Apple Factory Conditions

It wil be interesting to see what comes of this.

Glad they have an agreement in place like that.

I was impressed reading through Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct, but I sure hope they really enforce it.

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Move those factories to the US! $1000 isn't too much to pay for an iPod Nano!

hope Apple can fix it, perhap add a little extra for the worker they all ready have to try and make things right.

I guess Apple is just another greedy company, can't really blame them, all major players outsource factories to cheap labor countries. The price of an iPod wouldn't increase by that much if it was manufactured in USA, these are not some hand made custom jobs, this is a production line, couple of thousands of iPods per hour I assume. Modern world is all about greed. Companies move to cheap labor countries to generate more profit as they never decrease MSRP prices anyway. Plus it always helps that in countries such as China there is no labor laws like in USA or Western Europe so the employer can do whatever he feels like doing and taking more advantage of already low paid workers.

I had a discussion with one of the forum goers ( http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=206312&page=6 ) and how he defended globalization and how he wrote that by US opening factories in countries such as China or India it actually helps our economy and I ask how is the $50-$100 per month salary going to help us (which I mentioned in those posts)? They can barely afford basic life necessities let alone "high end American" products. This is all just corporate greed, nothing else.

my brother emailed steve jobs's public email address last night, with concerns about these allegations. he got a response this morning with basically the following.

"that article is bs. not true"

for what it's worth...

Disturbing news. I don't think I could continue to support Apple until these problems are fixed.

Over the past week, a firestorm has brewed over a report in Britain's Mail on Sunday which claimed extremely harsh working conditions at iPod factories. The original story is not available online, but Arstechnica has posted a good summary of the article.

In brief, two factories were visited by Mail on Sunday reporters. The first factory was found to be forcing its staff to work 15 hour days for $50 USD per month. The second facility benefited from being in closer proximity to Shanghai, and workdays were shortened to 12 hours/day and workers were paid almost $100 USD per month. Security guards were paid up to $150 USD per month, although much of that had to be paid back to the company for housing and food. In addition to long hours, work days were said to often be accompanied by military-style drills.

Today, Apple officially responded to the allegations with a statement (repored at Playlist/MacCentral):



Raw Data: Apple Supplier Code of Conduct (pdf)

:eek: :eek: :eek:

$50USD PER MONTH???? What??????? Is that what people usually get paid in china??????

my brother emailed steve jobs's public email address last night, with concerns about these allegations. he got a response this morning with basically the following.

"that article is bs. not true"

for what it's worth...

sounds interesting, but apparently apple is investigating the claim..
lets see what does come out of this

btw is it steve@mac.com ??