NYT: Apple's iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China

[Newsjock]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html
(Very long: 5,238 words; this is a different article than the one that the NYT published last weekend)

... In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

[onehandle]

1. A few companies who's products are made in the same factories as Apple's by the same workers:

Acer Inc.
Amazon.com
ASRock
Asus
Barnes & Noble
Cisco
Dell
EVGA Corporation
Hewlett-Packard
Intel
IBM
Lenovo
Logitech
Microsoft
MSI
Motorola
Netgear
Nintendo
Nokia
Panasonic
Philips
Samsung
Sharp
Sony Ericsson
Toshiba
Vizio

All electronics, be it in your computer, your phone, your car, or even your refrigerator, are overwhelmingly made in China.

Wish it was otherwise.

[Confusious]

2. Would you happen to have a link

To that info please?

[Confusious]

3. One other thing

Like it or not, Apple is at the top of the heap right now. ( I think apple people DO like being at the top of the heap, with all the crowing about stock prices and amount of money apple has shoveled away)

Apple is the most visible, so naturally, it will get the criticism.

Don't like the criticism? Get apple to change their polices. Or be less visible. The criticism will shift to a different company.

Is it unfair? Yea. But that's how it's always been, and unless people change in the future, how it will be.