Slashdot Mirror
Apple Pledges $1 Billion Toward Creating Manufacturing Jobs In US (cnbc.com)
Apple announced today plans to create a $1 billion fund to promote creation of advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Cook told CNBC in an interview that Apple will announce the first investment later in May. CNBC reports: "By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond. Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them," the CEO said. Apple has already created two million jobs in the United States, and Cook showed no signs of shrinking the tech giant's reach. "A lot of people ask me, 'Do you think it's a company's job to create jobs?' and my response is [that] a company should have values because a company is a collection of people. And people should have values, so by extension, a company should. And one of the things you do is give back," Cook said. "So how do you give back? We give back through our work in the environment, in running the company on renewable energy. We give back in job creation."
They actually require that all their hardware be shredded, no extraction of parts. https://motherboard.vice.com/e...
2 million jobs? So apple is claiming to be responsible for almost 1.5% of US employment? sounds like bullshit marketing speak to me
According to Wikipedia, Apple has 115,000 employees. I have no idea how Tim came up with "2 million".
Workers do not have overtime, do not have a lot of other protections.
Workers in China have a right to overtime pay. It isn't always enforced, but it is certainly enforced in the export factories in Shenzhen. Chinese workers in non-SOE companies also have a right to strike. Chinese workplace health and safety regulations are not as strict as OSHA, but they are reasonable, and they are enforced in Shenzhen.
Some workers seem to essentially be prisoner to the company town
Bullcrap. Some factories have dormitories, but living in them is optional, and most workers do not live there. This isn't the 1990s.
shopping in company stores
More bullcrap. I have never seen a "company store" in Shenzhen. It is a bustling metropolis with plenty of options for shopping, and there are no restrictions on how or where people can spend their money.
Have you ever been to China?
This figure is itemised on the Apple site . Basically they're claiming every job that touches Apple in some way, e.g. the workers at Caterpillar that make the generators used in Apple's data centers. 1.5 million of them are "jobs created and supported by the App store", which is sourced from a report that uses a really broad definition of an App Economy worker and includes support workers and "spillover" jobs.
You are demanding the worst form of environmental theater. Let's say it would cost Apple $5 to make their phone more recyclable. For $5 they could buy carbon credits to eliminate 800 kg of CO2. Yet you are whining about them not spending the same amount to recycle the 2 ounces of plastic in an iPhone.
If Apple spent money on environmentalism, spending that money money on "recycling iPhones" would be about the least effective possible way to do it.
So why don't they spend it on things that make more sense? They do.
Yup. Or restate the headline this way: "Company with 250 billion in cash assets decides to invest 0.4% in domestic economy!"