In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-human-costs-built-ipad-175037829.html
EXCERPT:
EXCERPT:
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers as well as dozens of other American industries have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious sometimes deadly safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apples products, and the companys suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers disregard for workers health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.
If Apple was warned, and didnt act, thats reprehensible, said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. But whats morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.
Comments
Likely, the customer isn't going to know. Manufacturers tend to fall all over themselves prepping for important visitors so that the 'dog-and-pony show' makes everything look okay. I've lived on both sides of that equation.
On a basic level, people are expensive. People can run cheap, but the cost of that is lower standard of living and significantly less time to be the great people they can otherwise be.
It is worth it to consider the basic anthropologists definition and measure of wealth: wealthy people have enough self purposed time to be in a desirable state of being where poor people have the majority of their time purposed for them.
Money and things run above that, and in conflict with it, particularly when people are not valued properly and their wealth as beings is ignored. Why and how that happens is political and to a significant degree cultural too. I am reluctant to make statements on either here, but to ask that we contemplate that dynamic.
Didja see the whole ad? Hysterical... http://hooniverse.com/2012/09/24/truth-in-advertising-hazard-fraught-tools/
Ever since PhiPi recommended "Poorly Made in China," I haven't been the same. Reading that book led to half-a-dozen others. I never realized how poorly educated I was about the most populous country on Earth.
Ok, this is the second or third time I've read my job description in these forums in the past month! Lighten up, already!! :0)
Frank
That made my day. I've got to buy the "some kind of guage". Trying not to laugh too loudly while at work!
The really, really, really sad part is...Craftsman is serious...
http://www.amazon.com/Craftsman-9-11818-12-volt-Lithium-lon-Hammerhead/dp/B0040ZLPGY
Only 12V though, bummer.
C.W.
My own gut feeling is this is not about China so much as it is about Corporate America going global and exporting jobs in the USA because of existing strong unions and labor laws, and of course, environment laws. I left California at 43 year of age because it became very obvious that all I was going to get in San Francisco was temp jobs of six months or less due to being older. Corporate America had played the lobbying game very well and managed to downsize by using huge temp agencies such as Adia (a Swiss outfit) to no longer have to provide benefits to a vast array of what-used-to-be 'entry level' jobs. com
Instead of starting in a mail room and working your way up to President, the job was now given to a temp that had to be dismissed within six months and the corporate bottom-line looked much healthier.
After three or so decades of such 'progress' in America, we have come to the end game. In sum, where are the customers going to come from if our fellow Americans don't have jobs?
The whole hub-bub about Apple in China is just a side show of the real issues. At this point, Americans are distracted into political gripes about what is going on overseas. But the real issue should be whether to buy American and dump American corporations that don't contribute to the American economy. In this case, Apple has huge cash capital reserves. And Microsoft borrowed funds last year to pay a dividend to shareholders just because so much of its income is off-shore where it is NOT being taxes by the USA. It it were to use its own funds to pay the dividend, there would have been a huge tax bill. Instead it takes advantage of the low, low interest rates of quantitative easing.
Face it, the average American needs to have government protect American prosperity rather than trying to export the US corporate model to the world for the sake of the wealthy.
I guess I have completely blown Ken's political guidelines with this posting. Please forgive me.
I have lived in Taiwan for 18 years. The first 3 years I worked 7 days a week and the for another 4 years I worked 6 days a week. If people in the US got willing to be competitive with the long hours others put in, they might be back at work and not standing in lines waiting to buy an iPhone5 on their over-extended credit card. But I suspect it is going to take more control of the corporate sector as they have learned that by being multi-national, they can operate without loyalty to any nation.
At least in Taiwan, I get full medical and dental coverage for $25 USD per month. Though I turn 65 in December and now Medicare wants me to pay another $70USD or so per month for medication coverage that will NOT deliver any medications to me in Taiwan.
In sum, clean up America First, and let the world take care of itself.