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Workers Sickened at Apple Supplier in China

byteware said:
That's not entirely true. I think what makes this newsworthy is the recent history of news reports from Apple factories, especially the high number of suicides among the work force producing Apple products.

This news story isn't just "a spill hurt workers at one of Apple's suppliers".

This news story is basically: "Workers at an Apple supplier factory are yet again subjected to an unsafe work environment".

If HP or Acer had the history of incidents that we're hearing out of Apple plants, then I would expect these kinds of news stories as well.
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Not unique to just Apple, if you believe the Googly links and articles:

Ghastly working conditions in a Chinese keyboard factory - Boing Boing

Survey speaks of unsafe work conditions - Investors.com

Bob
 
byteware said:
That's not entirely true. I think what makes this newsworthy is the recent history of news reports from Apple factories, especially the high number of suicides among the work force producing Apple products.
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The 'Apple factories' being Foxconn, whom also makes PCs and other consumer electronics for many companies, e.g. HP.
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Product/Barebones/Barebone_series/index.html

byteware said:
This news story isn't just "a spill hurt workers at one of Apple's suppliers".

This news story is basically: "Workers at an Apple supplier factory are yet again subjected to an unsafe work environment".

If HP or Acer had the history of incidents that we're hearing out of Apple plants, then I would expect these kinds of news stories as well.
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HP and Acer's contractors probably do. Because these makers all tend to use similar Chinese suppliers and OEMs, e.g. Foxconn.

The tech and popular press just loves a good 'Apple' story. Because it's so famous and a popular target of hate. More so than HP or Acer.

"Workers at an HP supplier factory are yet again subjected to an unsafe work environment".... IMO doesn't quite sound so sensational does it?
 
byteware said:
Yes, but I've yet to hear of conditions so bad that significant numbers of workers are committing suicide, except for Apple's factories.
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FYI the 'Apple factories' are a massive Foxconn site in Shenzhen, I've seen the place. AFAIK one of the biggest electronics factory sites in the world. This sites makes millions of computers and other electronics products for hundreds of manufacturers, NOT just Apple.

http://www.szcpost.com/2010/05/foxconn-suicides.html
'This behemoth company employs a small army of employees, over 300,000 in its Shenzhen factory alone.' ... 300,000 people is not far off the population of my home city of Bristol. And I'm sure Bristol has a higher rate of suicides than Foxconn's Shenzhen plant.

'They produce items such as the Mac mini, iPod, iPad, iPhone, Dell Computers, HP motherboards, Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Amazon kindle, and Cisco Equipment just to name a few.'

byteware said:
And that's the story that's causing THIS to be a story.
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Yes, because anything 'Apple' related makes for a good news story.

Microsoft studies claims of child labour abuse at Chinese supplier - Business News, Business - The Independent
....and there is a lot of it going on in China, that is sweatshops, abuse, suicides, unsafe conditions and child labour. Such is the nature of the place, but things are getting better. I lot of stuff I hear and read about because I live here, never makes international news, unless there is an 'Apple' connection.
 
Either this just got real, or some people need to go back and reread the entire thread. Or maybe I should just shut up and grab some popcorn.
 
I'll be an asshole and say. The buck has to stop somewhere. We want cheap goods, they suffer and toil for it. They don't have much of a choice. Wanna know what happens when you give factory workers rights and entitlements and wages? Go take a trip to Detroit.

I'm not saying it's right. But, it's the way it is.
 
mikedt said:
If it had been a contractor/supplier for Acer or HP or something, it would NOT have been newsworthy.
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Thats because, Acer and HP have the common sense to not pretend to care.

What sickens me about this whole article is how

A. Apple deserves praise for putting forth effort to find out what is going on and trying to be humanitarian.

B. They really do earn my scorn because, they don't really care..

Foxconn supplies a metric shitload of parts to the world.

Willing to bet a lot of people who are going to cry about the cruel treatment have foxconn parts in your pc.

HP and Acer have common sense..they know they can't or should I say, would not be in their best interest to change it... so they don't.

Apple raises attention to it as if they care.. but, lets be real... they have no power over it. I read about this issue a year ago it seems..

Do they have it bad in china? well.. yeah.

They also have jobs as oppose to absolutely nothing.

I say we bring these factories back to america. Let americans work crappy jobs too!

Plus we keep money in country and actually move back to a producing economy..
 
Snow_Fox said:
They also have jobs as oppose to absolutely nothing.
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True.

Snow_Fox said:
I say we bring these factories back to america. Let americans work crappy jobs too!
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Do Americans or Brits for that matter really want to be working minium-wage menial boring production line jobs, 12-14 hours a day, sleeping in factory dorms, only seeing family maybe once or twice a year? Sewing sneakers, pants and shirts, making christmas decorations, toys, routers and iPads.

Snow_Fox said:
Plus we keep money in country and actually move back to a producing economy..
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In Britain, I know many people didn't want to do these kind of lowly and boring jobs, so in came a workforce from Poland, 100s of thousands of them. I knew of a couple of meat and food factories near my home city of Bristol. They couldn't get enough UK people to work there, 95% Polish on the pay-rolls, and the remainder was from Portugal. I know the US still makes some garments, I bet it's a mostly migrant Mexican workforce making them though.

America still is a major producer of some high value things like aircraft, weapons and other military products, e.g. companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Halliburton.
Do they still make cars in Detroit, or has that been offshored as well?

It's low-cost low-profit domestic and consumer products which don't get produced in the US anymore, same for UK and western Europe. I'm sure nobody wants to be paying $1000-$2000 USD for an Android tablet, do they?
 
mikedt said:
Do Americans or Brits for that matter really want to be working minium-wage menial boring production line jobs, 12-14 hours a day, sleeping in factory dorms, only seeing family maybe once or twice a year? Sewing sneakers, pants and shirts, making christmas decorations, toys, routers and iPads.
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Considering how down our economy is do they really have a choice?

I am sure it won't be as bad as china but, it still wouldn't be fun. The fact is we need to start producing.

In Britain, I know many people didn't want to do these kind of lowly and boring jobs, so in came a workforce from Poland, 100s of thousands of them. I knew of a couple of meat and food factories near my home city of Bristol. They couldn't get enough UK people to work there, 95% Polish on the pay-rolls, and the remainder was from Portugal. I know the US still makes some garments, I bet it's a mostly migrant Mexican workforce making them though.
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Honestly. "lowly" though they may be, and I'll be blunt they aren't great jobs and I don't want them.

The truth is we are spoiled as a country. We all want the high end "good jobs" but, very few people want to really put forth the effort to get them.

Maybe if we get some of these really crappy jobs locally.. people might be inspired to become engineers again.

America still is a major producer of some high value things like aircraft, weapons and other military products, e.g. companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Halliburton.
Do they still make cars in Detroit, or has that been offshored as well?
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we have toyota factories in country and "american" companies importing parts from mexico.

I hate people who "buy american" and give some lecture about how its "good for the country" when as stated before.. we have local toyota factories.. and american companies importing parts from out of country..
It's low-cost low-profit domestic and consumer products which don't get produced in the US anymore, same for UK and western Europe. I'm sure nobody wants to be paying $1000-$2000 USD for an Android tablet, do they?
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Low-cost low-profit goes both ways.

Sure it may be low cost but, it still adds up to be large amounts of money leaving the country that never comes back.

When the money does come back it creates problems.
 
mikedt said:
Do Americans or Brits for that matter really want to be working minium-wage menial boring production line jobs, 12-14 hours a day, sleeping in factory dorms, only seeing family maybe once or twice a year? Sewing sneakers, pants and shirts, making christmas decorations, toys, routers and iPads.
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No, we have unions to raise our pay, and limit our hours... which drives costs up immensely... and then they would ship the jobs back off to China...
 
mikedt said:
Yes, exactly. It was unions for those reasons which practically killed the British car industry. British Leyland anyone?
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About the same here. Been to Detroit lately? It's a ghost town of empty factories that packed up and went to Mexico!
 
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