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Journalist goes undercover making the iPhone 5 at Foxconn

204 points by ukdm 14y ago

terhechte 14y ago
After the mess that was the last Apple Foxconn story, and with all the economic pressure that affects newspapers & news media, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe stories like these. It's not that I don't suppose that there're bad working conditions at Foxconn - there probably are. No, it's that even if the journalist in this story managed to sneak in, and work there, he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic. Otherwise, nobody would be interested in it, nobody would read it, and there'd be no money. I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous. The decline of advertising money and newspaper subscriptions has lead to a decline of journalistic integrity and objectivism, I think. Addendum, I studied journalism & communication, most of my friends are journalists, and I'd say they try hard, but the economic pressure sounds untenable sometimes. Some of them earn so little money, that I wonder how they even manage to pay rent.
- paulerdos 14y ago
  It is hard to know who to believe. The journalist who has something to gain by exaggerating the suffering of the workers, or the company which has much more to gain by hiding the suffering. The truth is somewhere in between. Based on the Foxconn on-the-job-site suicide rate being significantly higher than other on-the-job-site suicide rates (important to compare apples-with-apples, no pun intended), the truth probably lies closer to the journalist version.
  - misnome 14y ago
    If you are comparing apples-to-apples, then surely you should weight your statement on who to believe by how easy it is for each person to exaggerate/hide. It's super easy for a journalist to exaggerate something like this, with relatively little risk for a massive gain. On the other hand, a "Company" hiding things involves many, many more people involved in the conspiracy, and the penalty for failure isn't really that much (how many decades of big-companies-with-bad-working-conditions stories have we had?). It also doesn't give any sense of context - how reliable the newspaper is, what the average working conditions are for that class of facility, etc etc. Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story.
    - smoyer 14y ago
      "Apples-to-apples" ... perfect wording!
    - cooldeal 14y ago
      >Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story. The story is about making an iPhone 5, which is expected to boost the GDP of the US. http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-apple-iphone-gpd-jpmorgan-20120911,0,6089094.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-apple-iphone-... As we're constantly reminded by the Apple blogs and on here, Apple takes 75% of the profits in the phone industry and have huge margins which their competitors can't come close to, so isn't it logical that Apple gets more of the bad press for bad working conditions since they are in the best position to improve the workers' pathetic work and living environment?
    - paulerdos 14y ago
      You raise a seemingly valid point. But, your data seems to be different than mine. Many companies, especially large multi-national ones have an excellent track record of media manipulation and the ability to successfully hide massive problems. Think about how rare whistle blowers are. Easy example that I was personally affected by: Vioxx from Merck where Merck knew about the problems with the drug but pushed it through anyway and got away with it for years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/ns/health-arthritis/t/report-vioxx-linked-thousands-deaths/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/ns/health-arthritis/t/re... . Think about big tobacco, think about Chiquita and its activities in Columbia, think about Dow Chemical/Union Carbide...
  - glenra 14y ago
    What evidence suggests the suicide rate for Foxconn workers is "significantly higher" than would otherwise be expected? Near as I can tell, the only complaint is that there was a large raw number of suicides a while ago...in a company so huge it has more workers than the population of Wyoming. Last time I looked it up, the suicide rate there seemed to be lower than the rate among chinese people, lower than the rate among chinese college students, lower than the rate among US factory workers and so on. And that problem was largely in the past, not an ongoing issue.
    - paulerdos 14y ago
      "lower than the rate among US factory workers". This is a common comparison fallacy. The baserates you appear to be comparing with are all general population baserate. The baserate that I was thinking about was how many factory workers committed suicide on-site. That is the Apples-to-Apples comparison. Eg: How many Apple employees committed suicide on campus vs how many Foxconn employees committed suicide at their factory camp/dorm.
      - glenra 14y ago
        That is NOT a relevant comparison. Foxconn employees live in dormitories on-site while US factory workers don't, so you'd essentially be trying to compare ALL the suicides of Foxconn employees to SOME of the suicides of other workers. (Though I'm not sure they'd fail even THAT comparison.) If I recall correctly, even the rate at which Americans are murdered on the job is higher than the rate at which Foxconn employees commit suicide there. So if you want to keep claiming there's something uniquely bad about Foxcon in this regard, let's hear some actual numbers from you. What specific numbers are you looking at that lead you to believe Foxconn is unusually bad?
- norswap 14y ago
  tl;dr You don't anything about this (I don't either) but you doubt it because there is "economic pressure". Right. The same comment can apply to every single item posted to this website, yoohoo.
  - terhechte 14y ago
    I'm not talking about the rest of this site, I'm talking about journalism in particular, and how it changed compared to 1-2 decades ago. There's a huge difference between startup blog posts (which are for example other items posted here) and journalism, as a fourth constitutional force: Responsible for educating the people in an objective and truthful way, so they can form their own opinions, express their ideas, and thus participate in politics (by that I do't mean working in Washington. Lookup Habermas). In short, journalism should rinse democracy. I fear that this function (actually the only relevant function that journalism enjoys, imho) is less and less fulfilled. I just took the doubts I have about this article as an example of that. A working journalistic system shouldn't have to fear really hard economic pressure, otherwise it can't work correctly anymore. This relates to all other contents on this site as well, as long as they're journalistic and not public relations.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  It's probably true and there's nothing Apple or anyone can do about it apart from stop selling things. I dealt with several Chinese manufacturers in the late 1990's who were doing custom PCB runs for one of our products. They treated their staff like shit then and hid it all under the rug when you went to see them. They wheeled out the turd polish in double-quick time. I don't think it's changed and I don't think it will change unless people on the production lines just say "no". This has happened in the textile industry over there (according to my cousin who is an importer of textiles) and staff are earning great rates now. The cheaper staff are in Mexico and India now. Regarding the money - the cost of living is pretty damn cheap over there by their standards. Note: I don't like buying products myself which are responsible for this sort of thing, but I'm not that sympathetic. As for the journalists - they are as full of crap as the factory bosses are.
  - damian2000 14y ago
    Its probably not in the same league in terms of numbers, but its impressive that the Raspberry Pi foundation just announced recently that they are now manufacturing their computers at home, in the UK, and maintaining the same retail price. So with advanced technologies and automation, plus some determination, there is something they can do. Its also revealing that the RPi foundation is non-profit so they aren't trying to maintain a bottom line. http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  >"I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous." You really think piss-poor working conditions in Second-World factories are "unheard of and outrageous"? It's been going on for centuries. Sure, this story was impeccably timed, and I'm sure there are liberties taken here and there, but that's because running a magazine/newspaper is a business. That doesn't provide carte blanche to deny that there is truth behind the writing. I think it's a dangerous precedent when the populace begins to say, "you can't believe the media". In fact, I'm sure that there are terrible governments around the world that would love the population to think that way. I'm a big believer in capitalism and globalization, so I think that, net, having these factories in China is beneficial. But I also don't disclaim that they are probably horrible, unhealthy places to work. How much responsibility is Apple's, and how much is China's is the important question.
  - terhechte 14y ago
    I also think that it's dangerous to not trust media anymore. I was expressing my fear that that might happen. I don't think the working conditions are outrageous, I also don't think that they're piss-poor though. Relative to the environment (china) they may be not so bad. I was saying that media is trying to market it as outrageous to generate higher sales. This may be a cultural thing, but while I do believe in free markets and capitalism, I think that there're certain parts of society which need to be handled separately as the optimization for economic success (the cheaper the better) doesn't fare well (imho) with health and media. I like the approach of the UK, where the BBC is state paid but not state controlled. But this is a huge separate discussion and I can understand different viewpoints here and I'm afraid it's often about cultural differences which viewpoint we chose.
  - csense 14y ago
    > centuries "Industrialization of China did occur on a significant scale only from the 1950s, in the Maoist Great Leap Forward." [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_China
- sequoia 14y ago
  he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic. Are you basing this accusation on something or just pulling it out of thin air? You probably cheat on tests, steal other people's ideas, and slack off at work so everyone else has to work harder to accommodate you. Baseless accusations don't feel good, do they?
  - terhechte 14y ago
    No, I based it on a general feeling based on several other stories like the 'This American Life' Foxconn report. I'm also not saying that he is lying, just that he is distorting reality. Finally, I wasn't trying to write about this author in particular, but more about general journalism. I may well be wrong there, but I tried to express an opinion based on a theory (explained in the post) that economic pressure can lead to a lower quality of journalistic output. My examples of hyperbole & more were, then, just examples of typical traits of said process. It's well known, that journalistic outlets of less quality (Sun in the UK, Fox News in the US, BILD in Germany, etc) do just what I explained above: They add unnecessary hyperbole, shift facts & more - as long as the story sells. I was just expressing that less money may lead to less quality.
sneak 14y ago
Gee, I wonder why this was released today.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Maximum impact.
corin_ 14y ago
> The work is clearly very stressful and the pay is terrible. The example the journalist gave was two hours of overtime earning him just $4. Can anyone give any context of how bad this actually is? Obviously it's not as terrible as if somebody got paid $4 for two hours of overtime here in the UK, in terms of average wage and typical cost of living, but no idea how much less bad it is..
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Depending on where the factory is it's either good, bad or totally average. China seems to have multiple minimum wages for different areas.
- molmalo 14y ago
  In May, Foxconn’s base salary was $350 per month [1] So, $350 / 22 working days (per month aprox, assuming 2 days of weekend, I don't know if they have 1 or 2) => $15.9 per day. / 10 hours per day => $1.59 per hour Earning $2 for every extra hour... is like earning 1/3 extra per hour. Just to compare, here in Argentina, every extra hour is paid double by law. But I don't know if this is regulated in China... Anyway, given the kind of job, I wouldn't try to stimulate working extra hours, as attention would decrease too much for this kind of monotonous and precision work. So, it makes sense that they pay little for overtime work. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/iphone-manufacturer-foxconn-to-double-worker-salaries-by-2013/438 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/iphone-manufacturer-foxconn-...
- alexlawford 14y ago
  It's not too bad. That works out at about 12.5 RMB / hour, more than someone would make working a night shift at KFC here in Guizhou (I expect in Shen Zhen it would be a little higher). I work at a coffee shop owned by my friend here; 6 - 10 RMB / hour is quite typical for unskilled labour. Also, chances are that these factory workers have free accomodation and subsidised food which makes a significant difference. The journalist also notes that "there aren’t enough workers to fill the positions at the factory as they keep resigning". This doesn't neccessarily mean its a bad place to work. I hardly have any friends that haven't quit at least one job in the last year or two. Modern Chinese culture -- particularly among young people -- accepts quitting your job, messing around for a few months ("playing" in Chinese) and then finding another as quite normal.
bgraves 14y ago
The Apple Supplier Responsibility 2012 Progress Report [1] is worth a read. [1] http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2012_Progress_Report.pdf http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_...
tluyben2 14y ago
If that is true, why don't they have robots already? I know they are planning[1], however that kind of work seems to be very easily replaced by a robot (who will have a far higher accuracy and less failure rate than humans especially for the task the journalist describes). [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/foxconn-to-replace-human-workers-with-one-million-robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot...
- drharris 14y ago
  Simple; it's cheaper in the near-term. Keep production flowing while you figure out the automation side.
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    But for this PARTICULAR example, is it cheaper? I know a bit about robot hacking, not industrial mind you, but this would be a rather trivial machine which could probably replace that entire production line? You might know more than me about it though :)
    - taligent 14y ago
      That's a 'trivial machine' that you have to design, implement, test and most importantly maintain. Humans don't have those sort of problems.
      - drharris 14y ago
        Training, QA, lunch breaks, maximum daily working hours, overtime, etc. There are benefits and losses on both sides.
    - drharris 14y ago
      I know a bit on automation, work R&D in a factory. There's no doubt that it's cheaper in the long run, even with costs related to programming, testing, maintenance, and tweaking. But rushing untested robotics into production will almost certainly increase the costs above manual labor. It's better to maintain the current line while you test out the automation, gradually train workers to monitor systems, and switch over one line at a time. This particular story (painting dots) seems like a great case for automation, so I'd suspect they're working on it. Also keep in mind that sometimes, manual labor trumps robotics. Let's say there will be 70 million of these backplates shipped, and then no more will be needed. That's a lot of automation investment in a solution for a temporary product. Workers can move from one task to the next with ease, while robotics require a lot of development, logistics, and testing. For a company like Foxconn that will always be manufacturing different things, the investment in human labor might allow for more "pivoting" than robotics. Comes down to what makes the most business sense for them.
smoyer 14y ago
What's amazing to me is that they can actually manually make a device that, at least on the outside has almost perfect fit-and-finish. You'd think the inaccuracies would accumulate and produce the typical cheap knock-off look.
- damian2000 14y ago
  I don't think they make the backplate manually ... they're just putting some sort of pen mark on it ... probably in preparation for some other process down the line.
amalag 14y ago
So are Chinese upset at Apple, Foxconn, their government, their situation, or their communist totalitarian system?
- taligent 14y ago
  None of the above. They want work. And this is work that is much better than flipping burgers at McDonalds. Remember that some of these people might end up designing and producing the products of the future as well. I know if I was 18 I would jump at the chance to take a job like this.
kokey 14y ago
The interesting part here is that they have 48 low paid workers with some good QA instead of setting up a robot to do a particular task. Setting up automation will become quicker and cheaper, forcing the labour alternative to become even cheaper and more demanding to compete with that. This is what is happening. As this progresses, fewer people will be willing to work for that pay or under those conditions. Then these jobs will go away. This is a good thing, but bad if you are used to slower technological progress where you can always make ends meet by taking up some low paid low skill jobs.
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Anyone who has significant issues with this needs to stop buying anything marked made in China. There are some interesting bits in there from the perspective of understanding the manufacturing process, but in terms of the worker conditions and so on, it's nothing new and anyone for whom this is news has presumably been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years and making a concious effort not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply. That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  >That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers. I presume Apple has the largest clout with Foxconn and can essentially demand better worker conditions from them. Other companies may not have as much leverage, though I agree there needs to be more awareness about things like laptops, XBox, and PS3.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Apple may be Foxconn's biggest customer but this isn't just Foxconn and it isn't just China. Put this in the perspective it really needs - what percentage of Asia's comparable manufacturing output do you think Apple accounts for? And now consider that it's not just Asia, it's countries all over South and Central America and Eastern Europe. A friend of mine used to be a town planner and part of his job was getting planning permission for new McDonald's sites. When you're pitching to the relevant authorities in the UK, you're under no obligation to reveal who your customer is, just the basic nature of the business (in this case fast food restaurant). But, he said, they would often hint (in a deniable manner obviously) that they were representing Burger King because McDonald's had such a bad reputation. That reputation while largely deserved, distinguished them only from what we'd want them to be like, not from their competitors. Any fast food chain on that scale at a corporate level is largely indistinguishable from McDonald's - it's how they remain competitive. But McDonalds' rep meant that they got the kicking so people would rather have a (morally identical) Burger King in their town. Cosmetically a win perhaps, in reality nothing got any better anywhere. What I'm saying in a very roundabout way, if you boycott Apple, if all you do is move your custom to another organisation who are no better, you've made close to no difference at all. If this really bothers you, then you probably need to look further afield for your next smartphone or PC or tablet than the next big player.
relix 14y ago
$2 an hour? That's more than minimum wage in Estonia, a European Union country with most likely higher cost of living than China.
- sp332 14y ago
  That was his pay for overtime. I don't think they were paying him time-and-a-half, in fact I think they probably paid him less for the overtime. So I'm guessing he made more than $2/hr for most of that 10 days.
  - knwang 14y ago
    Foxxcoon pays about 400 USD a month - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-rais... and if that's for 7 days a week 10 hours a day as the reporter said, that's 300 hours.. so 1.33 dollars per hour. BTW, the typical salary range for a junior Ruby dev in a second or third tier city in China is about 800 - 1600 USD per month. Just to put things in perspectives
    - sp332 14y ago
      I'm not sure that gives any perspective. It's pretty obvious that any kind of "skilled labor" like programming will pay better than "unskilled labor" like making oil dots on a piece of aluminum.
      - knwang 14y ago
        The point is that just on salary, it's not bad at all, for where the factory is. But they work a lot more hours.
        knwang 14y ago
        And to put the "working hours" thing in perspective, it is typical in cities like Shenzhen to work their programmers 10 hours a day, five and a half days a week. So what sounds like horrible from a Western perspective may not be "too horrible" in the local sense. Remember, all those workers volunteered to work there and they can leave as they want. Sure, it's unbearable for some white collared journalist from Shanghai, but what about someone otherwise would have to plant rice in the field under the sun, or go down a tunnel to mine coal?
chaostheory 14y ago
The part I find strange is a reporter, who lives in a totalitarian country, was able to do an expose. I wonder how he got authorization?
- arrrg 14y ago
  China is not totalitarian. It's a prime example of an authoritarian regime. Of course, in the end it's all just a spectrum. Totalitarian regimes are just very extreme authoritarian regimes. Modern China, however, is far from being comparable to historic or current totalitarian regimes.
  - chaostheory 14y ago
    Well I'm still surprised an authoritarian regime, or however anyone would classify China, would allow such an exposé.
jstalin 14y ago
Yet, working there is still better than manual labor and malnutrition in the countryside...
api 14y ago
I think we need conscious consumerism in the electronics industry just like we have now in food, clothing, etc. I think a lot of people would consider electronics made with first-world labor practices and livable wages. It would be a bit more expensive and niche at first, but it would make an impression. This is an area where Google and/or an Android vendor could make a splash. "Fair trade" gadgets?
mun2mun 14y ago
People who are in disgust in Foxconn incident should also look into the factories where cloths they were wearing are made http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-18-2012/cambodia-garment-worker-justice/11033/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-18-20.... It is standard rule in capitalization. Businesses have to get goods/materials from the cheapest source available. No questions asked about how the supplier achieves it as long as it doesn't get worse. And yes, this article is pure propaganda stunt.
- yread 14y ago
  And sometimes suppliers also save on fire safety with some disastrous consequences http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/pakistan-factory-fires-karachi-lahore http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/pakistan-factory...
deelowe 14y ago
This "journalist" puts 1 single Chinese company under a microscope and incites people of first world nations to pick up their pitch forks and torches in protest. Sure the conditions at Foxconn are terrible in comparison to my world view, but I'm not Chinese and my world view is irrelevant here. You know how I know this article is trash? This statement right here: "It also appears that windows have had bars put over them in an attempt to cut down on suicides." The suicide thing was covered pretty well recently and my recollection was that the workers of Foxconn were threatening suicide in a round about way of collective bargaining. Foxconn handled the situation very poorly and it's been a huge fiasco ever since. My understanding from the follow-up articles I read is that there is nothing abnormal about actual suicide rates at Foxconn when compared to any other company. Let's be real here. What matters is how Foxconn compares to other Chinese factories. For all I know, Foxconn could be providing better pay, better living conditions, and better benefits than every other Chinese company. However, since there's nothing in this article to give me a better perspective, I have no way of knowing. There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers. Don't blame Foxconn simply because they make Apple products when they are doing the same thing as every other Chinese company. Also, what's with this fixation on Foxconn and Apple? Foxconn does a whole hell of a lot more than just assembling ipads and iphones. I'm sure Apple accounts for but a small fraction of their total revenue.
- varelse 14y ago
  Apple is the market leader. Therefore they're a lightning rod for this sort of criticism. Stated without proof but I'd be surprised if conditions building any other device over there anywhere else are any better... As others have said, if you truly don't approve of these practices, then stop buying the end products of them...
- jonknee 14y ago
  You're not Chinese, but the "journalist" as you say is. This wasn't a Western hit piece.
  - 14y ago
senthilnayagam 14y ago
it is a underpaid sweat shop worker in a developing country or a robotic manufacturing in a developed nation, one thing for sure manufacturing jobs are not coming back to America. there is empirical evidence to suggest very successful companies get more bad press, Apple(for foxconn working conditions), Amazon(for temp warehouse jobs) being leading example.
podperson 14y ago
This sounds horrible. I would hate to do it. But it actually sounds much less bad than working in an order fulfillment warehouse in the United States (at least you can go home to sleep, I guess). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f... Amazon is a market leader too, and there's almost no coverage of how it treats its workers. Likewise Google and Samsung (the latter is considered unusually bad, having engaged in coverups).
- guelo 14y ago
  America's 40 hour work week, overtime rules, break requirements, chemical handling safety rules and a bunch of other OSHA regulations make the worst American job infinitely better.
aneth4 14y ago
A few things to note: - The job was taken voluntarily - The employee can resign at any time - The pay is not horrible. $2/hr for overtime is very high for China, and much higher than could be made at most jobs outside of professional occupations in major cities. Working in a factory in China is not a glorious undertaking, but it is not (in this case) slave labor nor is it unethical. The author suggests robots could do this, but instead they use humans - as if it were a horrible thing to voluntarily employ humans. Do you think those earning a living there would prefer to be fired and replaced by robots? There are horrible situations in China - like the gulag prison labor system. There are certainly factories where children are put to work unethically and illegally (as there are in the US). This article however exposes nothing alarming.
- sjwright 14y ago
  This. And besides, isn't Apple something like 0.001% of Chinese manufacturing output? Apple isn't the problem; if anything Apple may well be the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn.
  - AndyNemmity 14y ago
    And Apple is the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn because of articles like this.
    - sjwright 14y ago
      I guess all Apple could ask is that we share the love. :-D
deleted 14y ago
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PetrolMan 14y ago
Forget Apple for a moment. I don't understand why so many people are trying to defend the working conditions. Fine, the conditions may be considered fine in the context of China. That does not make them acceptable; it just means that the working conditions in China as a whole are bad. If I'm honest, I had not ever considered the plight of the Chinese factory worker. I use things everyday that are manufactured in China under conditions that might be worse than those at Foxconn. That being said, this article was useful in that it opened my eyes a bit. This isn't to say that I thought the working conditions were probably great. I just had never considered them at all. It's quite easy to live in a bubble and sometimes articles like this help break out of it.
adrianwaj 14y ago
There should be a site: foxconnsponsors.com - something akin to sponsoring a child (World Vision). Maybe Apple can setup the site - iWorkers.com and you get to see pictures through your iPhone of how these iWorkers' lives have been transformed through iWorkers.com. Heck, make it accept bitcoins.
qdpb 14y ago
> There’s also details given of 70 ways you can incur a penalty, but only 13 ways to earn a reward. To be fair, at my job it's more like 100 and 1.
mortalkastor 14y ago
I'm appalled by the comments here. The consensus seems to be that the terrible working condition of the people making our favorite gadgets doesn't matter and shouldn't get coverage because you can find even poorer conditions in the same country. Fucking hippies lamenting over the lot of a few Chinese working 10 h/day in a toxic prison factory while they are not even totally enslaved.
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
I like how how they try to point those things back at Apple, but the fact is, everything built on China is the same. Foxconn is rich because they do that, and China is rich because all factories do that. China is a regime, and it's convenient for the west that it stays that way. It's a source of inexpensive labour force and a place you can pollute building your gadgets. If they were to follow the most strict rules from EU/US, there's no way in hell that you would have access to cheap electronics. Now I ask: would you exchange first world conditions for those workers for more expensive products? The majority of us consumers don't have a clue, we just go for what has a good cost/benefit. Ethics often isn't a factor on where we spend our money.
staunch 14y ago
It'd be so amazing if Apple decided to move all their manufacturing to the US. It seems impossible, but it's Apple, they have the money and ability to do it. It might take 10 years and lower their margins in the short-term, but I bet through automation they could eventually achieve parity with outsourcing. Not to mention that federal/state/local governments would be willing to grant massive incentives to make it happen. Hell, they could even add an optional $50 Made In America fee to every device for a while and a huge number of people would pay it. Like every other technology hardware company they're addicted to cheap labor. Super automated factories are obviously where things are headed. Apple could lead the way in yet another way. In fact it's one thing Tim Cook could probably get done even better than Steve Jobs could have.
jlmendezbonini 14y ago
I recommended everyone to watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_... "In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of workers -- the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China's booming megacities, and tells their stories."
gambiting 14y ago
I quite literally get sick reading this. In Poland, which is in the middle of Europe,and which is a part of European Union and all, there are people who don't earn as much per hour as guys at Foxconn do. It's not uncommon for people to earn 5PLN/hour,which is actually less than 2 USD/hour. And these guys get 4 dollars per hour, have a place to stay,a place to do sports and food to eat, and you call it inhumane and horrible? I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself,not everybody lives in highly developed countries like UK and US, not earning 20 dollars/hour is not the end of the world, like seriously.
madmaze 14y ago
Here is a very interesting story on the flip side of this article http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_...
sapuser 14y ago
Some of the commentary is sad. Injustice is injustice no matter where it happens. The reality is that masses of people in third world countries are exploited and they don't have very many options to do otherwise. The governments and multinational companies are very interested in maintaining this status quo -- that is how you can earn billion (get cheap labor for low costs and sell at high prices). Apple doesn't sell their products at 1/5th the price in the US to reflect the local rates (for that matter most things like a Mercedes would sell for the same international price). The point is that a large section of world population is denied many benefits simply because where they are (think about the quality of medical treatment in the US vs a place like China or India or Uganda). It is in one's interest to ensure access to all such services/products at low cost (subsidized by someone else) while ensuring comparatively high compensation due to residence in a first world nation. Hopefully the inequity will grow smaller over time.
lexarchy 14y ago
Given the dominant ideology and his political incentives, I would no more trust an undercover journalist's report about Foxconn than I would an undercover 17th-century Protestant's report about the Vatican.

204 points by ukdm 14y ago

After the mess that was the last Apple Foxconn story, and with all the economic pressure that affects newspapers & news media, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe stories like these. It's not that I don't suppose that there're bad working conditions at Foxconn - there probably are. No, it's that even if the journalist in this story managed to sneak in, and work there, he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic. Otherwise, nobody would be interested in it, nobody would read it, and there'd be no money. I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous. The decline of advertising money and newspaper subscriptions has lead to a decline of journalistic integrity and objectivism, I think. Addendum, I studied journalism & communication, most of my friends are journalists, and I'd say they try hard, but the economic pressure sounds untenable sometimes. Some of them earn so little money, that I wonder how they even manage to pay rent.

paulerdos 14y ago
It is hard to know who to believe. The journalist who has something to gain by exaggerating the suffering of the workers, or the company which has much more to gain by hiding the suffering. The truth is somewhere in between. Based on the Foxconn on-the-job-site suicide rate being significantly higher than other on-the-job-site suicide rates (important to compare apples-with-apples, no pun intended), the truth probably lies closer to the journalist version.
- misnome 14y ago
  If you are comparing apples-to-apples, then surely you should weight your statement on who to believe by how easy it is for each person to exaggerate/hide. It's super easy for a journalist to exaggerate something like this, with relatively little risk for a massive gain. On the other hand, a "Company" hiding things involves many, many more people involved in the conspiracy, and the penalty for failure isn't really that much (how many decades of big-companies-with-bad-working-conditions stories have we had?). It also doesn't give any sense of context - how reliable the newspaper is, what the average working conditions are for that class of facility, etc etc. Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story.
  - smoyer 14y ago
    "Apples-to-apples" ... perfect wording!
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story. The story is about making an iPhone 5, which is expected to boost the GDP of the US. http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-apple-iphone-gpd-jpmorgan-20120911,0,6089094.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-apple-iphone-... As we're constantly reminded by the Apple blogs and on here, Apple takes 75% of the profits in the phone industry and have huge margins which their competitors can't come close to, so isn't it logical that Apple gets more of the bad press for bad working conditions since they are in the best position to improve the workers' pathetic work and living environment?
  - paulerdos 14y ago
    You raise a seemingly valid point. But, your data seems to be different than mine. Many companies, especially large multi-national ones have an excellent track record of media manipulation and the ability to successfully hide massive problems. Think about how rare whistle blowers are. Easy example that I was personally affected by: Vioxx from Merck where Merck knew about the problems with the drug but pushed it through anyway and got away with it for years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/ns/health-arthritis/t/report-vioxx-linked-thousands-deaths/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/ns/health-arthritis/t/re... . Think about big tobacco, think about Chiquita and its activities in Columbia, think about Dow Chemical/Union Carbide...
- glenra 14y ago
  What evidence suggests the suicide rate for Foxconn workers is "significantly higher" than would otherwise be expected? Near as I can tell, the only complaint is that there was a large raw number of suicides a while ago...in a company so huge it has more workers than the population of Wyoming. Last time I looked it up, the suicide rate there seemed to be lower than the rate among chinese people, lower than the rate among chinese college students, lower than the rate among US factory workers and so on. And that problem was largely in the past, not an ongoing issue.
  - paulerdos 14y ago
    "lower than the rate among US factory workers". This is a common comparison fallacy. The baserates you appear to be comparing with are all general population baserate. The baserate that I was thinking about was how many factory workers committed suicide on-site. That is the Apples-to-Apples comparison. Eg: How many Apple employees committed suicide on campus vs how many Foxconn employees committed suicide at their factory camp/dorm.
    - glenra 14y ago
      That is NOT a relevant comparison. Foxconn employees live in dormitories on-site while US factory workers don't, so you'd essentially be trying to compare ALL the suicides of Foxconn employees to SOME of the suicides of other workers. (Though I'm not sure they'd fail even THAT comparison.) If I recall correctly, even the rate at which Americans are murdered on the job is higher than the rate at which Foxconn employees commit suicide there. So if you want to keep claiming there's something uniquely bad about Foxcon in this regard, let's hear some actual numbers from you. What specific numbers are you looking at that lead you to believe Foxconn is unusually bad?
norswap 14y ago
tl;dr You don't anything about this (I don't either) but you doubt it because there is "economic pressure". Right. The same comment can apply to every single item posted to this website, yoohoo.
- terhechte 14y ago
  I'm not talking about the rest of this site, I'm talking about journalism in particular, and how it changed compared to 1-2 decades ago. There's a huge difference between startup blog posts (which are for example other items posted here) and journalism, as a fourth constitutional force: Responsible for educating the people in an objective and truthful way, so they can form their own opinions, express their ideas, and thus participate in politics (by that I do't mean working in Washington. Lookup Habermas). In short, journalism should rinse democracy. I fear that this function (actually the only relevant function that journalism enjoys, imho) is less and less fulfilled. I just took the doubts I have about this article as an example of that. A working journalistic system shouldn't have to fear really hard economic pressure, otherwise it can't work correctly anymore. This relates to all other contents on this site as well, as long as they're journalistic and not public relations.
eckyptang 14y ago
It's probably true and there's nothing Apple or anyone can do about it apart from stop selling things. I dealt with several Chinese manufacturers in the late 1990's who were doing custom PCB runs for one of our products. They treated their staff like shit then and hid it all under the rug when you went to see them. They wheeled out the turd polish in double-quick time. I don't think it's changed and I don't think it will change unless people on the production lines just say "no". This has happened in the textile industry over there (according to my cousin who is an importer of textiles) and staff are earning great rates now. The cheaper staff are in Mexico and India now. Regarding the money - the cost of living is pretty damn cheap over there by their standards. Note: I don't like buying products myself which are responsible for this sort of thing, but I'm not that sympathetic. As for the journalists - they are as full of crap as the factory bosses are.
- damian2000 14y ago
  Its probably not in the same league in terms of numbers, but its impressive that the Raspberry Pi foundation just announced recently that they are now manufacturing their computers at home, in the UK, and maintaining the same retail price. So with advanced technologies and automation, plus some determination, there is something they can do. Its also revealing that the RPi foundation is non-profit so they aren't trying to maintain a bottom line. http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925
tatsuke95 14y ago
>"I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous." You really think piss-poor working conditions in Second-World factories are "unheard of and outrageous"? It's been going on for centuries. Sure, this story was impeccably timed, and I'm sure there are liberties taken here and there, but that's because running a magazine/newspaper is a business. That doesn't provide carte blanche to deny that there is truth behind the writing. I think it's a dangerous precedent when the populace begins to say, "you can't believe the media". In fact, I'm sure that there are terrible governments around the world that would love the population to think that way. I'm a big believer in capitalism and globalization, so I think that, net, having these factories in China is beneficial. But I also don't disclaim that they are probably horrible, unhealthy places to work. How much responsibility is Apple's, and how much is China's is the important question.
- terhechte 14y ago
  I also think that it's dangerous to not trust media anymore. I was expressing my fear that that might happen. I don't think the working conditions are outrageous, I also don't think that they're piss-poor though. Relative to the environment (china) they may be not so bad. I was saying that media is trying to market it as outrageous to generate higher sales. This may be a cultural thing, but while I do believe in free markets and capitalism, I think that there're certain parts of society which need to be handled separately as the optimization for economic success (the cheaper the better) doesn't fare well (imho) with health and media. I like the approach of the UK, where the BBC is state paid but not state controlled. But this is a huge separate discussion and I can understand different viewpoints here and I'm afraid it's often about cultural differences which viewpoint we chose.
- csense 14y ago
  > centuries "Industrialization of China did occur on a significant scale only from the 1950s, in the Maoist Great Leap Forward." [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_China
sequoia 14y ago
he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic. Are you basing this accusation on something or just pulling it out of thin air? You probably cheat on tests, steal other people's ideas, and slack off at work so everyone else has to work harder to accommodate you. Baseless accusations don't feel good, do they?
- terhechte 14y ago
  No, I based it on a general feeling based on several other stories like the 'This American Life' Foxconn report. I'm also not saying that he is lying, just that he is distorting reality. Finally, I wasn't trying to write about this author in particular, but more about general journalism. I may well be wrong there, but I tried to express an opinion based on a theory (explained in the post) that economic pressure can lead to a lower quality of journalistic output. My examples of hyperbole & more were, then, just examples of typical traits of said process. It's well known, that journalistic outlets of less quality (Sun in the UK, Fox News in the US, BILD in Germany, etc) do just what I explained above: They add unnecessary hyperbole, shift facts & more - as long as the story sells. I was just expressing that less money may lead to less quality.

sneak 14y ago

Gee, I wonder why this was released today.

mtgx 14y ago
Maximum impact.

corin_ 14y ago

> The work is clearly very stressful and the pay is terrible. The example the journalist gave was two hours of overtime earning him just $4. Can anyone give any context of how bad this actually is? Obviously it's not as terrible as if somebody got paid $4 for two hours of overtime here in the UK, in terms of average wage and typical cost of living, but no idea how much less bad it is..

nicholassmith 14y ago
Depending on where the factory is it's either good, bad or totally average. China seems to have multiple minimum wages for different areas.
molmalo 14y ago
In May, Foxconn’s base salary was $350 per month [1] So, $350 / 22 working days (per month aprox, assuming 2 days of weekend, I don't know if they have 1 or 2) => $15.9 per day. / 10 hours per day => $1.59 per hour Earning $2 for every extra hour... is like earning 1/3 extra per hour. Just to compare, here in Argentina, every extra hour is paid double by law. But I don't know if this is regulated in China... Anyway, given the kind of job, I wouldn't try to stimulate working extra hours, as attention would decrease too much for this kind of monotonous and precision work. So, it makes sense that they pay little for overtime work. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/iphone-manufacturer-foxconn-to-double-worker-salaries-by-2013/438 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/iphone-manufacturer-foxconn-...
alexlawford 14y ago
It's not too bad. That works out at about 12.5 RMB / hour, more than someone would make working a night shift at KFC here in Guizhou (I expect in Shen Zhen it would be a little higher). I work at a coffee shop owned by my friend here; 6 - 10 RMB / hour is quite typical for unskilled labour. Also, chances are that these factory workers have free accomodation and subsidised food which makes a significant difference. The journalist also notes that "there aren’t enough workers to fill the positions at the factory as they keep resigning". This doesn't neccessarily mean its a bad place to work. I hardly have any friends that haven't quit at least one job in the last year or two. Modern Chinese culture -- particularly among young people -- accepts quitting your job, messing around for a few months ("playing" in Chinese) and then finding another as quite normal.

bgraves 14y ago

The Apple Supplier Responsibility 2012 Progress Report [1] is worth a read. [1] http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2012_Progress_Report.pdf http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_...

tluyben2 14y ago

If that is true, why don't they have robots already? I know they are planning[1], however that kind of work seems to be very easily replaced by a robot (who will have a far higher accuracy and less failure rate than humans especially for the task the journalist describes). [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/foxconn-to-replace-human-workers-with-one-million-robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot...

drharris 14y ago
Simple; it's cheaper in the near-term. Keep production flowing while you figure out the automation side.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  But for this PARTICULAR example, is it cheaper? I know a bit about robot hacking, not industrial mind you, but this would be a rather trivial machine which could probably replace that entire production line? You might know more than me about it though :)
  - taligent 14y ago
    That's a 'trivial machine' that you have to design, implement, test and most importantly maintain. Humans don't have those sort of problems.
    - drharris 14y ago
      Training, QA, lunch breaks, maximum daily working hours, overtime, etc. There are benefits and losses on both sides.
  - drharris 14y ago
    I know a bit on automation, work R&D in a factory. There's no doubt that it's cheaper in the long run, even with costs related to programming, testing, maintenance, and tweaking. But rushing untested robotics into production will almost certainly increase the costs above manual labor. It's better to maintain the current line while you test out the automation, gradually train workers to monitor systems, and switch over one line at a time. This particular story (painting dots) seems like a great case for automation, so I'd suspect they're working on it. Also keep in mind that sometimes, manual labor trumps robotics. Let's say there will be 70 million of these backplates shipped, and then no more will be needed. That's a lot of automation investment in a solution for a temporary product. Workers can move from one task to the next with ease, while robotics require a lot of development, logistics, and testing. For a company like Foxconn that will always be manufacturing different things, the investment in human labor might allow for more "pivoting" than robotics. Comes down to what makes the most business sense for them.

smoyer 14y ago

What's amazing to me is that they can actually manually make a device that, at least on the outside has almost perfect fit-and-finish. You'd think the inaccuracies would accumulate and produce the typical cheap knock-off look.

damian2000 14y ago
I don't think they make the backplate manually ... they're just putting some sort of pen mark on it ... probably in preparation for some other process down the line.

amalag 14y ago

So are Chinese upset at Apple, Foxconn, their government, their situation, or their communist totalitarian system?

taligent 14y ago
None of the above. They want work. And this is work that is much better than flipping burgers at McDonalds. Remember that some of these people might end up designing and producing the products of the future as well. I know if I was 18 I would jump at the chance to take a job like this.

kokey 14y ago

The interesting part here is that they have 48 low paid workers with some good QA instead of setting up a robot to do a particular task. Setting up automation will become quicker and cheaper, forcing the labour alternative to become even cheaper and more demanding to compete with that. This is what is happening. As this progresses, fewer people will be willing to work for that pay or under those conditions. Then these jobs will go away. This is a good thing, but bad if you are used to slower technological progress where you can always make ends meet by taking up some low paid low skill jobs.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

Anyone who has significant issues with this needs to stop buying anything marked made in China. There are some interesting bits in there from the perspective of understanding the manufacturing process, but in terms of the worker conditions and so on, it's nothing new and anyone for whom this is news has presumably been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years and making a concious effort not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply. That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.

recoiledsnake 14y ago
>That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers. I presume Apple has the largest clout with Foxconn and can essentially demand better worker conditions from them. Other companies may not have as much leverage, though I agree there needs to be more awareness about things like laptops, XBox, and PS3.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Apple may be Foxconn's biggest customer but this isn't just Foxconn and it isn't just China. Put this in the perspective it really needs - what percentage of Asia's comparable manufacturing output do you think Apple accounts for? And now consider that it's not just Asia, it's countries all over South and Central America and Eastern Europe. A friend of mine used to be a town planner and part of his job was getting planning permission for new McDonald's sites. When you're pitching to the relevant authorities in the UK, you're under no obligation to reveal who your customer is, just the basic nature of the business (in this case fast food restaurant). But, he said, they would often hint (in a deniable manner obviously) that they were representing Burger King because McDonald's had such a bad reputation. That reputation while largely deserved, distinguished them only from what we'd want them to be like, not from their competitors. Any fast food chain on that scale at a corporate level is largely indistinguishable from McDonald's - it's how they remain competitive. But McDonalds' rep meant that they got the kicking so people would rather have a (morally identical) Burger King in their town. Cosmetically a win perhaps, in reality nothing got any better anywhere. What I'm saying in a very roundabout way, if you boycott Apple, if all you do is move your custom to another organisation who are no better, you've made close to no difference at all. If this really bothers you, then you probably need to look further afield for your next smartphone or PC or tablet than the next big player.

relix 14y ago

$2 an hour? That's more than minimum wage in Estonia, a European Union country with most likely higher cost of living than China.

sp332 14y ago
That was his pay for overtime. I don't think they were paying him time-and-a-half, in fact I think they probably paid him less for the overtime. So I'm guessing he made more than $2/hr for most of that 10 days.
- knwang 14y ago
  Foxxcoon pays about 400 USD a month - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-rais... and if that's for 7 days a week 10 hours a day as the reporter said, that's 300 hours.. so 1.33 dollars per hour. BTW, the typical salary range for a junior Ruby dev in a second or third tier city in China is about 800 - 1600 USD per month. Just to put things in perspectives
  - sp332 14y ago
    I'm not sure that gives any perspective. It's pretty obvious that any kind of "skilled labor" like programming will pay better than "unskilled labor" like making oil dots on a piece of aluminum.
    - knwang 14y ago
      The point is that just on salary, it's not bad at all, for where the factory is. But they work a lot more hours.
      - knwang 14y ago
        And to put the "working hours" thing in perspective, it is typical in cities like Shenzhen to work their programmers 10 hours a day, five and a half days a week. So what sounds like horrible from a Western perspective may not be "too horrible" in the local sense. Remember, all those workers volunteered to work there and they can leave as they want. Sure, it's unbearable for some white collared journalist from Shanghai, but what about someone otherwise would have to plant rice in the field under the sun, or go down a tunnel to mine coal?

chaostheory 14y ago

The part I find strange is a reporter, who lives in a totalitarian country, was able to do an expose. I wonder how he got authorization?

arrrg 14y ago
China is not totalitarian. It's a prime example of an authoritarian regime. Of course, in the end it's all just a spectrum. Totalitarian regimes are just very extreme authoritarian regimes. Modern China, however, is far from being comparable to historic or current totalitarian regimes.
- chaostheory 14y ago
  Well I'm still surprised an authoritarian regime, or however anyone would classify China, would allow such an exposé.

jstalin 14y ago

Yet, working there is still better than manual labor and malnutrition in the countryside...

api 14y ago

I think we need conscious consumerism in the electronics industry just like we have now in food, clothing, etc. I think a lot of people would consider electronics made with first-world labor practices and livable wages. It would be a bit more expensive and niche at first, but it would make an impression. This is an area where Google and/or an Android vendor could make a splash. "Fair trade" gadgets?

mun2mun 14y ago

People who are in disgust in Foxconn incident should also look into the factories where cloths they were wearing are made http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-18-2012/cambodia-garment-worker-justice/11033/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-18-20.... It is standard rule in capitalization. Businesses have to get goods/materials from the cheapest source available. No questions asked about how the supplier achieves it as long as it doesn't get worse. And yes, this article is pure propaganda stunt.

yread 14y ago
And sometimes suppliers also save on fire safety with some disastrous consequences http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/pakistan-factory-fires-karachi-lahore http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/pakistan-factory...

deelowe 14y ago

This "journalist" puts 1 single Chinese company under a microscope and incites people of first world nations to pick up their pitch forks and torches in protest. Sure the conditions at Foxconn are terrible in comparison to my world view, but I'm not Chinese and my world view is irrelevant here. You know how I know this article is trash? This statement right here: "It also appears that windows have had bars put over them in an attempt to cut down on suicides." The suicide thing was covered pretty well recently and my recollection was that the workers of Foxconn were threatening suicide in a round about way of collective bargaining. Foxconn handled the situation very poorly and it's been a huge fiasco ever since. My understanding from the follow-up articles I read is that there is nothing abnormal about actual suicide rates at Foxconn when compared to any other company. Let's be real here. What matters is how Foxconn compares to other Chinese factories. For all I know, Foxconn could be providing better pay, better living conditions, and better benefits than every other Chinese company. However, since there's nothing in this article to give me a better perspective, I have no way of knowing. There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers. Don't blame Foxconn simply because they make Apple products when they are doing the same thing as every other Chinese company. Also, what's with this fixation on Foxconn and Apple? Foxconn does a whole hell of a lot more than just assembling ipads and iphones. I'm sure Apple accounts for but a small fraction of their total revenue.

varelse 14y ago
Apple is the market leader. Therefore they're a lightning rod for this sort of criticism. Stated without proof but I'd be surprised if conditions building any other device over there anywhere else are any better... As others have said, if you truly don't approve of these practices, then stop buying the end products of them...
jonknee 14y ago
You're not Chinese, but the "journalist" as you say is. This wasn't a Western hit piece.
- 14y ago

senthilnayagam 14y ago

it is a underpaid sweat shop worker in a developing country or a robotic manufacturing in a developed nation, one thing for sure manufacturing jobs are not coming back to America. there is empirical evidence to suggest very successful companies get more bad press, Apple(for foxconn working conditions), Amazon(for temp warehouse jobs) being leading example.

podperson 14y ago

This sounds horrible. I would hate to do it. But it actually sounds much less bad than working in an order fulfillment warehouse in the United States (at least you can go home to sleep, I guess). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f... Amazon is a market leader too, and there's almost no coverage of how it treats its workers. Likewise Google and Samsung (the latter is considered unusually bad, having engaged in coverups).

guelo 14y ago
America's 40 hour work week, overtime rules, break requirements, chemical handling safety rules and a bunch of other OSHA regulations make the worst American job infinitely better.

aneth4 14y ago

A few things to note: - The job was taken voluntarily - The employee can resign at any time - The pay is not horrible. $2/hr for overtime is very high for China, and much higher than could be made at most jobs outside of professional occupations in major cities. Working in a factory in China is not a glorious undertaking, but it is not (in this case) slave labor nor is it unethical. The author suggests robots could do this, but instead they use humans - as if it were a horrible thing to voluntarily employ humans. Do you think those earning a living there would prefer to be fired and replaced by robots? There are horrible situations in China - like the gulag prison labor system. There are certainly factories where children are put to work unethically and illegally (as there are in the US). This article however exposes nothing alarming.

sjwright 14y ago
This. And besides, isn't Apple something like 0.001% of Chinese manufacturing output? Apple isn't the problem; if anything Apple may well be the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn.
- AndyNemmity 14y ago
  And Apple is the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn because of articles like this.
  - sjwright 14y ago
    I guess all Apple could ask is that we share the love. :-D

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

PetrolMan 14y ago

Forget Apple for a moment. I don't understand why so many people are trying to defend the working conditions. Fine, the conditions may be considered fine in the context of China. That does not make them acceptable; it just means that the working conditions in China as a whole are bad. If I'm honest, I had not ever considered the plight of the Chinese factory worker. I use things everyday that are manufactured in China under conditions that might be worse than those at Foxconn. That being said, this article was useful in that it opened my eyes a bit. This isn't to say that I thought the working conditions were probably great. I just had never considered them at all. It's quite easy to live in a bubble and sometimes articles like this help break out of it.

adrianwaj 14y ago

There should be a site: foxconnsponsors.com - something akin to sponsoring a child (World Vision). Maybe Apple can setup the site - iWorkers.com and you get to see pictures through your iPhone of how these iWorkers' lives have been transformed through iWorkers.com. Heck, make it accept bitcoins.

qdpb 14y ago

> There’s also details given of 70 ways you can incur a penalty, but only 13 ways to earn a reward. To be fair, at my job it's more like 100 and 1.

mortalkastor 14y ago

I'm appalled by the comments here. The consensus seems to be that the terrible working condition of the people making our favorite gadgets doesn't matter and shouldn't get coverage because you can find even poorer conditions in the same country. Fucking hippies lamenting over the lot of a few Chinese working 10 h/day in a toxic prison factory while they are not even totally enslaved.

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

I like how how they try to point those things back at Apple, but the fact is, everything built on China is the same. Foxconn is rich because they do that, and China is rich because all factories do that. China is a regime, and it's convenient for the west that it stays that way. It's a source of inexpensive labour force and a place you can pollute building your gadgets. If they were to follow the most strict rules from EU/US, there's no way in hell that you would have access to cheap electronics. Now I ask: would you exchange first world conditions for those workers for more expensive products? The majority of us consumers don't have a clue, we just go for what has a good cost/benefit. Ethics often isn't a factor on where we spend our money.

staunch 14y ago

It'd be so amazing if Apple decided to move all their manufacturing to the US. It seems impossible, but it's Apple, they have the money and ability to do it. It might take 10 years and lower their margins in the short-term, but I bet through automation they could eventually achieve parity with outsourcing. Not to mention that federal/state/local governments would be willing to grant massive incentives to make it happen. Hell, they could even add an optional $50 Made In America fee to every device for a while and a huge number of people would pay it. Like every other technology hardware company they're addicted to cheap labor. Super automated factories are obviously where things are headed. Apple could lead the way in yet another way. In fact it's one thing Tim Cook could probably get done even better than Steve Jobs could have.

jlmendezbonini 14y ago

I recommended everyone to watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_... "In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of workers -- the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China's booming megacities, and tells their stories."

gambiting 14y ago

I quite literally get sick reading this. In Poland, which is in the middle of Europe,and which is a part of European Union and all, there are people who don't earn as much per hour as guys at Foxconn do. It's not uncommon for people to earn 5PLN/hour,which is actually less than 2 USD/hour. And these guys get 4 dollars per hour, have a place to stay,a place to do sports and food to eat, and you call it inhumane and horrible? I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself,not everybody lives in highly developed countries like UK and US, not earning 20 dollars/hour is not the end of the world, like seriously.

madmaze 14y ago

Here is a very interesting story on the flip side of this article http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_...

sapuser 14y ago

Some of the commentary is sad. Injustice is injustice no matter where it happens. The reality is that masses of people in third world countries are exploited and they don't have very many options to do otherwise. The governments and multinational companies are very interested in maintaining this status quo -- that is how you can earn billion (get cheap labor for low costs and sell at high prices). Apple doesn't sell their products at 1/5th the price in the US to reflect the local rates (for that matter most things like a Mercedes would sell for the same international price). The point is that a large section of world population is denied many benefits simply because where they are (think about the quality of medical treatment in the US vs a place like China or India or Uganda). It is in one's interest to ensure access to all such services/products at low cost (subsidized by someone else) while ensuring comparatively high compensation due to residence in a first world nation. Hopefully the inequity will grow smaller over time.

lexarchy 14y ago

Given the dominant ideology and his political incentives, I would no more trust an undercover journalist's report about Foxconn than I would an undercover 17th-century Protestant's report about the Vatican.