How is it cherry picking when it's the meat of your argument? You are arguing that Apple should establish a global wage independent of cost of living in a worker's location, no? What contractors should Apple be provided insight into their worker's compensation packages? That seems like a quite a privacy violation. I've worked as a contractor before. The notion that a client would demand to know my personal compensation and decide that they feel is appropriate for it is ridiculous. Your idea is nonsensical and impossible.
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Apple Outlines Milestone on Eliminating Conflict Minerals in 2016 Supplier Responsibility Report
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How is it cherry picking when it's the meat of your argument? You are arguing that Apple should establish a global wage independent of cost of living in a worker's location, no? What contractors should Apple be provided insight into their worker's compensation packages? That seems like a quite a privacy violation. I've worked as a contractor before. The notion that a client would demand to know my personal compensation and decide that they feel is appropriate for it is ridiculous. Your idea is nonsensical and impossible.
No, all lives are invaluable. But prices and wages should always be set by markets. Never by fiat. Setting a wage based on someone "knowing better", always eventually results in more harm than good.
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Good to seeI'm curious as to whether other companies are so forthcoming with the details of their business.
Yep, but they just quietly put it somewhere on their websites, whereas Apple often tries to take credit for things they're not always directly responsible for.
For example, Conflict Minerals reports are mandated for many companies in the U.S. It's not a choice. So to save money in compliance, they banded together:
The Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative (CFSI) is sponsored by a group of 150+ major companies (including Apple, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG, plus even AT&T, Sprint and Verizon). It's CFSI who audits the smelters, comes up with the lists of who to use or not, etc... and they do so for the benefit of all their members.
Thus Samsung and Apple and others are all using the same minerals auditing agency and give similar reports, but Apple has for years carefully written their press releases to make the naive reader assume that Apple did all their own checking and voluntarily to boot.
As for underage workers, Samsung provides its third party suppliers with facial recognition gear in order to help them keep out teens who are constantly trying to use someone else's ID. It's a problem that all companies in that part of the world face, since the teens often see it as an opportunity to get work experience that will raise their employment chances later on.
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Why such low standards? USA factory workers are among the lowest paid in the OECD and have more laws restricting their collective bargaining, union activities etc than almost anywhere else in the 'West'. Don't you think the pay and conditions of those California workers should be brought up to Australian standards!
Ok, instead of sugar coating it, here's the position you're trying to argue against.
Organizations outlive individuals. If I have an Apple or an Exxon, that company can live on indefinitely generating revenue I can feed on if I'm an investor or government, while a continual stream of workers come and go from it. That's why it makes the most sense to support to companies and institutions, and regard individuals as little more than a liability. For now, until we can completely replace them with software and androids, they're a necessary evil. This is why we've flipped the tax liabilities of the IRS as well, giving the institutions as close to a free ride as possible, and subsidize it by taxing the individual on their labor, threatening them with incarceration and forfeiture of their assets if they don't comply with this voluntary taxation. The poorer you treat them, the more desperate they get, and the more you can use them as an expendable, disposable resource. Individuals will always come crawling with their hand out for a job and a pittance. After all, they're not anyones responsibility but themselves. If they didn't want to live in poverty, their parents shouldn't have bred them without a decent inheritance to endow them with. The fact that they did, indicates that their position in poverty is their rightful place in the natural order. We have a perfect system here, so if it leaves millions of people laboring for $3/hr, it's not a problem in the system, it's a problem in those people. No one's forcing them to trade their hours for $3 a piece. The fact that they do, means that we all agree, their lives are only worth that. The free market is incapable of lying.
Good luck arguing that down.
Organizations outlive individuals. If I have an Apple or an Exxon, that company can live on indefinitely generating revenue I can feed on if I'm an investor or government, while a continual stream of workers come and go from it. That's why it makes the most sense to support to companies and institutions, and regard individuals as little more than a liability. For now, until we can completely replace them with software and androids, they're a necessary evil. This is why we've flipped the tax liabilities of the IRS as well, giving the institutions as close to a free ride as possible, and subsidize it by taxing the individual on their labor, threatening them with incarceration and forfeiture of their assets if they don't comply with this voluntary taxation. The poorer you treat them, the more desperate they get, and the more you can use them as an expendable, disposable resource. Individuals will always come crawling with their hand out for a job and a pittance. After all, they're not anyones responsibility but themselves. If they didn't want to live in poverty, their parents shouldn't have bred them without a decent inheritance to endow them with. The fact that they did, indicates that their position in poverty is their rightful place in the natural order. We have a perfect system here, so if it leaves millions of people laboring for $3/hr, it's not a problem in the system, it's a problem in those people. No one's forcing them to trade their hours for $3 a piece. The fact that they do, means that we all agree, their lives are only worth that. The free market is incapable of lying.
Good luck arguing that down.
False. Wait... No. Not just false. Unequivocally false.
If it were true, then the following statements would also be true.
Sony employees are Apple employees.
Samsung employees are Apple employees.
LG employees are Apple employees.
Cirrus Logic employees are Apple employees.
Skyworks Solutions employees are Apple employees.
Taiwan Semiconductor employees are Apple employees.
All of these companies supply (or have supplied) various components for Apple's hardware systems, ranging from batteries, to displays, to capacitors, to circuit boards, and more. The rationalle you use would require then that:
'Some random mine where the coal used to generate the electricity used to run the computers that control the ore smelter that produced the steel used in the creation of the shipping container that a supplier used to move 80 tons of surface-mount diodes to a warehouse used by Foxconn' are Apple employees. Eventually, everyone in the world become 'Apple employees'.
A company does not employ their suppliers' employees.
OTOH, Apple has claimed to have created hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, by counting up even the people in factories who build delivery trucks and airplanes.
So, what would that be? $20 hour, full benefits, vacation? Why not just make them here then?
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I have no heard them claim that.....source?
You're reaching with that.
But they have had a very large impact on employment. Still has nothing to do with Foxconn employees being Apple employees. It's the same vendor relationship as any other company.
Sure, which is why I didn't say it was the same thing. Just pointing out that Apple is glad to take credit for the employees of companies they use.
It's been headlines here before. Easy to look up. Let's see. Google "apple creates jobs airplanes". Yep, first result:
"Apple directly or indirectly supports roughly 400,000 jobs in the U.S. These jobs include numerous industries, from the people who create components for our products to the people who build the planes and trucks that carry them to our customers. " - http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/
This is a delusional socialistic pipe dream.
Apple are the company that publicly do the most with this kind of thing but get demonised the most by the media in the same public light.
Crazy.
Crazy.
It's amazing to me to see the hubris of western people. We think our values, our culture, etc. are so superior to other nations and think we should be putting out noses everywhere. I'm not saying that companies shouldn't do their best to make sure that their SUPPLIERS act responsibly, but sitting here behind our two thousand dollar machines, we have no idea what is going on and no context to these issues.
Do you think that all those Chinese workers are thanking the US for reducing their work hours? Many of those workers have come in from farms to try to earn money to send back to their families. They live on site and when they aren't working, they aren't going to the movies or out to nice restaurants, they are sitting in their dorms waiting for their next shift to start. Their pay has been decreased because instead of working 80 hours in a week they can only work 60 hours in a week. So, it will take longer now before they can go home to their families, because all they are doing is trying to make as much money as quickly as possible so they can go home.
That is just one tiny example of how people here know nothing about real conditions around the world. But you can all pat yourselves on the back and say "I did my good deed." So, Apple doesn't buy conflict minerals anymore. I guess all those children who were working in the mines are now back in their air-conditioned schools working towards getting into college now. Or, maybe now they had to find even worse work because their choice was work in the mines or starve.
Do you think that all those Chinese workers are thanking the US for reducing their work hours? Many of those workers have come in from farms to try to earn money to send back to their families. They live on site and when they aren't working, they aren't going to the movies or out to nice restaurants, they are sitting in their dorms waiting for their next shift to start. Their pay has been decreased because instead of working 80 hours in a week they can only work 60 hours in a week. So, it will take longer now before they can go home to their families, because all they are doing is trying to make as much money as quickly as possible so they can go home.
That is just one tiny example of how people here know nothing about real conditions around the world. But you can all pat yourselves on the back and say "I did my good deed." So, Apple doesn't buy conflict minerals anymore. I guess all those children who were working in the mines are now back in their air-conditioned schools working towards getting into college now. Or, maybe now they had to find even worse work because their choice was work in the mines or starve.
Very good Apple. You are leading the industry in social and environmental responsibility.
Now, how is the FBI's Corporate Social Responsibility score card doing?
Now, how is the FBI's Corporate Social Responsibility score card doing?
- Lying - up 90%
- Fraud - up 80%
- Defeating encryption - down 20%
- Protecting mega banksters - up 100%
- Killing the constitution - up 200%
- etc. etc.
kdarling said:
Indirectly supporting is not the same thing as creating.
The fact is they do indirectly support by signing contracts with suppliers and vendors to pay them a sum of money for their services. This has been documented publicly to include increasing headcount so that the vendor can support the work that Apple has sent to them. This is indirect support.
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Though you meant this tongue-in-cheek, I appreciated the chuckle amidst the usual Apple hate.
The comical mainstream hate towards Apple gives a new meaning to "double standards".
Is this post a joke?
If workers in the Far East were paid the same as those in the US, Apple and all these companies would have all their factories in the US. There would be zero incentive to have factories in other countries.
Lots of companies use Foxconn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers
I imagine Foxconn workers assemble all sorts of products during the year as demand fluctuates.
Why should Apple be the baseline for what they earn?
Contrary to popular opinion, Apple cannot force companies, in other countries, to have a 40 hour work week. It is a constant improvement process. My guess is that Apple is not happy with the 60 hours and is trying to improve it further. But unless you have some magic wand that you aren't telling people about, it's politics, and that takes time.
Sure they can. Apple can force the contracting company to do whatever they want under the terms of the contract. Apple could very easily tell say Foxconn they will only give them the iPhone build contract if they limit workweeks to 40 hours. I'm not saying Apple should do this, but they certainly could if they wanted to.
They could, but how many suppliers would sign a contract like that right out of the gate? Then Apple would be left with fewer suppliers, which means fewer iPhones, iPods, iPads, Mac Pros, Macbook Pros, Apple TV, ..., which would in turn translate to the silly Wall Street crooks dropping the stock even more than they are, which would mean all of us who own Apple stock have less disposable income and less to retire on. The circle of life if you will. So, like I said, it's a political matter that takes time.