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Apple Computer Hoards Cash, Makes Products in Abusive Conditions
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Go to any gathering, and you’ll find nearly every person carrying an iPhone or an iPad, despite the Apple Computer’s dismal record on labor practices. Apple executives must be laughing all the way to the bank — their Swiss bank, that is.
In its fourth quarter earnings report released last week, Apple Computer revealed that 2/3 of its on-hand cash – some $54 billion — is squirreled away outside the boundaries of the United States, presumably to avoid paying its fair share of taxes. In the meantime, reports Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a Hong Kong-based group, Apple’s major manufacturing contractors routinely subject employees to forced overtime, wage theft and no breaks — and even unprotected exposure to toxins.
Apple, together with rival tech firm Google, have been lobbying for a “tax holiday” that would allow them to bring some of those billions into the U.S. at a lower tax rate, promising that to do so would create jobs. But, as we reported, a similar measure tried in 2004 created few jobs, and instead rewarded companies that had kept their money overseas. Where Apple has created jobs is in China, where the workers who make its slick products are made to work in deplorable conditions.
A new SACOM report, “The iSlave Behind the iPhone: Foxconn Workers in Central China,” examines conditions at the Apple Computer contractor’s plant since the suicides of nine workers last year made big news. One thing that has changed: workers were given a raise — to all of $1.18 an hour. But workers are often shorted overtime pay, SACOM reports, and Foxconn even illegally withheld, during the Chinese New Year, payment for overtime already worked in order to prevent workers from taking the traditional holiday to visit their families.
Most workers in these factories are migrants; the corporations deliberately build facilities in lower-populated areas where wages are lower. Not that labor costs account for much of the cost of an Apple product. According to Sophia Cheng, writing at the SACOM Web site:
Take the iPad, for example, which is the sole item produced at Foxconn’s 100,000-worker factory in Chengdu. Industry analyst iSuppli estimates that Apple spends only $9 on labor for every $499 iPad.
In SACOM’s latest report — whose release was timed to coincide with the opening of the first Apple Store in opulent Hong Kong — workers complain of deplorable dormitory conditions, where access to electricity and water is routinely cut, and of the exploitative fees they are made to pay to Foxconn for their room and board.
Workers say they are also made to stand for 10 hours at a time without taking breaks, and subjected to abusive behavior by supervisors, including being made to sign confessional letters when accused of making a mistake or infraction. In China, labor unions are run by the state, so when workers act on their own to strike, as they did at United Win, another Apple contractor, in 2010, they risk legal sanction.
Download the full report, The iSlave Behind the iPhone: “Foxconn Workers in Central China,” here in a PDF file.
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16 Comments
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To those people that sanctify Steve Jobs, how does this grab you? Jobs was no friend to workers. He was business, first, last and always. Apple wasn’t trying to make life easier for workers, it was working to make it easier to have employers work you harder. It was working to maximize profits above all else. The ordinary people were of no consideration to Jobs.
Yes, Apple does have lots of cash. Yes, Apple products are, unfortunately, made in Asia. However, Apple has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US and will continue to create more. I am a motion picture sound editor, IATSE 700, and I have worked on Macs constantly for over 20 years. I recently visited the Apple HQ at 1 Infinite Loop to meet friends who work for Apple. Apple has so many employees that the HQ cannot contain even half of them. They have had to rent and purchase office space all over Cupertino and that is still not enough space so many employees work at home. Apple has created huge numbers of ancillary industries all over the US and the world to create accessories, apps, etc. And they are now planning to build a huge new Headquarters in Cupertino which will bring thousands of construction jobs to Cupertino and eventually house over 8000 employees. Apple is not perfect, no company is, but unlike the “job creators” the Republicans like to spout about — Apple actually does create thousands of good jobs in the US. Now if only they’d build some factories in the US !!!!!
Sure Apple has a lot of people who are working in this country, but none of them are producers of products. They are the overhead that people who buy Apple products have to pay for. The only reason these jobs are not overseas is that then the bosses in this country would not be necessary. These bosses have to have a cheering crowed in order to justify their existence as a boss. Apple spends a lot more on television adds trying to convince people to buy their products than they pay the people who actually produce their products. This is why the Wall Street Protestors are trying to wake up our politicians and Wall Street Robber Barrons to threat their wealth producers with respect and pay a fair living wage. Also pay a fair tax that equals more than the lowest wage earner in the working class American work force.
Quala, they don’t even want to pay a “fair living wage”. They want slaves. Treat the people like they are nothing; make them feel worthless.
The following is what a man wrote almost TWENTY years ago–
The government and the rich people in this country don’t want you, the working man, to own anything or to fly on airlines on vacations alongside of them. They (the rich) think of us (the working man) as being lowlifes, who, by buying nice things, will cause their prices to go up, thus digging into their greedy pockets. The government and the rich would fix it so we, the working class, could no longer enjoy some of the finer things in life.
Corporations are making record profits, but God forbid that the working man get a pay raise–this will cause inflation.
It seems the government is working very hard to keep us down. We, the working people, are the majority and should be dictating to the government policies to be followed, not the rich.
Nothings really changed since 1992 except it has gotten worse. And I say again, it’s about world power—one world government.
People need to vote those in office out of office and keep doing it until ‘they’ do want they are being paid to do instead of trying to destroy our country.
Good points and I agree. Character is the courage to live by the values you profess to believe in. We have very little character in our Corporations, State governments, Federal governments and our Federal Regulatory agencies. Our “rulers” live in the Me instead of the We!
Wonderful posts, Social Frank and Quala. I won’t need to go into additional complaints against the Apple mantra which has so many people brainwashed by propaganda about how great Apple Computers are to PCs. A computer is still a computer and most of the workable patents — and even duplicating non-workable patents — for both Apple and PC computers are all taken up to eliminate competition by other better computers which could advance the science. But maybe that is a good thing, we do not need our computers to spy on us, as Microshit’s Windows as a hacker’s program does !!!
Whee! How do you respond to something like this? Obviously you are a SOUND Editor which does not immediately equate with a critical thinker! I don’t care how big the company is, how rich, or how many “thousands” of jobs they create or support. The thousands do not equate with millions out of work, poor working conditions and/or paid poverty wages, no benefits and cheated out of overtime and rest breaks. If you do not or can not provide good, safe working conditions and you pay people poverty wages you are morally bankrupt and not entitled to be in business. Oh! Let’s add to this that you pay your non-producing executive good old boy predators obscene pay, bonuses and perks. I noticed you did not include in your glowing report of Apple that they were going to improve the working/living conditions of their factory workers overseas or expatriate their billions in offshore banks! Oh! That’s right. Foreigners, especially Chinese, aren’t worthy of being treated like valued human beings.
I don’t wish to be too harsh here but this kind of thinking demands a critical response and, having published it, you have invited just such a response.
I sick of hearing how many cars are sold in China and how
many people went from poverty to riches instead of hearing the
misserable conditions most people in China live and work under.
Thank-you for the report.
And why are Apple products so damn expensive. A typical laptop you buy for a few hundred will cost you two thousand if it has Apple on it. That was Steve Jobs in a nutshell, convincing the socially mobile crowd the the brand was worth it. Oh how Americans love their hi-tech propaganda!
Except, 1st Cav, they have not made “laptops” for over 25 years… Lap Top is a nomenclature, not a nickname, and they were not technologically advanced which is why they were known to set card tables on fire due to their heat. They were the size of a brief case and were very heavy with wires in them, and their life-span was a brief seven years about. I cannot remember seeing a lap top after the early 1990s, in fact!
If you don’t like Apple or Steve Jobs, that’s your business. As far as we know, there was only one human being who was perfect – and look what they did to him. My recommendation is for the Apple bashers to refocus their energy on the real targets, the international corporate financial gangsters who are destroying our government, our democracy and the economic system of the entire world. That’s what the AFL-CIO is doing right now. They are supporting OWS. I support OWS and so should we all. As a great philosopher once said – “keep your eye upon the donut – and not upon the hole.”
There are quite a few problems with that article.
It repeats the debunked Foxconn suicide story. Yes, there were suicides–but the suicide rate was lower than the general population’s rate. It is also lower than the rate among US workers, so if we go by suicides we should be shutting down plants staffed by AFLCIO workers in the US and moving them to China.
Foxconn makes major components for almost all electronics makers. It is virtually certain that story, and the website that serves it, were produced under the same conditions as Apple products are produced. Actually, they were probable produced under worse conditions because Apple has one of the best programs in the industry for monitoring supplier behavior and making them improve.
They are including complaints about conditions during the construction of facilities. Seriously? So Apple contracts with some Chinese company to make things. The Chinese company needs some facilities built. It contracts with a Chinese construction company. That’s now two steps away from Apple–how can you reasonable expect Apple to do anything about them?
They talk about worker pay in absolute terms. The only reasonable way to compare worker pay in different countries (or even in different regions of the same country) is in terms of buying power. How many hours does it take to earn a day’s worth of groceries, for instance? (The same goes when comparing pay within a country. I’m well paid for the Seattle area, but would be quite underpaid if I moved to Manhattan, for instance).
They do mention that Foxconn gave employees a raise, but fail to mention that this was because Apple made Foxconn do that. A balanced article would have mentioned that.
Fails to mention that Apple has been on the forefront of exposing many of these problems, and has one of the most active “supplier responsibility” programs in the industry, which has had many successes in improving conditions. Apple publishes annual reports detailing problems they have found in surprise audits, and steps they have taken to make the suppliers fix the problems, and how those efforts have turned out. You can get the reports here. They are trying to make it sound like Apple is ignoring the workers.
Oh, and bye the bye – Steve Jobs was a dedicated liberal. Apple donated $100,000 to the California campaign to fight against Prop 8, a right-wing attempt to ban same-sex marriage And Steve Jobs was the one who took Pixar from a nerdy science project in George Lucas’s basement and made it into a hugely successful producer of animated movies which saved Disney and created thousands of jobs – as well as creating wonderful classic movies that will be enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people for generations to come. We need to stop spinning our dusty little webs of hate and frustration and take positive action to save our country from the fascists who want to destroy our unions.
I wrote SACOM explaining what actually caused the suicides at Foxconn. They continue to repeat the falsehood that it is poor working conditions and employee abuse.
Where true sweat shop conditions exist, such as the garment industry in New York there have never been suicides. But at France Telelecom, with a 35 hour work week and union representation, there have been 60 attempts with 30 deaths.
Pictures and video taken by TV news crews touring facilities in both countries show it’s Subliminal Distraction exposure. (Those pictures are available on my site VisionAndPsychosis.Net.)
SD a normal feature in our physiology of sight, and little known problem, was discovered when it caused mental breaks for office workers. Foxconn put assembly line workers too close together without a peripheral vision blocking scheme between them, Cubicle Level Protection. The office cubicle was designed to stop the believed harmless episode in offices by 1968.
A pair of safety glasses with wide temple arms, opaque or blacked, out wold stop the suicides for pennies in China.
These same suicides happen at U.S. colleges every semester. Although it can happen to any student, engineering and computer science majors spend many hours using computers and are at high risk.
Any AFL-CIO union member with a computer at home or a child in high school and college should be made aware of this problem.
It was discovered and solved forty years ago.
Simple, cost fee precautions involving the location of home or student computers will prevent most or critical levels of exposure.
Do you suppose looking at all them apples and not being able to eat them had anything to do with the suicides ????? (blink) (blink)
The USA is not China. China is not the USA. Go ahead and pay the workers $30/hr and have the product assembled in the States. Then say hello to the magical $1599 iPad. Yes, China has different working conditions than the U.S. This is why everything is made in China and not in the USA. Change worker conditions in China and iPads won’t be made there anymore – but someone else will produce them just as cheap under the same conditions elsewhere.
I’m willing to bet that Adele Stan’s PC that she used to write the article was made in China. Same with her mobile phone. That and 80%+ of what she owns.
This is a biased piece meant to paint Apple in a bad light despite 99% of Apple’s competitors using the same companies and workers in many cases.