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The Human Cost of the Apple Supply Chain Machine (bloomberg.com)
Apple is still struggling to improve working conditions at its supply chain factories. China Labor Watch and Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Catcher, a key supplier for iPhone and MacBook casings, makes workers endure harsh safety conditions and unfair work terms in a factory in Suqian. According to observers and discussions with workers, the machines are not only loud, but spray fluid and metallic particles that frequently hit workers' faces only some of which have access to safety goggles and gloves. From the report: Hundreds throng a workshop where the main door only opens about 12 inches. Off duty, they return to debris-strewn dorms bereft of showers or hot water. Many go without washing for days at a time, workers told Bloomberg. "My hands turned bloodless white after a day of work," said one of the workers, who makes a little over 4,000 yuan a month (just over $2 an hour) in her first job outside her home province of Henan. She turned to Catcher because her husband's home-decorating business was struggling. "I only tell good things to my family and keep the sufferings like this for myself." "I asked for the earplugs many times but they didn't have any. The loud noise of 'zah-zah' made my head ache and dizzy," one of those employees told Bloomberg.
I'm really tired of the Apple Shaming Society. It's like theres some group of people out there whjo make it their bussiness to rapidly notify all of us apple users or non-users that the company-that-can-do-no-wrong has a skid mark on it's shorts. Really were not thew naive. We don't exhalt apple to sainthood. It's a company that makes products we like or loath but it's not expected to be saintly. And most people even know that apple does go a mile further than most it is making sure it's foxconn suicide nets are secure and that the toxic effluent is at least mint flavored and made from recylced whale blubber not fresh kills.
Apple had the courage to remove the headphone jack. And to drive prices up to $1,000 per unit. These measures will ultimately result in improved working conditions for those who are privileged to be building Apple's hardware. I heard that the wealth trickles down.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Why do you expect apple to fix this? Yout hink all the others using China are nto keeping the same deplorable conditions? China needs to step up and say treat people better but they wont!
Last time you bought something, did you check if everyone involved was being treated fairly? Are you responsible for all the production steps that happens when you buy anything?
Let's say you buy some Oreo cookies:
- where did all the ingredients come from? Was there any people or animals harmed? What about harm to the land itself?
- how was the packaging manufactured? Which method was used to procure the oil used to make the plastic packaging? Was it harmful to the environment?
- how much polution was produced to make the cookies, the packaging, transport it between the supplier and the warehouse, then the warehouse to the grocery store where you shop? And when you drove there to buy them and bring them back to your house?
Say what you want, but even if Apple are trying, they're only working via contracts with manufacturers. They can ask of them to adhere to certain standards, but the fact is that everything costs money. That's capitalism at work.
#DeleteFacebook
Apple isn't able to produce phones that sell for only $1,000 without slave labor. They only have $231 billion of cash on hand. Think of the children of the Apple executives.
If all countries had laws that required the selling company to prove that their workers are treated and paid humanely ...
... the third world would spiral further into poverty and desolation thanks to rich western doogooders taking away their only competitive advantage: cheap labour.
Please. Apple makes BILLIONS in profit. You're simply trying to pass the buck. "It's not Apple's fault, they're a business!" Saying that they have to make a profit above any and all other considerations is bullshit.
Sorry, but people are going to pay attention to this kind of stuff, and they're going to ream Apple about it (though this kind of thing is not exclusive to Apple). That's the cost of doing business. Paying someone so low that it's pretty much slave labor isn't going to get you any gold medals.
There is no reason most African countries would have to live in the stone age other than the fact that their resources and people have been repeatedly pillaged over thousands of years.
Right, because, say England, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea were completely free from repeated pillaging for thousands of years. Nobody ever invaded them or took any of their resources.
When you have countries actively trying to keep them down it is rather difficult for me to stand there and make such a callous supposition such as yours.
The history of mankind is basically a constant struggle between tribes and nations "actively trying to keep others down". At different times in history different groups did it with different degrees of success, but to use that as a cop-out is incredibly naive. When African nations were raiding and pillaging Europe, nobody suggested that Europe would be a utopian wonderland if only those damn Africans would cut it the fuck out. When Vikings were raiding England, there was nobody blabbering about how those poor besieged Britons would be just fine if only everyone else would leave them alone.
The rise and demise of nations is an incredibly complex subject; it's a fools errand to try and isolate it down to simplistic causes. Anyone who pretends to have "the answer" is an ignoramus at best. And if that answer happens to be "isolationism" then you're a dangerous ignoramus as well.