortunate that nobody involved can't be trusted, that doesn't mean you trust the liar from home. The logical thing to do is to not trust any of them.
Apple isn't the worst part of america because they exploit the 3rd world, everyone does that, apple is the worst part of america because:
Both apple and america largest contributions to the world are vanity greed and consumerism
We cheer on labor rights in China, but complain about unions in the US. Maybe it's the balance, I don't know. But, it seems hypocritical.
US unions seem to be among the biggest cheerleaders for 'labor rights' in China, presumably becuase they're the ones who expect to benefit from increasing Chinese manufacturing costs.
Just like with Daisy or Greenpeace or the other people that have made allegations about factories in China, they all attach the Apple name to get attention even if Apple is not involved. Daisy was not a "nutjob", he was just less careful than others doing the same thing.
I remember "hundreds of workers threaten suicide at iPhone factory". Why? "They are afraid of losing their jobs because of reduced Xbox production".
Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed.
That is far from an indisputable argument:
1. Working conditions in the UK were not all that different from working conditions in the US over the same period. For example, child labor was legal in both the US and the UK until well into the 20th century.
2. An overall growth in wealth does not necessarily create a middle class - you also need the distribution of that wealth to be even enough that those who are not members of the investor class are not living hand-to-mouth. If you want an example of a rising tide not really lifting all boats, look at what happened to GDP versus wage growth since 1975.
3. You're completely ignoring trade unions and government regulation, both of which changed policies dramatically.
4. I'm not sure which period of the middle class you're talking about, but if it's the one from the 1950's, you also have to factor in the lack of able-bodied men and the G.I. Bill.
5. There was another significant comparative advantage in play for the US in the 1880's: Many of the raw materials for the products of US factories were from the US, so manufacturing in the US cut transportation costs. If you're raising cattle in Colorado, it's far easier to make that into ground beef in Chicago than it is to ship cattle to Birmingham. If you're mining iron in upper Michigan, it makes more sense to do your smelting in Cleveland or Detroit than it does to ship it to Bath before smelting.
I am officially gone from
the apple can buy up a huge part of detroit, privatize the DPD, and augment a police officer to take a bite out of crime.
And he never wanted this.
We cheer on labor rights in China, but complain about unions in the US. Maybe it's the balance, I don't know. But, it seems hypocritical.
It's mostly different people doing the complaining.
But the positions are not mutually exclusive. The adversarial relations between worker's unions and management is not sustainable. Unions are the economic equivalent of revolutionaries (sometimes they're necessary but you can't run your day to day affairs with constant threat of sudden and significant change). There are other ways to support worker's rights besides supporting unions, notably government regulation.
The country I live in (USA, you may have heard of it) once counted abundant, low cost labor as a comparative economic advantage. At that time, we exploited this advantage, which resulted in a sustained economic boom, accompanied by exploding output, and eventually the creation of a middle class.
Nevermind the almost perversely abundant natural resources (Coal, oil, natural gas, ore, fresh water, wood, transports, arable/buildable land, the list goes on) it was surely all thanks to fortuitously exploiting our workers!
If China wants to maintain the absolute worst conditions imaginable (short of literally enslaving/killing people) then more power to them. If they want to do so and sell their goods on the global market, there is no reason we should stand for it (we will just slap them around with tariffs). Our goods were tariffed at first, too.
Cute, but my android phone friends were making fun of my iPhone this weekend. I looked at them and said, you guys know I build custom PCs, am comfortable with Linux and Windows. You know I have android installed on my Nook. You know I can program for several different environments. So why do I have an iPhone? Because I want one god damn device that if it doesn't work I can just take it to a store and say "fix this, bitches" and not have to know anything about it or care. Apple provides the customer service that neither AT&T nor Verizon ever provided for me.
Of course they carry around Galaxy SIII with an external battery held on by a cover which makes their batteries last for days, but also makes their phones weigh two pounds. Mine comes in at under 4 ounces. Slightly more with a case. That's what I want. I don't worry about the charge because I charge while driving and have an external battery for emergencies.
So we have different needs when it comes to phones.
As far as it being "trendy" or "look[ing] like a hipster" that's just nonsense. That hasn't been the case since about the iPhone 3. No one other than anti-apple fanbois GAF these days.
I guess this means its time of "The People's Republic of China" to start cracking down on the abuse of the people.
You know stand up for the rights of their own people?
Seriously, the government is letting this happen to their people, because it's their job, not Apple or anybody else's.
Since the others were also intentionally fabricating things, and applying every level of truth contortion/exageration that they could too, they just did a better job of hiding it.
Alternatively you might just have become like Germany, where manufacturing is strong but wages are reasonable and conditions are generally good. You might have moved towards the kind of service economy you have now. After all, the way the UK would have "meddled" would have been though consumers demanding products that are ethically manufactured, and by being willing to pay for them. Apple products are quite expensive anyway, but even with things like basic foodstuffs people are willing to pay for Fair Trade or free-range.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Technology giant Apple is facing fresh allegations of worker rights violations at Chinese factories of one of its suppliers"
What other western companies do business with the Pegatron Group and why is Apple only singled out for attention by China Labor Watch?
AccountKiller
Even if there were some questionable rendering of the facts, Mr. Daisey seems to be spot on about Chinese factories. China has only proven - since the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4th 1989 - that they are only interested in giving favor and freedom to multinationals while denying freedom to their own people.
That said:
It seems like the factories in China would rather smear anyone who questions their practices, and hope that their US-side clients come to the rescue if it goes global. Failing that, they go to the PR firm that takes on the worst of the worst - Burson Marsteller - in order to whitewash their image.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Or they are hoping to be the first to sign up chinese to their membership. Think of the union dues on millions of chinese workers? The union is a business just like any other, they need new members/dues to function.
Yes, and they also have a vested interest in lying.
But the other companies don't have even that. Even if Apple is misleading in some respect, they are at least giving you SOMETHING. Other companies remain totally silent on worker care issues. They provide no documentation as to conditions. They impose no restrictions on companies they contract with for Assembly. Apple Does.
So even if Apple isn't doing some of it quite right, they are still vastly far ahead of other companies in trying to improve working conditions in China. Which is why if you actually cared about the Chinese, you'd be supporting Apple instead of attacking them.
Instead, you'll continue to use your non-Apple laptop and your non-Apple smartphone because you like them, totally ignoring the fact that the conditions they were made under are far worse than anything reported for Apple.
Myself, I have taken to buying some things like wireless routers from Apple that I used to purchase cheaper versions of before, because at least I have some idea of the conditions they are being manufactured under. Either you actually care or you don't, you can't just claim to care and then act as if the issue doesn't matter.
The hypocrisy here is just sickening.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
posted by AC
yep, no shame in the iphone, your not just following the herd. what was that "Baah baah" yes baah bahh my little sheep baaaaah baaahh
At Pegatron, over 10,000 underage and student workers (interns), from 16 to 20 years of age, work in crowded production rooms, doing the same work as formal, adult workers.
This is Communist China. College student are expected to be in positions of leadership in the future and part of their education is to work in labor intensive jobs that ordinary citizens would have. Working in a factory or an industrial site is normal. Every college student knows this is part of the college program. Every student agreed to this in order to be admitted to the university.
This particular complaint is one of the few that are actually a cultural misunderstanding.
Stop placing blame on people who are kept ignorant to the practices and lied to. Every time something like this comes out, consumers are first told "No wayz, we would never hurt people to make profits" which turns into "we are investigating" when more evidence is provided, and finally "we are fixing it" when they can't deny problems any further.
It's like blaming unions for the downfall of companies while exec's get multi-million dollar bonuses. It's illogical to put the blame there, but you tow the party line and say it anyway.
When people realize there are issues, they do vote with their wallets. If that was not true companies would _never_, _ever_ change. Foxconn would still be the piece of trash it was (and maybe it is, we only see the post cards). If they are kept in the dark, you can't blame them for not making noise or boycotting.
If you really want to blame someone other than management, how about bashing our media monopoly that spreads propaganda instead of news and politicians that allowed it (and continue to allow) this to happen? Of course that's not the party line, so you won't even think about it. Right?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Would be in Communist China and that is to exploit workers. Or they want Communism to succeed over America, Most likely butt hurt by some politics. Personally I would arrest the CEO and others for UN-American activities.
I've worked in conditions like these (including extreme 110F heat & no bathroom breaks) over 16 hour days with no bathroom breaks here in the USA. I could make a case for everything they've said about that place happening here, except perhaps for the underage workers part.
Those conditions suck and I hope they put a stop to this, both here and abroad.
Where is your middle class now? Enjoying illegal foreclosures and on food stamps. Yeah, must be great advice.
A well-meaning effort to improve the lives of a few then would have hurt the quality of life for many later.
Those who criticize Chinese working conditions are either ignorant of economics and history or have an agenda to hold China back.
The amount of evil in these lines is nothing short of amazing, you human parasite.
Sure are a lot of whiny workers in China. You'd never hear such complaints in Japan, because the Japanese would use robots.
Well, yes. Many of the people demanding 'better working conditions' in China seem to believe that, if they can increase manufacturing costs in China, manufacturing jobs will magically return to America. In reality, they'll go elsewhere in Asia, and most work that does return to America will be done by machines.
It's actually a quite perverted point of view that better working conditions would have to increase cost. For example, improving worker safety and having fewer accidents reduces costs. Having a clean workplace makes it easier to produce items that pass quality control than dirty workplaces. Sexism, racism, or just plain bullying in the workplace doesn't exactly make workers more productive. Excessive overtime increases cost because the work is done by exhausted workers who can't concentrate and therefore work slower and make more costly mistakes.
Very reassuring and interesting to see a psychopath's perspective on this. I imagine if we just get rid of 'good conditions' everywhere we'd have much better world economic output. Let's just hope reason prevails.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.