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Apple, Samsung, and Sony Face Child Labor Claims (amnestyusa.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Amnesty International has accused Apple, Samsung, Sony, and other tech companies of failing to do basic checks to ensure minerals used in their products are not mined by children. A new report explains how cobalt is harvested from mines by children as young as seven years old. The cobalt then ends up in lithium-ion batteries sold to device-makers throughout the world. The list of companies who use these batteries also includes Daimler, Dell, HP, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Vodafone, Volkswagen, and ZTE. Amnesty International notes that half the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where many mining operations have terrible track records for accidents and concern for workers' welfare. They say, "the vast majority of miners spend long hours every day working with cobalt without the most basic of protective equipment, such as gloves, work clothes or facemasks to protect them from lung or skin disease." According to UNICEF, about 40,000 kids worked in mines across southern DRC in 2014.
Would not Tesla be the biggest offender. Are they not the biggest user of lithium batteries
Why should we continue to embrace the idea that amoral companies can do anything they choose in the name of profits?
Why should we continue to give a damn what companies think is best for them?
Why the fuck have we mistaken "shareholder value" for "the economy"?
Big fucking deal, the 1% make a better ROI on Apple et al because we let them act like sociopaths, if it's only the corporations and major stock holders who benefit?
Fuck that, all these companies gutting the economy for their own profits doesn't help all but the richest people. And it's time we stopped giving a fuck about what benefits the richest people.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ethically and morally sound?
Ridiculous drivel.
Tell me this: If their economy is so great that jobs are abound, that children need not work, that adults enjoy the great luxuries of running water and steak dinner every night, then *why* do they send their children to the mines? What sadistic creature would send their own child to labor under heathens in unsanitary, deleterious conditions unfit for man or beast?
I'm sure you feel very proud of yourself for sending these children off to starve, saving them the pain of calloused hands, abused joints, and scarred lungs. It seems very ethical to take away a man's food when that food is not fit for men of dignity, and leave him hungry so as to save him from such savagery.
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