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> A poster in an agency describes job qualification for Foxconn workers: age between 16 and 40, ninth-grade diploma, no Tibetan and Uygur ethnicities. Many dam
by abalone 7y ago
> A poster in an agency describes job qualification for Foxconn workers: age between 16 and 40, ninth-grade diploma, no Tibetan and Uygur ethnicities.
Many damning things in the report but this straight up racism demands a firm response from Apple.
- atomical 7y agoWhy would it? Tim supports Saudi Arabia and their oppressive apps in the app store.
- atian 7y agoNope.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago> racism demands a firm response from Apple. Board: Will that make us more profitable? Tim: We will become less profitable, but in the long term, people will see that we- Board: No.
- protomyth 7y agoTim Cook is the architect of the Apple supply chain, and that's why he is the CEO instead of a product person. He is not innocent and has to have read the Foxconn job requirements of age between 16 and 40, ninth-grade diploma, no Tibetan and Uygur ethnicities. He knows what he is doing, and blaming just the board is a cop-out.
- bdcravens 7y agoProbably does demand a response, but this doesn't seem to be an "official" Foxconn policy: > These conditions on ethnicity do not appear on the Foxconn website, but do adorn the walls of private job agencies hiring directly for the technology giant
- VonGuard 7y agoWouldn't be such a big deal if the Chinese weren't literally interning and exterminating Uyghurs. Calling this stuff racism is like calling Nazi Germany Alt-Right... Stops WAAAY short of framing the problem.
- erentz 7y agoHang on. It’s not just racist hiring policies. We have companies here that are doing business in a country that is putting millions of people of a certain ethnicity in concentration camps. That really is not being talked about enough.
- VonGuard 7y agoThis.
- devoply 7y agoYes and we are talking about Apple which has 245 billion dollars cash on hand yet is paying workers $272 / month. Where we can hardly blame workers for what China is doing, we definitely can hold Apple to account for what it's doing. This is the sort of shit Marx was referring to as ripping the workers off surplus value in the beginning of the industrial age. Socially conscious my ass.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jjtheblunt 7y agoEntirely wrong : that's not Apple doing that, and, having spent years as an engineer at Apple, it's a huge priority to be ethical and good. i'm serious. Why not move elsewhere? The only factories able to produce the required volumes are, by virtue of great planning by China, there, and perform work on a contract basis for many companies, Apple included, Dell, and so on.
- MegaButts 7y agoI realize it's a complicated subject, but if ethics was as high a priority as you were saying why wouldn't they simply move those jobs somewhere else with lower margins? EDIT: Since you edited your comment instead of responding to mine, yes China is the only country that can currently support Apple's manufacturing needs. But if Apple actually felt it was unethical to work with China for whatever reason they could begin the process to have factories set up elsewhere, even in the United States or Mexico, within a few years. It would obviously impact their profit margins, but you are arguing that ethics is a "huge priority" while providing nothing substantive to back up that claim.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoHey China...hire them, just make them a yellow star, or a red one. isn't it cute that FoxConn doesn't make that as a policy but subcontractors do?
- sct202 7y agoIt's surprising that they don't have enough workers and are still racist.
- abalone 7y agoSee: all of American history.
- claudiawerner 7y agoIf you don't mind me pointing out the irony here: this is the epitome of "woke capital" - the issue isn't the inhumanly low wages, it's that the company policy is discriminatory towards who it will pay those wages...
- abalone 7y agoIt would be.. if I hadn’t said there are a lot of other damning things in the report.
- throwas1984 7y agoWhile I as European fully agree with your point of view, I think that projecting our world perspective on other countries is just bs. Fight with racism is purely white peoples concept. Racism is a term usually doesn't even exist outside of Europe/North America. So we shouldn't try to put our mentality on top of China, as we are not the sole source of truth in this world.
- nickpeterson 7y agoI'll bite, if racism is so accepted in other places doesn't that just make them all wrong? Or are you contending that racism has value?
- throwas1984 7y agoI personally think that racism is very wrong and needs to be left in the past. It has no value in current world. But me, an European, saying to Chinese how they must live and behave - this is just neo colonialism. They should figure this out on their own.
- true_religion 7y agoI mean, they can figure this out on their own but in the meanwhile we don’t have to trade with them and give them money to essentially violate our ethics at arms length distance.
- acct1771 7y agoWhat makes our trade with them different than our trade with Saudi/Israel/etc?
- true_religion 7y agoNothing. Personally, I am against trade with Saudi Arabia. As for Israel, I am sympathetic to a small, democratic nation populated by the descendants of a western genocide, which is surrounded by hostile autocratic or theocratic neighbors. However that’s my opinion. If Israel’s existence is somehow against your ethics, I won’t force you to trade with them. I would just criticize you more directly.
- howcomeno1asks 7y agoCurious how no one here is asking "WHY don't they want Uygurs or Tibetans?" I wonder if it could be due to the bombings [1] and mass-stabbings [2] these people carry out against Han Chinese from time to time. And the fact that Foxconn workers are primarily Han Chinese. Of course it might also be because Foxconn is run by race-haters who hate Uygurs for their Turkic features and are jealous of Tibetans for their high altitude hemoglobin adaptations. Can't rule that one out. Might have nothing to do with bombings/stabbings. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bomb-blast-in-tibetan-area-of-china-1646887.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bomb-blast-in-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack
- nikanj 7y agoWhy Apple? Foxconn makes _everything_. Yet it’s always ”iPhone maker”, never ”xbox maker” or ”Hamilton Beach toaster maker”
- abalone 7y agoBecause the story is about assembling iPhones.
- yumraj 7y agoI don't think that is racism per se, that just proves what everyone already knows, that Tibet and Xinjiang are occupied territories/colonies and not really part of China.
- tootie 7y agoThis is normal in a lot of places. Even much of first-world Asia allows for racial discrimination.
- abalone 7y agoThere is a lot of pretty horrible stuff that is “normal in a lot of places.” It doesn’t excuse it. Racism is not something Apple stands for and so it has leverage to stop this practice in its suppliers.