iPad Makers a Bunch of Rotten Apples?

[Guest thaiworthy]

In another thread, I encouraged Fountainhall to buy an ipad3. However, I have subsequently learned of this rather shocking news item today, although I suspect this particular issue may also shared among other overseas manufacturers as well. Mebbe many, if not most, have hazardly glossed over what should be the same standards of health and safety practices enforced by OSHA here in the U.S.

 

Consider the fate that befell workers at a factory in Chengdu, China, that makes products for Apple. In May, independent investigators issued a report documenting grave dangers to workers at the facility. They warned the factory was failing to control the profusion of dust produced by the manufacture of aluminum cases for the Ipad 2. When a factory is suffused with aluminum dust, there is a high risk of explosion. Apple ignored the reportand refused to meet with the authors, the investigators said.It did nothing to address the danger.

 

Two weeks later, the factory exploded, killing four workers and injuring 18. In the wake of the explosion, Apple said its suppliers took measures to control aluminum dust. But despite this, in December 2011, another explosion, at an Apple supplier factory in Shanghai, injured 61 workers.

 

Grievous labor rights problems at Apple's supplier factories have been known for years, including the spate of worker suicides in 2010 at the giant plant in Shenzhen, China, known as "Ipod City." At this factory -- owned, like the Chengdu plant, by Apple's biggest supplier, Foxconn -- more than a dozen workers took their own lives by throwing themselves from the roof of the factory's overcrowded dormitories, in apparent protest of the brutal treatment facing workers at the facility. (Foxconn reportedly responded by putting up nets outside the dorms and making workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.)

 

Putting up nets? Signed pledges? Heartless Apple and Foxconn! For shame, for shame! As if signing a pledge is going to make a difference if they go ahead and kill themselves, anyway. Adding insult to injury?

 

http://www.cnn.com/2...+Top+Stories%29

 

Perhaps Apple should put a sticker on each iPad it sells, stating:

 

"There has not been a fatal accident at the facility that made this product for X number of days."

[Guest fountainhall]

I have read that cnn article. I think it would have been fair to point out that it was written by Scott Nova, the Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent nonprofit labour rights monitoring organization. So it inevitably paints one side of the picture. For example, he says this –

 

if Apple genuinely "cared about every worker," it would pay every worker a living wage -- enough for workers to achieve a minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future.

 

I haven’t the faintest idea what workers at Apple’s plants in China are paid and how this compares to national and regional norms. But my feeling is that jobs in those factories must be in very considerable demand.

 

Nova does point out that last Wednesday CNN/Fortune ran an article where the Fair Labor Association President said this about Apple’s China manufacturer Foxconn: “The facilities are first class . . ." Yet Nova goes on to paint Foxconn’s owner as mega rich megalomaniac who forces his workers to spend hours writing out his sayings as punishment for displeasing managers!

 

I am sure some of Nova’s comments are valid. Rather than wages, though, I’d have thought he would be better spending more of his energy looking at working conditions and pressing for these to be improved – radically where necessary.

 

I also think we have put some sort of balance on Nova’s views. A writer for the TeensinTech website suggests that it is unfair to point the finger only at Apple. When Apple did an exclusive partnership deal with Foxconn, it sought full details of what would be every aspect of its operations, including salaries. It then agreed terms that would permit Foxconn to meet its financial requirements.

 

http://teensintech.c...upplier-safety/

 

Foxconn has clearly cut corners and so it is, in my view, now up to Apple to take swift action to ensure that Foxconn immediately complies with Apple’s Suppler Code of Conduct. Failure to do so is surely a reason to cancel the contract and take its manufacturing slewhere – no matter how much that will cost.

 

http://www.apple.com...ode-of-conduct/