At those prices, does Apple really need to use sweatshops?

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Why do the mining and manufacturing companies feel they have to exploit and abuse their labour? Greed only covers so much.. no?

Why can't they impliment legal mining practises in the DRC?

 

Decades-long resource wars, for a start.

It's too bad our lives depend so much on ipods and cell phones, elst we could do something about it.

Steve Jobs's new trick: the Apple tablet

Rumours are rife that Steve Jobs is about to unveil a revolutionary touchscreen gadget

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/23/apple-tablet-steve-jobs...

IPhone plant defends itself after worker suicides

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Taiwan's Foxconn Technology, a contract maker of the iPhone and other consumer electronics, insisted Wednesday its treatment of workers is world class after a female employee became the company's eighth Chinese worker to commit suicide this year.

"We regret to see the recurrence of such incidents," Foxconn said in statement that came a day after a 24-year-old Foxconn factory worker surnamed Chu killed herself by jumping from her rented apartment in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Foxconn, the world's largest contract maker of electronics, said that Chu, whose full name was not released, began her employment last August.

The company has attracted wide attention from the Chinese media following a spate of suicides among young Chinese working at its mammoth Shenzhen factory complex, where some 300,000 are employed.

A week ago, a 24-year-old male factory worker surnamed Lu committed suicide by jumping from a building inside the complex.

The most notable Foxconn suicide came last July when 25-year-old Sun Danyong jumped from his high-rise apartment after being interrogated over a missing iPhone prototype.

According to WHO, the suicide rate in China is about [url=http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/]28 per 100,000.[/url]

This factory seems to have a rate of approximately 5 per 100,000.

Looks like this factory is less of a hellhole and more of a haven.

I added the two as I interpreted them as "male suicides" and "female suicides".

Regarding the factory, I accounted for us being about halfway through the year by assuming about twice as many suicides -- 16 -- and then dividing by 3 to account for 300,000 employees.  So if that math is reasonable, this factory has between a fifth and a sixth of the national average.

Based on that, I can only conclude that SWEATSHOPS SAVE LIVES.  :0

Another worker death at iPhone firm Foxconn

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In China a factory worker has died after falling from a high building, the latest in a string of such deaths at the same plant.

The man, who was 19, was employed by Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm also known as Honhai.

The firm makes mobile phones, games consoles and computers for companies like Apple, Hewlett Packard and Sony.

Nine people have died after falling off buildings at the factory this year. Two others were seriously injured.

Police are not saying yet whether this was a suicide attempt, a suspicious death or an accident.

It happened just one day after Foxconn started playing music to workers on the assembly line to try to ease the pressure on them.

Otoh, Canada's economy is a bastion of workplace ethics. And we deal with it by not making anything anymore. The garlic bulbs in my pantry? China.

How much of that 30% will they take back for yawning on the job or speaking to another worker or any of the insane rules they must work under?

And Rabble gives away Apple products and uses the Royal Bank, wow, I find myself jarred by the incongruity of a "progressive" board supporting those who are not progressive at all.

Nope, no cell phone, no ipod, no ipad, no playstation, no Apple products, no Zoostorm, no Hewlett-Packard, no......which is not to say that I consider myself "pure" as I recognize that we are all in this tangle together but I do make certain choices and they include not buying into having to have the latest toys. 

Many years ago I saw a movie and now I can't even recall exactly what movie it was but I do recall that I was left with the question of what do things cost, really cost, and since then that has been a guiding prinicple in my choices.

ennir wrote:

And Rabble gives away Apple products and uses the Royal Bank, wow, I find myself jarred by the incongruity of a "progressive" board supporting those who are not progressive at all.

And Rabble's servers are located in the USA. (but we mustn't speak of it)

No Yards wrote:

Then I assume you weren't around a few years ago when rabble ran into trouble for firing one of its employees via voice mail (or some such "progressive" manner,) and management acted like compete BP CEO asses.

Don't ever assume that just because rabble is presented as a progressive forum that this means that it always follows progressive business practices.

I was around then and it did occur to me as I read that Rabble gives away Apple products, has a connection to the Royal Bank and uses servers based in U.S. that it was consistent with firing a moderator by email, which I think was the"progressive"means used.

"Does it really matter where it is made?"

The 'People's' Republic of China is a brutally-authoritarian, racist and corruption-ridden dictatorship, with the worlds' highest rate of executions. There is zero religious, or political freedom. Really, the term 'fascist' works here, as the Han majority leaders rule the country with an iron fist and sense of racial superiority. Much of the industrial output of 'Communist' China comes out of slave labour camps. China keeps the yuan absurdly-undervalued, ensuring the compeditive advantage of its products notwithstanding labour costs. Canada has lost a great deal of its manufacturing jobs to China, even on Canadian soil (that Esquimalt crane project). Really, there should be import duties on Chinese goods, but Canada's politicians, like Bob Rae and Jean Chretien, have been too busy cultivating business ties with that dictatorship. Even the NDP refuses to get involved: Jack Layton will whine about a trade agreement with Colombia, but won't touch the matter of trade with a vicious dictatorship that's stolen perhaps hundreds of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs. Layton is too busy schmoozing with expat business leaders in the Chinese community, trolling for votes. (When the Ironworkers Union pleaded with the NDP to get involved in that Esquimalt issue, Layton ignored them.) China also supports, financially and militarilly, the Janjaweed militia in Sudan, as part of its neo-imperialist (oil, minerals, farmland) policy in Africa. All of you people concerned about gun violence should also realize that those AK-47 and Sig handgun clones, as well as shotguns used by drug gangs here in Canada come from China's Norinco Industries, mostly smuggled on container ships.

When Apartheid was in force, Canada rightfully boycotted trade with and investment in South Africa. The PRC is no better than Apartheid South Africa: a nasty dictatorship of one 'superior' race, executing people left and right, employing slave labour and fighting imperial wars in Africa. It really does matter where you buy stuff from, and it also matters if we keep losing manufacturing jobs to China.

I think Taiwan was neck and neck with South Korea for dubious distinction of longest work week in the world a few years ago. They've used former military officers in those countries to bark orders at workers, and who are penned up in concentration camp-like conditions with ten or more jammed together in company housing etc. Our corporate jackals consider us worthless and weak compared to captive labour forces in those countries.