“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,” Charles Duhigg and David Barboza report for The New York Times. “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 Apple’s products, and the company’s 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,” Duhigg and Barboza report. “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.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the the full article, “Apple” was deployed 105 times (105 times!), “iPad” 12 times, “iPhone” nine times, and “iPod” once. That’s 139 Apple-related mentions in an article detailing conditions at Chinese, not Apple, companies that, oh by the way, also happen to assemble products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and many, many, many other companies around the world. No, one short paragraph mentioning other companies by name once, doesn’t provide “balance.”
Singling out Apple and glossing over every other company doesn’t make you smart hit-whores, guys. It makes you slanted, biased, yellow journalists. But, of course, you do work for The New York Times, so that was to be expected.
The next time you transparent fools wonder why your circulation and employee numbers continue to plummet, just re-read this Take.
Apple insists that all of their suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes. Apple’s actions, from thorough site audits to industry-leading training programs, demonstrate this commitment.
Read more about supplier responsibility at Apple here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “The Scarbro” for the heads up.]
