iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think
The article claims "Apple is directly dependent on forced labor."
http://www.alternet.org/story/154043/iempire%3A_apple%27s_sordid_business_practices_are_even_worse_than_you_think/?page=entire
iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think
New research goes beyond the New York Times to show just how disturbing labor conditions at Foxconn, the "Chinese hell factory," really are.
February 7, 2012 |
Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.
It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.
To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.
Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world's single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won't be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.”
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You likely sent that message on something made by Foxconn. But make sure you focus only on Apple. It makes you superior.
My current computer is about as old as yours, so nanny-nanny boo-boo! It's a Mac, though, I will admit -- a G5 iMac. And believe me, my computers have all paid me to use them! In fact, I got that G5 to do an animation job for a clients. It cost me about $1500, and I made $10,000. And I still use it to this day. Last upgrade was a 2 terabyte raid array for backup so I can go on using it for many more years.
I think you entirely missed the point of my HP post -- you did the usual "Apple is too expensive" blah blah blah post, and I merely pointed out that the supposed hot new HP laptop being advertised, basically their rip-off of the considerably older MacBook Air, still costs the same price. Pound for pound, feature for feature, that tired old refrain that Apple products are over-priced and too expensive just never holds water, unless you're one of those guys that likes to "build their own" from bailing wire, toothpicks and old parts from the computer scrap yard. Those guys can never be satisfied.
Please don't assume that your post "upset" me. You give yourself way too much credit! (BTW, I work for an advertising agency...less advertising would not improve my life 
).
It says it all. So in the end be prepared and carry what you need.
Garlic for Vampires
Silver Bullets for Werewolves
Charlie Booker for the cult of the Apple
Apple appeals to a left-leaning demo. There is no mistaking that. Shouldn't the company
that sells predominantly to the left also espouse its values? I think so, and I think that is
the subtext to much of the Apple critique.
