[mikelcal]

Mods please move to appropriate sub-forum if needed.

Just got this in an email, I don't know where it If ever I signed up for this. But this is what it said. The media is mad that RIM isn't making enough money while "the other fruit company gets away with murder"

Every day, tens of millions of people will swipe the screens of their iPhones to unlock them.

On the other side of the world, a young girl is also swiping those screens.

Six days a week, twelve-plus hours a day, she repetitively swipes tens of thousands of them.She spends those hours inhaling chemicals that are never disclosed to her.For her labor, she makes less than $17 a day[13], is forced to work unpaid overtime, and,when her supervisors want to punish her, she is humiliated and forced to clean toilets.

Sound like a horror story? According to recent reports, scenarios like this are a waking nightmare for many workers in Apple�s Chinese supply chain.[1]

Tell Apple: You�re the most profitable company in the world.[2] It�s time to treat your workers ethically.

Right now we�re partnering with corporate accountability group SumOfUs.org because we have a huge opportunity as citizen-consumers:

Apple is under enormous, sustained pressure to reform its supply chain in the run-up to its new iPhone.

It even hired the Fair Labor Association (FLA), to inspect its factories, and publicly vowed to reform.[3] But an independent investigation by Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior found that,for many workersthings are actually getting worse.[1]

That�s right, after vowing to fix its problems, Apple is turning a blind eye as many workers now report lower wages and forced overtime, along with continued, humiliating punishments by management.

In extreme cases, people have literally been dying while making Apple products.

Reporters have documented cases of deadly, preventable, explosions at iPad factories, and repeated instances of employees dying of exhaustion after long shifts.[4,5,6]

Tell Apple that it�s time to start treating workers like human beings, with safe, legal hours and a living wage.

Can Apple truly reform? Absolutely.Apple is the richest company in the world, posting a record-breaking gross profit margin for the last quarter of 45.7%[7].

It�s sitting on $110 billion in cash.[8]And while Apple makes hundreds of dollars of profit on each iPhone or iPad it sells, only $8 and $10 (respectively) goes to the workers that make it.[9,10,11] Simply put,Apple could double or even triple the amount it pays to laborers without a serious impact on its bottom line.

But instead Apple has been paying out its shareholders, and set aside a record-shattering$378 million for its CEO Tim Cook last year.

That�s over $1,000,000 a day, or nearly60,000times the salary of the people who make the products that make Tim Cook rich. [12,13]

Why are we targeting Apple specifically? This is a bigger problem than Apple, but no company is in a better position to improve things than Apple:Its record profits and eye-popping cash-on-hand have come off the backs of workers pushed to the brink -- and sometimes beyond -- by its tight deadlines and impossible demands.

In addition, Apple, as the largest customer of Foxconn, is in a unique position to improve the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of human beings. And if Apple actually did mandate changes at Foxconn, it would ripple across the sector to raise wages and improve working conditions for everyone making our electronics in China.

According to an anonymous Apple executive quoted in a major expos�in the New York Times, all Apple has to do is demand change, and it�ll happen:

�Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn�t have another choice.�[4] As a company that prides itself on being an industry leader in the tech world, Apple needs to take the lead in ethical treatment of its workers.

Tell Apple to improve conditions in the factories that make its products in time for the next iPhone to be made ethically.

Thanks.

-Demand Progress

[1]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/631?t=5&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAzers

[2]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/633?t=8&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[3]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/634?t=10&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[4]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/635?t=12&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[5]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/636?t=14&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[6]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/637?t=16&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[7]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/638?t=18&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[8]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/639?t=20&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[9]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/640?t=22&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[10]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/641?t=24&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[11]http://www.isuppli.com/PublishingImages/Press%20Releases/2011-03-12_iPad2_BOM.png

[12]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/632?t=26&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

[13]http://act.demandprogress.org/go/642?t=28&akid=1416.386103.WsmWAz

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[Bla1ze]

Another one of these threads? You realize many, many companies use Foxconn and such right? Not just Apple.

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Apple Inc. (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
Microsoft (United States)
Motorola Mobility (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Samsung Electronics (South Korea)
Sony (Japan)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)

All users of Foxconn factories. In addition to that, it's foolish and naive to think some components in your BlackBerry weren't created under some of the same circumstances as well.

[CarrierUnlock]

Think he does now.

[kennyliu]

Hey, I will go even further than Bla1ze. The clothes you wear are made by people in similar working environment. If it's cotton, you should also be aware that that cotton was most probably picked by very young children who were paid pennies to feed their families. They were forced to the field by the governments.

But you wear your clothes nevertheless

[anthogag]

What about smokers

[xandermac]

What about smokers

I quit tobacco, I now use a JoyeTech eGo e-cig made in a factory in china somewhere, it's lovely.

[xandermac]

Mods please move to appropriate sub-forum if needed.

Just got this in an email, I don't know where it If ever I signed up for this. But this is what it said. The media is mad that RIM isn't making enough money while "the other fruit company gets away with murder"



Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

This was all over the news until it turned out that Mike Daisey, the guy that broke the story, was found to be lying and fabricating evidence. NPR had to retract an entire episode of This American Life dedicated to Apple/Foxconn labor practices because of Mike Daisey (the fat git).

Unfortunately, because of these lies the story has died down, its like no one wants to go near it anymore.

It's not exclusively an Apple problem and Apple are doing more than any other tech company to rectify "some" problems.

Remember though, the people that work in those factories WANT those jobs and our interfering has already cost them. Their overtime was cut and they were pissed. Bleeding hearts generally cause more problems than they fix.

[kennyliu]

Remember though, the people that work in those factories WANT those jobs and our interfering has already cost them. Their overtime was cut and they were pissed. Bleeding hearts generally cause more problems than they fix.

Exactly, their alternative is to work for even lower pay.

However, this isn't the case with children picking cotton though. Most of them are literally forced by their governments under the threat of being expelled from school.

So my point is that child exploitation in cotton-growing countries (I am sure it's not only cotton) is a much bigger issue than the Foxcon thing, but nobody seems to care much. Oh, double standards.

[lnichols]

People don't care how the sausage is made as long as they can stand in a long on iPhone release day and pay $200 to Apple.

[Phil DeLong]

People don't care how the sausage is made as long as they can stand in a long on iPhone release day and pay $200 to Apple.

Did you even read the replies? Namely the one by Bla1ze?

[Moonbase0ne]

isn't this an old story?

Also, there are a ton of things made by companies by inapproiate means. The only reason APPLE is being mentioned in because they happen to be very very popular with their phones, tablets, etc... But, I am pretty sure other companies use the same company, Foxxcon, or one similiar.

And, there was media backlash on this story.