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So Christmas is a Babylonian invention and we shouldn't buy chocolates because of the conditions under which the cocoa farmers are treated. What about the sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic. 
What about the factory workers in the factories that manufacture computer components? What about the farm workers who pick fruits and vegetables and how badly they are treated? What about the deplorable conditions in the factories where running shoes are naked.
Onoo set of hypocrites!Why aren't you living on the street buck naked without a morsel of food since the people who produced your food and manufactured your clothing did it under deplorable conditions?
Put onoo money where onoo mouths are.
How come you are even using computers in view of this?
Come talk to me bout dis....
What about the factory workers in the factories that manufacture computer components? What about the farm workers who pick fruits and vegetables and how badly they are treated? What about the deplorable conditions in the factories where running shoes are naked. Onoo set of hypocrites!
Why aren't you living on the street buck naked without a morsel of food since the people who produced your food and manufactured your clothing did it under deplorable conditions? Put onoo money where onoo mouths are.
How come you are even using computers in view of this?
Child Labour Watch
This investigation of other Apple suppliers in China reveals that serious work-related injuries and worker suicides are by no means isolated to just Foxconn but exist throughout Apple’s supply chain. For example, we found that at least two workers committed suicide at Flextronics[4]’ factories last year[5][6] (Ganzhou and Zhuhai) and that upwards of 59 workers were injured in explosions at Riteng’s Shanghai factory last December[7] (both are Apple’s suppliers). More broadly, this investigation of ten different Apple factories in China finds that harmful, damaging work environments characterized by illegally long hours for low levels of pay are widespread in Apple’s supply, with working conditions frequently worse at suppliers other than Foxconn. We also document for the first time the tremendous problems caused by the use of ‘labor dispatching’ by Apple suppliers in China.
Apple must take on the responsibility of improving conditions in its supply chain and changing its purchasing system. We hope that Apple will respond to these investigative findings, which go well beyond that of the Fair Labor Association (in a study paid for by Apple). Unfortunately, Apple has never responded to any of China Labor Watch’s investigative findings. Apple has promised this year to improve working conditions in its Chinese supplier factories, but based on its track record of not meeting such promises in the past, we are compelled to ask: are these promises sincere or merely a public relations ploy?
Background Information
In 2006, the Western media began investigating labor conditions in Apple’s supply chain in China. Subsequent reports on Foxconn factories in 2007 prompted Apple to start auditing its supplier factories and also to begin publishing its annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Reports. In addition to Apple, other electronics companies felt compelled to respond after the media exposed poor working conditions in Foxconn factories. Under pressure from Apple and other companies, Foxconn radically reformed its dormitories—instead of sleeping 300 in a room, workers now sleep eight to twelve in a room. The improvement in dormitories was apparent to all observers, but other important aspects of working life, like the intensity of labor, remained unimproved, or even worsened. In 2006, an assembly line with 150 workers assembled a little more than 2000 computers in a day. By 2011, this number had increased to 3,500 computers. Part of this increase is the result of improved automation on the assembly line, but another significant factor is the dramatically increased intensity of the work itself.
After a string of worker suicides at a Foxconn Apple factory in May 2010, dozens of media reports put increased pressure on Apple and Foxconn to make changes. Foxconn vowed to raise wages and, perhaps more importantly, to set stricter limits on workers’ overtime hours. Before 2010, workers often had to work over 300 hours per month, logging around 120 hours of overtime. According to our investigations over the last two years, Foxconn has effectively reduced overtime to less than 80 hours a month in most departments and workshops. While this represents improvement, this amount of overtime is still nearly double that of the overtime permissible by Chinese law and often pushes workers well beyond reasonable limits.
Without media coverage of poor working conditions, these changes would have taken years to occur, if ever at all. As evidence, note that overtime hours at Apple suppliers other than Foxconn tend to be much longer.
New York Times stories in early 2012 put Apple and Foxconn back in the spotlight. In a matter of days, social activism sites Change.org and SumOfUs.org collected over 200,000 signatures for petitions to improve working conditions at Foxconn, and, caving to external pressure, Apple invited the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to conduct independent, third-party audits of the factory conditions at Foxconn. After FLA finished their audit, Apple and Foxconn said that changes would be made. However, if you read Apple’s own reports on conditions at its supplier factories, and reports on Foxconn factories by SACOM and China Labor Watch, and other related media reports, you will find that FLA’s report presents no new findings; all the problems that the FLA raised have been raised in previous reports. Since Apple failed to ensure that many needed reforms would be made before, its new commitment should be treated with skepticism.
About Our Report
From January through April 2012, China Labor Watch conducted investigations at ten Apple supplier factories. Initially, we hoped to use worker surveys to measure various working conditions quantitatively. However, after successfully surveying four factories in Shenzhen, our investigators ran into opposition in Shanghai and Jiangsu province. In Shanghai, factory management found out about our surveys and contacted the local police, who then confiscated our surveys and detained our investigators for seven hours before buying them train tickets and ordering them to leave Shanghai. In Jiangsu province, police also bought our investigators train tickets and forced them to leave. Undeterred in the face of obstacles, we sent a second investigatory team to finish what had been started. Some of our investigators entered the factories as undercover workers while others interviewed workers around the factory premises. Altogether, six investigators were involved, including two college graduates, one vocational school graduate, and three workers who left their factories to become labor activists. In addition, four of the six investigators have two or more years of experience in the labor rights field in China, and all of them are familiar with factory conditions and can easily engage workers.
The findings of this report are primarily based on survey data and firsthand observations. At the end of the report are case-by-case descriptions of each factory’s working conditions. The ten factories in our report were picked directly from Apple’s list of supplier factories. By investigating ten factories of varied scale and location, we hoped to investigate whether the problems identified by the New York Times and other reports are isolated to Foxconn or exist throughout Apple’s supply chain. In fact, many of the factories that we investigated performed much worse than Foxconn in key areas of workers’ rights such as overtime hours, pay, and labor dispatching. On the various factories’ websites, they claim to produce for other brands besides Apple, but we did not investigate to confirm these claims. From our experience, a factory’s clientele changes frequently, so they could still be producing for these brands or have only produced for them in the past.
Beyond Foxconn : Deplorable Working Conditions Characterize Apple's Entire
On June 14th, a Foxconn worker jumped to his death from his apartment building in Chengdu, marking the 18threported worker suicide at Foxconn factories in China in just over two years[1]. Many additional suicides may have gone unreported[2][3]. But these deaths and the focus on conditions at Foxconn reflect only a portion of the troubling conditions at Apple suppliers.This investigation of other Apple suppliers in China reveals that serious work-related injuries and worker suicides are by no means isolated to just Foxconn but exist throughout Apple’s supply chain. For example, we found that at least two workers committed suicide at Flextronics[4]’ factories last year[5][6] (Ganzhou and Zhuhai) and that upwards of 59 workers were injured in explosions at Riteng’s Shanghai factory last December[7] (both are Apple’s suppliers). More broadly, this investigation of ten different Apple factories in China finds that harmful, damaging work environments characterized by illegally long hours for low levels of pay are widespread in Apple’s supply, with working conditions frequently worse at suppliers other than Foxconn. We also document for the first time the tremendous problems caused by the use of ‘labor dispatching’ by Apple suppliers in China.
Apple must take on the responsibility of improving conditions in its supply chain and changing its purchasing system. We hope that Apple will respond to these investigative findings, which go well beyond that of the Fair Labor Association (in a study paid for by Apple). Unfortunately, Apple has never responded to any of China Labor Watch’s investigative findings. Apple has promised this year to improve working conditions in its Chinese supplier factories, but based on its track record of not meeting such promises in the past, we are compelled to ask: are these promises sincere or merely a public relations ploy?
Background Information
In 2006, the Western media began investigating labor conditions in Apple’s supply chain in China. Subsequent reports on Foxconn factories in 2007 prompted Apple to start auditing its supplier factories and also to begin publishing its annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Reports. In addition to Apple, other electronics companies felt compelled to respond after the media exposed poor working conditions in Foxconn factories. Under pressure from Apple and other companies, Foxconn radically reformed its dormitories—instead of sleeping 300 in a room, workers now sleep eight to twelve in a room. The improvement in dormitories was apparent to all observers, but other important aspects of working life, like the intensity of labor, remained unimproved, or even worsened. In 2006, an assembly line with 150 workers assembled a little more than 2000 computers in a day. By 2011, this number had increased to 3,500 computers. Part of this increase is the result of improved automation on the assembly line, but another significant factor is the dramatically increased intensity of the work itself.
After a string of worker suicides at a Foxconn Apple factory in May 2010, dozens of media reports put increased pressure on Apple and Foxconn to make changes. Foxconn vowed to raise wages and, perhaps more importantly, to set stricter limits on workers’ overtime hours. Before 2010, workers often had to work over 300 hours per month, logging around 120 hours of overtime. According to our investigations over the last two years, Foxconn has effectively reduced overtime to less than 80 hours a month in most departments and workshops. While this represents improvement, this amount of overtime is still nearly double that of the overtime permissible by Chinese law and often pushes workers well beyond reasonable limits.
Without media coverage of poor working conditions, these changes would have taken years to occur, if ever at all. As evidence, note that overtime hours at Apple suppliers other than Foxconn tend to be much longer.
New York Times stories in early 2012 put Apple and Foxconn back in the spotlight. In a matter of days, social activism sites Change.org and SumOfUs.org collected over 200,000 signatures for petitions to improve working conditions at Foxconn, and, caving to external pressure, Apple invited the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to conduct independent, third-party audits of the factory conditions at Foxconn. After FLA finished their audit, Apple and Foxconn said that changes would be made. However, if you read Apple’s own reports on conditions at its supplier factories, and reports on Foxconn factories by SACOM and China Labor Watch, and other related media reports, you will find that FLA’s report presents no new findings; all the problems that the FLA raised have been raised in previous reports. Since Apple failed to ensure that many needed reforms would be made before, its new commitment should be treated with skepticism.
About Our Report
From January through April 2012, China Labor Watch conducted investigations at ten Apple supplier factories. Initially, we hoped to use worker surveys to measure various working conditions quantitatively. However, after successfully surveying four factories in Shenzhen, our investigators ran into opposition in Shanghai and Jiangsu province. In Shanghai, factory management found out about our surveys and contacted the local police, who then confiscated our surveys and detained our investigators for seven hours before buying them train tickets and ordering them to leave Shanghai. In Jiangsu province, police also bought our investigators train tickets and forced them to leave. Undeterred in the face of obstacles, we sent a second investigatory team to finish what had been started. Some of our investigators entered the factories as undercover workers while others interviewed workers around the factory premises. Altogether, six investigators were involved, including two college graduates, one vocational school graduate, and three workers who left their factories to become labor activists. In addition, four of the six investigators have two or more years of experience in the labor rights field in China, and all of them are familiar with factory conditions and can easily engage workers.
The findings of this report are primarily based on survey data and firsthand observations. At the end of the report are case-by-case descriptions of each factory’s working conditions. The ten factories in our report were picked directly from Apple’s list of supplier factories. By investigating ten factories of varied scale and location, we hoped to investigate whether the problems identified by the New York Times and other reports are isolated to Foxconn or exist throughout Apple’s supply chain. In fact, many of the factories that we investigated performed much worse than Foxconn in key areas of workers’ rights such as overtime hours, pay, and labor dispatching. On the various factories’ websites, they claim to produce for other brands besides Apple, but we did not investigate to confirm these claims. From our experience, a factory’s clientele changes frequently, so they could still be producing for these brands or have only produced for them in the past.
Come talk to me bout dis....
bout we shouldn't be eating this and we shouldn't be celebrating dat.
or
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