Dear friends, I and a group of others wish to write to Apple requesting that it changes its manufacturing practices for iPhones.
You are a bit late here. Just about a week or two ago Apple has released its latest Supplier Responsibility report which can be found at
http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2011_Progress_Report.pdf
I think you will find that it addresses all the issues that you are complaining about. Your term "iPhone suicides" seems well, just slightly exaggerated, considering that (1) the Foxconn plant in question produces gazillions of items other than iPhones, and (2) the suicide rate of workers at Foxconn is actually less than half that of the general population of the USA, which has about 30,000 suicides per year on average.
You're going to struggle to stop people committing suicide if they want to, and I'd imagine there's always a low background rate of people with depressive illness who are tipped over the edge by circumstances -- which are possibly/probably/likely? completely related to work conditions -- and will commit suicide anyway.
Read that report. Apple and Foxconn have actually acted and reduced the rate. In the UK, the suicide rate had been reduced by a very simple law change: No pharmacy is allowed to sell you enough sleeping tablets to kill yourself. And surprisingly, many people who would go to a pharmacy, buy lots of sleeping tablets, go home and swallow them, don't manage to go to two or three pharmacies to collect the required number of tablets. Very simple measures can reduce suicide rates.
One thing that Foxconn has done is putting up nets to catch people jumping off the roofs. And people reading that have claimed that this is just taking the piss. And they are right: It is taking the piss, and it works. Imagine you stand on the top of a roof, ready to jump, and then you notice a net to catch you. You think: These bastards, I am standing here, desperate, ready to take my life, and they are taking the piss by putting up a net. That anger alone can be enough to change a person's mind. And once you're off that roof, you think that you just almost died and now is the time to take some serious action.
Not only do I think that this is a deeply immoral and despicable attitude to problems in China, but so does Apple (see report above).
I've been to china and seen places these people work and while I won't object to your cause it'll be almost impossible for you to make an impact. Until you can turn the economic tides and make it cheaper to produce these things in America again nothing will change.
You can't make a change, but Apple can. And does. See report above.
That doesn't mean we're stuck with Foxconn staying the way it is. Apple has been quite responsive to shifts in consumer ethics over the past few years. Earlier this decade, environmental groups targeted Apple for its spotty record. The company's first response was to deny every accusation, but that soon became untenable; the perception that Apple wasn't green was affecting its public image. At that point Apple did something smart—it decided to turn a disadvantage into a selling point. The company rolled out a progressive environmental plan, and Jobs now touts Apple's greenness every time he releases a new product. (Greenpeace now ranks Apple's environmental record in the middle of the pack among tech companies.)
Nice quote, but very very misleading. The Greenpeace idiots actually rated companies by the promises they made without checking what companies actually did. In one case they gave Hewlett Packard maximum points for promising to get rid of some materials within two years, when Apple got no points for not making any such promise. However, the Greenpeace idiots didn't notice that Apple had already stopped using these materials for several years. This is like comparing one husband who promises to stop beating his wife within two years, and another one who makes no such promise - because he has never done it in his life!
