ABC Previews 'Nightline' Visit to Foxconn's Chinese Factories

[Apple Corps]

Forget about wages, how about plain human decency? We expect China to conform to our standards of human rights, but at the same time its ok to let their workers be abused? And dont say it's foxconn's fault. Apple can make foxconn hire more workers so they dont have to work so hard. But apple is greedy. Instead of 100b in the bank, apple might only have 99b if it tried to improve work conditions.

Have you ever been to China? Are you not grasping the improvement in standard of living this brings to Chinese workers who are doing these jobs? Have you looked at the Purchasing Power Parity stats for the wages in China?

I'm thrilled to see some hard working, capable people moving ahead. That used to be the way America worked.

 

[JHankwitz]

I have to say, knowing how much Apple charges for their products, I am disgusted that they hire w/ a company like Foxconn that only pays it's employes $1.50 an hour. As much as I enjoy my Apple products, it makes me think twice about buying another.

Then I guess you won't be purchasing and electronic equipment from anyone for a long time since it's all made by companies like Foxconn, or far worse.

I've personally seen factories in China where bare-footed employees are powering their machines by spinning cement wheels on a shaft with their foot, using light coming from a small window 30 ft. away, and no heat, air conditioning, or fresh air. You're not aware of how many day to day products you regularly buy from these factories. Foxconn is a relative paradise for workers.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Pfft! When I was in the Navy we had 6 month deployments at sea. We had to work 6 days a week with 8 hours a day. Tack on 5 hours of watch on top of that and any equipment break downs meant longer hours. When I first joined, basic pay was $640.00 a month.

At times I remember 48 hours before getting rest. Or during one inspection, three weeks working 18 hour days with just 6 hours sleep in between.

And yes, I've worked in a factory setting making minimum wage at $3.35 an hour. Foxconn was MUCH cleaner and had air conditioning which we did not, during the summer months. we did not get all the free amenities these workers got like food, housing ect.

Stop your whining, some places outside Foxconn is not much better.

 

[z28black98]

haven't watched night line in years. That being said, my dvr is set to record! looking forward to it.

 

[Dbrown]

Have you ever been to China? Are you not grasping the improvement in standard of living this brings to Chinese workers who are doing these jobs? Have you looked at the Purchasing Power Parity stats for the wages in China?

I'm thrilled to see some hard working, capable people moving ahead. That used to be the way America worked.

I dont care what you say about all that. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that workers work 10 hour shifts 6 days a week, are forced to sleep in rooms 20 per person, cannot go home to see there families.

If the wage is $1.78/day and that's better than average, fine. But don't make people work like that. Hire more damn workers, they're paid only $1.78/day and apple has 100b in the bank.

It's pretty hypocritical how we criticize china for human rights violations and restrictions on free speech, but its ok if the people there get worked like dogs as long as they build apple stuff.

 

[mrgraff]

The extensive preview offers comments from several Foxconn employees, as well as Louis Woo, a former Apple executive who now serves as an advisor to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, and Fair Labor Association president Auret van Heerden.

Was there another clip to watch? The one in the original post looked more like a preview trailer than anything with as much content as described above.

 

[jackc]

I dont care what you say about all that. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that workers work 10 hour shifts 6 days a week, are forced to sleep in rooms 20 per person, cannot go home to see there families.

If the wage is $1.78/day and that's better than average, fine. But don't make people work like that. Hire more damn workers, they're paid only $1.78/day and apple has 100b in the bank.

It's pretty hypocritical how we criticize china for human rights violations and restrictions on free speech, but its ok if the people there get worked like dogs as long as they build apple stuff.

60 hours a week for workers in a poor country is abuse? And you think hiring more workers is somehow going to magically make it so they can work 40 hours for a lot more money? Stay out of their way, and they'll develop like every other rich country has.

 

[Dbrown]

Pfft! When I was in the Navy we had 6 month deployments at sea. We had to work 6 days a week with 8 hours a day. Tack on 5 hours of watch on top of that and any equipment break downs meant longer hours. When I first joined, basic pay was $640.00 a month.

And yes, I've worked in a factory setting making minimum wage at $3.35 an hour. Foxconn was MUCH cleaner and had air conditioning which we did not, during the summer months. we did not get all the free amenities these workers got like food, housing ect.

Stop your whining, some places outside Foxconn is not much better.

$3.35 for minimum wage must have been back in the 70's or something. How is anything that happened that long ago relevant to 2012?

LOL @ bringing up military service to compare to the working conditions at foxconn. It's actually quite amusing because in the military, you are told what to do, where to go, when to eat, when to sleep etc... you have no control of your life except your duty to the service and pay you crap wages. At foxconn they do the same to their workers... except they are civilians. Imagine a US company trying to pull that crap on their workers.

 

[JHankwitz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/t...lectronics-giant-foxconn.html?ref=global-home

Although the basic story has been around for a while, the recent interest was generated by a NY Times series a few weeks ago. This is the Times latest article out today (2/20). ABC is just a journalistic follower.

The last paragraph is interesting. Your iPad6 could be made by robots.

Far too expensive to make them with robots. You have to hire skilled technicians and engineers instead of unskilled labor to maintain the robots. That's far more costly. I know of several auto part manufacturers in the USA that went the robot route. Most have gone out of business because their costs were so high they could no longer provide product at the same contracted price.

 

[BuddyTronic]

I dont care what you say about all that. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that workers work 10 hour shifts 6 days a week, are forced to sleep in rooms 20 per person, cannot go home to see there families.

If the wage is $1.78/day and that's better than average, fine. But don't make people work like that. Hire more damn workers, they're paid only $1.78/day and apple has 100b in the bank.

It's pretty hypocritical how we criticize china for human rights violations and restrictions on free speech, but its ok if the people there get worked like dogs as long as they build apple stuff.

So you are saying that Foxconn or Apple should pay these workers more.

Well, if they were paid $5.00 per hour, they might be making more than a physician makes in China for all we know. What would be the incentive to get an education then? Instead of those hoards of people lined up to get a chance to apply for a job at Foxconn like they do now, you'd have 10X more and possibly you would have people fighting each other just to get the high pay job.

The going rate is the going rate. If people are lined up to work at Foxconn every morning, it tells you something.

Maybe the socialist government in China has a minimum wage policy, I don't know. But the supply of labor is seemingly endless - at least until you can keep people at home in the countryside and make some jobs for them there. I think some factories up north are doing that in China now. Keeping people closer to home at least.

 

[Dbrown]

60 hours a week for workers in a poor country is abuse? And you think hiring more workers is somehow going to magically make it so they can work 40 hours for a lot more money? Stay out of their way, and they'll develop like every other rich country has.

Oh so its ok to force people to work 60hrs a week with no overtime if they work in a poor country?

 

[JHankwitz]

I guarantee this will be a puff piece of journalism that will ultimately tout AAPL and make them look good.

There will be good positive spin and hype up to March 7th. Shame on ABC news for falling for AAPL tactics.

No, shame on ABC and all the rest of them for the biased spin they put on vertually everything they show us on TV. You can be sure that the spin you see on this program will be far less than what you normally get during a regular news broadcast.

 

[Apple Corps]

Oh so its ok to force people to work 60hrs a week with no overtime if they work in a poor country?

"...force..." ???

 

[linuxcooldude]

are forced to sleep in rooms 20 per person

Try living in a Navy ship. 60 persons per bearthing area. Your Rack ( bed ) is much smaller then the ones they have at Foxconn. In fact they call it a Coffin Locker.In one small Cubicle you have 6 persons, 3 on each side stacked on top of each other. Getting up in the morning is hard as their is not much room to move around in.

On a submarine, their is not enough room for beds, so you have to share racks on a rotating schedule.

$3.35 for minimum wage must have been back in the 70's or something. How is anything that happened that long ago relevant to 2012?

No it was not in the 70's, it was in 1988. And its very much relevant! In fact not so long ago you could be in the military and if you had a family, you might even be eligable for food stamps! Thats when they began changing how they looked at pay and allowances, just for that reason.

Seems like Foxconn is not so bad after all.

 

[Dbrown]

So you are saying that Foxconn or Apple should pay these workers more.

Well, if they were paid $5.00 per hour, they might be making more than a physician makes in China for all we know. What would be the incentive to get an education then? Instead of those hoards of people lined up to get a chance to apply for a job at Foxconn like they do now, you'd have 10X more and possibly you would have people fighting each other just to get the high pay job.

Where did I say to raise the wages? I said improve working conditions.

 

[JHankwitz]

Why do I have a feeling we will see all lies.

Everything you see on TV is a lie. Rent a copy of "Network". It really put things in proper perspective way back in 1976, and it still holds true today.

 

[Dbrown]

Try living in a Navy ship. 60 persons per bearthing area. Your Rack ( bed ) is much smaller then the ones they have at Foxconn. In fact they call it a Coffin Locker.In one small Cubicle you have 6 persons, 3 on each side stacked on top of each other. Getting up in the morning is hard as their is not much room to move around in.

On a submarine, their is not enough room for beds, so you have to share racks on a rotating schedule.

So what? Just because its ok in the military then its ok for civilians? Oh I suppose no one should be complaining about privacy issues because there is none in the military, right?

 

[MacCurry]

No, shame on ABC and all the rest of them for the biased spin they put on vertually everything they show us on TV. You can be sure that the spin you see on this program will be far less than what you normally get during a regular news broadcast.

True. But unlike other instances where it is a promotion of a political agenda, this is an instance of favorable reporting which will benefit AAPL share holders. Since ABC is part of Disney Corp., and the bigwigs in Disney are major shareholders in AAPL, who do you think benefits?

If you're an AAPL share holder, great, otherwise this story should not air. The NYT article was good enough and AAPL got Foxconn to clean up its act.

 

[Zonz]

I don't understand why so many people will crusade the argument that because they have relatively better working conditions and wages than other manufacturing companies that Foxconn and Apple should be cut some slack. Who cares what other companies are doing?!

Each and every company should not be compared to each other in order to evaluate how ethical their working environments are, but instead compared against what is decided to be the basic level of humane and moral working conditions.

Now I understand the issue with this; every country has a different poverty level and a different perception of what it means to be poor. $1.50 sounds great to these workers. So I suggest just a different way of looking at it.

We have entered the globalized age. We have to compare wages and conditions on a global scale. There needs to be a poverty level decided for everyone. Now this is still years in the making, but eventually our lives and economies will be even more so interconnected across the globe that it will be more reasonable to do this. Borders will merge and culture will become homogenous.

Apple is doing what makes fiscal sense to them. Cheap labor making cheap products sold for high profit margins makes a great business plan. I can't blame them for that. But we live in a world that is becoming more and more globalized, and therefore we all have to some extent a responsibility for the livelihood of the people in these nations. Not to the extent of what Americas done in the past (war, spread democracy, etc. all very bad), but because of the conditions we have to be thankful for we also have a higher responsibility to make sure that we aren't taking advantage of these countries, but instead we should try to share our wealth with them (not our politics). There is a very large problem in the world today because of these international companies not having to adhere to any individual country's law. They are taking advantage of the system and becoming far to powerful because they are not regulated. Apple is guilty of this. Many others are guilty of this. It smart in a business sense, but that doesn't mean it isn't wrong. (That also doesn't mean that Apple is the MOST guilty of this, and perhaps it is unfair that the finger is pointed at them, but the fact that they are guilty is enough)

 

[linuxcooldude]

So what? Just because its ok in the military then its ok for civilians? Oh I suppose no one should be complaining about privacy issues because there is none in the military, right?

Oh, now that were talking about that. Even on base, the rooms are much bigger.

But due to budget cuts we were forced two people inside of a room designed for one. So double the amount of furniture, barely left much room to move around in but we made it work.

Then the air conditioning to the building went out which the never fixed for a year.

I'm just giving you a bit of clarity on how things can go, even inside a country that has a better economy, its not all rainbows and puppy dogs.

 

[diazj3]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

This is a damage control puff piece. Abc is owned by Disney, Bob Iger is on the apple board. (Steve was also on the Disney board and the largest share holder).

This will not have any damning info on apple or foxconn. This will show it in a positive light.

This won't be like a video version of the NPR report.

I agree: this will most likely be a simple PR damage control stunt to dilute the facts on previous reports and ease consumer conscience. If it achieves its objective, consumers will return to disregarding the real problems behind this issues... and just concentrate on shopping more crap. Hell, you can see some readers here already feeling better just by watching the preview...!

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I would love to buy many of those workers hidden cameras that look like a shirt button. That's the ONLY way we will see what it's really like in there.

 

[robgendreau]

There wasn't this attention on Dell, HP, IBM, or any other manufacturer and still isn't when it should be on the industry as a whole, not one company.

When you're the biggest company in the world by capitalization, you invite scrutiny, you become the poster child for the industry. MS had that distinction, as did IBM; now it's Apple's turn. I expect that as they go, so will the rest of the industry.

It would be funny if some clever Chinese engineers came up with a good OS, and told the US companies to shove off and turned Foxconn into a manufacturer of $100 i-clones that ran existing apps. Just the Chinese market alone would be gi-normous. And Apple could sue in Chinese courts….

 

[budselectjr]

"...force..." ???

yeah, i'm confused as well. In the short preview, I saw a whole mob running to towards the entrance like there was free money inside.

 

[laurim]

Did anyone else find that preview difficult to watch? In this technology age we still rely on the human hand and factories of human machines just making products for others.

What would you rather uneducated people do for money? They could break their backs under the hot sun in the fields, I suppose. Or be prostitutes. Or beg. If robots take all the jobs, what's left for people? Not everybody can be white collar.