iPod maker admits breaking Chinese labour laws

[MacBytes]

Category: Apple Hardware
Link: iPod maker admits breaking Chinese labour laws
Description:: none

Posted on MacBytes.com
Approved by Mudbug

[rockthecasbah]

Oy vey this does not look good. 80 extra hours per month? It doesn't even seem human (and truly isn't)... I have no idea how Apple will shake this off and how they're gonna fix this mess with labor. Maybe we'll finally see some American made iPods

[CANEHDN]

I hate Foxconn motherboards and PC cases and now it's apparent why. Hopefully Apple can prove they were unaware of the actual working conditions.

[jaxstate]

I don't think Apple could care less, before the iPod maker were caught. Now they are going to appear all concerned, for image control.

[swingerofbirch]

This is no time to be an Apple apologist. It a time to hold Apple's feet to the fire until their will is broken and shout with repentance.

Before these malfeasances were unearthed I had already contacted Apple regarding using China as their sole iPod manufacturer.

I believe iPods are built with planned obsolescence in mind, and when my iPods have simply been replaced with new models at Apple's expense, I questioned how they could afford to stay in business. "Trust us," they told me, "we're making plenty of money."

Now I see where the rub is: torturous iPod factories. Every person on this planet is equally valid. Now I'm not saying I haven't been taken for a ride by the slithering underbelly of the United States known as corporate America, of course I have: but not like this. Not like this.

Something's rotten, and I think it's Apple.

[Stridder44]

Originally Posted by swingerofbirch

Before these malfeasances were unearthed I had already contacted Apple regarding using China as their sole iPod manufacturer.

Right. Im sure they cared.

[belfast-biker]

Originally Posted by Stridder44

Right. Im sure they cared.

Perhaps not, but he had the balls to try.

[swingerofbirch]

Of course a company cares what it's consumers think. Not that many happen to care about this issue, but believe me, if a lot of consumers cared where their products were made, the companies would care too.

I am not however an example of someone who would really cause a company to change its practices. For example, I HAVE bought iPods, and I buy clothes from Banana Republic, as opposed to a company like American Apparel.

So, me calling them to complain wasn't a huge dent of course not, but they would care if people really did make a dent. EX: boycotting Apple, large number of people leave the outlets and malls to buy from American Apparel etc

[zv470]

I think the majority of people don't care either. People buy whatever is cheaper. I care... when I buy something I buy NOT made in China. Unfortunately with Apple gear... I have no choice.

[imacintel]

Wow. This makes me want to kill a kitten with a spork.

[szark]

I'll wait to hear Apple's reply before condemning them. According to the article, we have a Chinese manufacturer who lied about running a sweatshop. Now they've admitted it, but say that Apple approved their actions.

I don't know about you, but I don't exactly consider them to be a reliable source of the truth.

[California]

"admitted to breaking Chinese labor laws"

Huh? A country with no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of the press, no freedom to own private property, no freedom of religion -- it is hard for me to believe that China gives one whit about the pursuit of happiness of its citizens and their manner of making a living, as it were.

What Apple or any other American or Western company is doing in China is beyond me -- because they will counterfeit and reverse-engineer everything made there and then proceed to undercut said Western businesses with copies of their own products.

All because Western businessmen are hypnotized by the billions of potential "consumers" in China's enormous population. Well, until there is a freely elected government in China, those "consumers" will buy only what their totalitarian leaders allow. Counterfeiting benefits the State there because it is killing Western businesses economically.

The movie studios have slowly caught on not to trust China as they see counterfeits of their films bleed through China in the hundreds of billions of dollars, with a limited and censored box office return back to them. The Chinese give a show of "freedom" but it's all about the money staying in their hands as they use it against the free world. This powermongering is the hallmark of all tyranny since the beginning of time; the Chinese must have a total overthrow of their system because "reform" with the same people in power just doesn't work.

I hope Jobs and Apple will realize their moral and capitalistic mistake ASAP and start doing business with countries that actually have a normal rule of law -- i.e. freely elected officials and basic human rights.

[crackpip]

Originally Posted by California

What Apple or any other American or Western company is doing in China is beyond me -- because they will counterfeit and reverse-engineer everything made there and then proceed to undercut said Western businesses with copies of their own products.

The use of cheap chinese labor is a conflict between the morality of human rights and capitalist ideals. History has shown that, without government intervention or powerful labor organizations, the latter will win out. The CEO's have determined the risk is worth the reward to the shareholders (and they're own pocketbooks). While authoritarian governments are certainly bad for society, unregulated capitalism is the source of this problem.

Off topic, the MPAA estimates (2006) global piracy at $6.1 billion dollars, with Europe and North America being the biggest problem. It's not in the hundreds of billions in China alone.


crackpip

[swingerofbirch]

How could Chinese people buy anything BUT products on the black market with wages like this???

[Lixivial]

Not quite ready to believe a company who has lied, denied and tried to weasel its way out of responsibility at every turn. They say Apple had knowledge... after they were forced, PR-wise, to admit they broke Chinese labor laws... after they initially denied the entire thing in a fairly large outcry... after Apple announced they were investigating the entire thing.

Yeah, I'm not willing to take Foxconn's word for it yet.

[danielsan26]

Originally Posted by crackpip

The use of cheap chinese labor is a conflict between the morality of human rights and capitalist ideals....
crackpip

Human rights and capitalist ideals only conflict when the majority of people care about human rights. Until people boycott Walmart (as I do), and pay higher prices for responsibly made products after doing their homework (again, here!), this will not happen. Capitalism works everytime, companies just need incentive to act in that way.

Heavy governmental regulation is tantamount to saying, "We must protect the people, since we know better than they do." I, for one, don't think so. Governments have never proven themselves to be morally or financially superior to private enterprise.

[California]

Originally Posted by crackpip

While authoritarian governments are certainly bad for society, unregulated capitalism is the source of this problem.

Off topic, the MPAA estimates (2006) global piracy at $6.1 billion dollars, with Europe and North America being the biggest problem. It's not in the hundreds of billions in China alone.


crackpip

I guess the problem is unregulated capitalism is still better and fairer than statist socialism or communism. The less government has to do with my pocketbook, or anyone's pocketbook, the better, because who is to say that government officials are any less corrupt than Wall Street capitalists? At least the Wall Streeters don't have their own armies and nukes. Government needs to stay out of the economy and do what it should be doing -- protect our rights to our own pursuit of happiness.

China has doublecrossed the West with their bogus WTO agreements and China is the place where the counterfeiting is done; though it may be shipped to the West. A counterfeit movie in China costs well under a dollar and you can buy a reverse engineered and unsafe rip off Mercedes Benz in China for under twenty thousand dollars.

Apple and other companies forget they are dealing with a government that has never read Orwell, and is stuck in some early twentieth century pipedream of glorious Marxism -- with a hundred million murdered (since that time) to prove it and billions and billions of military dollars spent to defend it. Lenin's axiom that communists sell the Western capitalists just enough rope to hang themselves is in full force in China today.

Oh, and don't let anyone kid themselves that the insane military "boldness" of N. Korea and Iran recently wasn't bolstered by their backalley friends, the Chinese.

[thatguy_youknow]

We need to stop making stuff in China and increase the amount of stuff made in PRC.

[crackpip]

Originally Posted by danielsan26

Human rights and capitalist ideals only conflict when the majority of people care about human rights. Until people boycott Walmart (as I do), and pay higher prices for responsibly made products after doing their homework (again, here!), this will not happen. Capitalism works everytime, companies just need incentive to act in that way.

I do not believe this, especially as we move to a smaller number of larger corporations. With market consolidation comes monopolies and oligopolies; the freedom of consumers to act in a moral manner becomes significantly diminished. Would enough consumers boycott gas if the oil companies are found to be acting unethically? Or, another example from the past, if all the companies are maintaining sweatshop conditions, are you going to quit your job in protest? That's great that you boycott Wal-Mart, but do you also boycott K-mart, Nike, Daimler-Chrysler, Microsoft, any shrimp products, UPS, Google, Yahoo, John Deere, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Some of these are easy to boycott, but there are many more and it becomes more difficult.

Heavy governmental regulation is tantamount to saying, "We must protect the people, since we know better than they do." I, for one, don't think so. Governments have never proven themselves to be morally or financially superior to private enterprise.

Actually, in a more ideal world (i.e. a less money centered political process), it would be tantamount to saying, "We must regulate this industry because the people are saying an industry is behaving unethically." On a practical level, there are more choices than just laissez-faire or heavy regulation. There's a balance point, where neither government nor corporations are completely trusted. Even now, the U.S. is somewhere in the middle, not an unregulated capitalist state, with copyright and trademark laws, tariffs, government subsidies and tax breaks,... the list goes on.

crackpip

[swingerofbirch]

How can you say China is marxist????

China is more capitalistic than the United States...unregulated capitalism leads to dictatorships!

[California]

Originally Posted by swingerofbirch

How can you say China is marxist????

China is more capitalistic than the United States...unregulated capitalism leads to dictatorships!

China's governmental system is an oligarchy -- still the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as it has been since 1949 when Mao established his rule of terror.

China's economic system has the appearance of capitalism, but it is capitalism without private ownership or private property rights, or basic human rights. How much free trade can go on when the State holds all the cards? So it is a bogus idea when we criticize a "Chinese company" for labor abuse. The Chinese "company" is owned by the State and only granted rights of use by the state.

The West's incomprehension of this point is very costly. Without true private property rights, what the totalitarians in power in China are playing is a fancy shell game with the WTO and the West at large.

And because we don't understand that it is the State there that calls all the real shots, we keep losing.

Know thy enemy, in war and in business. The West is clueless.

Jobs should be smarter than this and needs to reread Orwell.

[swingerofbirch]

I am obviously not as book smart as you, but my belief is and what I was trying to say is that if you have unregulated capitalism you create dictatorship in which there is one total power, and whether you call it government or corporation doesn't really matter. Already in the United States there is an amalgamation between corporations and elected officials.

If left completely unregulated Enron/Microsoft/Exxon would become our government, whether in name or not, does not make much difference.

Like I said, I really don't know much about China, its history, or anything of that nature.

What I know is that as a child I grew up in Sweden, and they have what is called social democracy, which seemed to just be wonderfully harmonious.

And I know that when I hear people talk about China they attack it as being marxist and socialist, which greatly bothers me, because Sweden is those things and would never allow its people to suffer the way people are suffering in China. The system in Sweden is the opposite! It is against human suffering. It is a system of morality and benevolence providing that every person deserves dignity and the means to a good life, including access to health care for all and access to the highest levels of education from preschool through doctoral programs free of all charge.

And what I surmise about China is that it is top heavy with money like the United States. They both to varying degrees allow people to suffer without dignity and without education and health care. And unfortunately every time I talk to people about these issues--people without health insurance--they have so much stupid pride that they say receiving health care free would be socialist, and I don't know what they are even referring to--China, Sweden?

Why does socialism have to be a bad word? I believe financial and social democracy promote political democracy. In the United States the disproportionate allocations of wealth allow those with it to disproportionately give political input. How can you have 1 unit of political input per person if one person has millions of dollars to bribe politicians with?

There is also this delusion that socialism is all or nothing. In Sweden people earn incomes. And just as in the United States there is income redistribution. In the United States we tend to redistribute our income on billion dollar fighter jets, whereas Sweden spends it on things like education, fine arts, and health care (social issues, hence socialism).

[crackpip]

Originally Posted by California

China's economic system has the appearance of capitalism, but it is capitalism without private ownership or private property rights, or basic human rights. How much free trade can go on when the State holds all the cards? So it is a bogus idea when we criticize a "Chinese company" for labor abuse. The Chinese "company" is owned by the State and only granted rights of use by the state.

The West's incomprehension of this point is very costly. Without true private property rights, what the totalitarians in power in China are playing is a fancy shell game with the WTO and the West at large.

And because we don't understand that it is the State there that calls all the real shots, we keep losing.

Know thy enemy, in war and in business. The West is clueless.

Jobs should be smarter than this and needs to reread Orwell.

I think that you are oversimplifying this a bit. For example, the Chinese constitution allows for property rights (at least in word) and while the state has the right to take property they (supposedly) must compensate. This is similar to the U.S. right of eminent domain, which was strengthened last year by the U.S. Supreme Court to include state "improvement" projects.

As for Orwell, Orwell was a socialist, and Animal Farm was a reaction to Stalinism, that is the adoption of capitalist ideals within the framework of communism. After overthrowing the humans, the pigs became more like the humans, no longer representing a communist movement. Instead they simply replaced one regime with another, and wealth is not equally distributed to the workers. Orwell agreed with many Marxist principles, though disagreeing with the need for armed revolution.

crackpip

[fixyourthinking]

Originally Posted by swingerofbirch

This is no time to be an Apple apologist. It a time to hold Apple's feet to the fire until their will is broken and shout with repentance.

Before these malfeasances were unearthed I had already contacted Apple regarding using China as their sole iPod manufacturer.

Now I see where the rub is: torturous iPod factories. Every person on this planet is equally valid. Now I'm not saying I haven't been taken for a ride by the slithering underbelly of the United States known as corporate America, of course I have: but not like this. Not like this.

Something's rotten, and I think it's Apple.

The truth to the story is that the overtime (while against China Labor law) was voluntary NOT mandatory and it was paid. Some weeks, as I am self employed I have 20 hour days. Some days, for the work I do in those 20 hour days I earn less than minimum wage. Same goes for executive management in a lot of companies. Still it remains voluntary.

If you are a human rights analyst why aren't you excited about the opportunity for advancement that these factories provide. Did you know that they have education plans as well? How are these people going to get the housing, food, education, and career opportunity in a rice field?