“Apple’s iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday. The report, ‘iPod City’, isn’t available online. It offers photographs taken from inside the factories that make Apple music players, situated in China and owned by Foxconn,” Macworld UK reports. “The report claims Longhua’s workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player, the report claims. They earn £27 per month. The report reveals that the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory that is secured by police officers.”
Macworld UK reports, “Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month – but they must pay for their accommodation and food, ‘which takes up half their salaries,’ the report observes. A security guard told the Mail reporters that the iPod shuffle production lines are staffed by women workers because ‘they are more honest than male workers.'”
Full article here.
“The situation is too murky for a rush to judgment on Apple’s ethics here, and it may well meet minimum global standards. But for a company that has staked its image on progressive politics, Apple has set itself up as a potential lightning rod on global labor standards. Sweatshops came back to bite Nike after its customers rose up in arms; and Apple can expect a similar grilling from its upscale Volvo-driving fans in the months ahead,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News. “Tech companies’ records in China are in the spotlight for a wide variety of human rights issues. Google and Yahoo have weathered a lot of criticism — quite rightly — for censoring search results and cooperating with the Chinese authorities cracking down on dissidents. I’m not naïve enough to expect companies to behave morally like individuals, but I find Google’s corporate mantra ‘Don’t be evil’ to be especially galling. They dropped that one pretty quick.”
“All of this should put Apple on notice that doing business in China in anything less than an exemplary fashion is a recipe for a PR disaster,” Kahney writes. “Apple is just one of myriad companies using Chinese factories to make its products. And of course, it does so purely because of China’s low wages and other costs. The iPod is assembled by Invatec and Foxconn, two manufacturers headquartered in Taiwan that own factories in China and elsewhere. Foxconn is a trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry, a $16 billion giant and one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world, which makes everything from Playstations for Sony to iPods for Apple. Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the pro-globalization International Institute for Economics, said Hon Hai has an ‘excellent reputation.’ He says factories in China operated by big global companies like Hon Hai are very different from smaller, indigenous operations. International giants usually enforce the same work practices in China as they do in other parts of Asia, or Europe and United States, according to Lardy.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Regardless of the story’s validity (we need to know more from more sources first), Apple should make sure that the people who are assembling Apple products in China and all other countries are treated better than the accepted base standards. It’s good business, it’s the right thing to do, and it’s what we expect of Apple.
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Good take MDN, I love Apple. But they can’t be ass holes.
I’ve never driven a Volvo. All generalizations are false.
MDN take is simple and to-the-point. I agree completely.
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I don’t know why, but I doubt the validity of this story. I want to see proof.
Yes, Apple (if this is right) should definitively do better than this. MDN take is a good take
I agree too.
But let’s not forget the responsibility of the Chinese government, or the government of any country, to promote the welfare of its citizens.
Folks, I think this is all BS. iPods are made in
Taiwan, right? Taiwan is NOT China, and they
have much higher work standards. Maybe I’m
wrong, look on the back of your iPod. Where was
it made?
Uhhhh…..not good.
I used to work as an engineer in the microelectronics sector. We had a factory in “asia”.
The only hope we have is that wages rise fast enough in these “up and coming economies” (i.e. countries w/o labor laws) that this will end on its own. Until then the U.S and E.U. governments reward corporations that exploit the ignorant. Either by taking jobs away to Asia, by promoting illegal immigration, by providing payroll tax breaks for having workers in asia, or freeing companies of health insurance obligations. Hopefully all the exploitation will end soon.
My Jetta was manufactured in Meh-ee-co…
You ain’t missin’ much, Ampar…
“Where was it made?”
it says “assembled in China”
Fact is China is a repressive country, with little regard for human rights and no worker protections.
Anyone who buys ANYTHING that is made in China should assume that people are being exploited to some degree. It’s not just Apple.
I agree with Thorin and call bullshit on this story.
It’s amazing the lengths people will go to topple the iPod empire.
From somebody that spends a lot of time in China, this story is BS. If you only knew the true story of China and how well these people that work at such places are off in comparison to so much of the population, you wouldn’t be so concerned. Apple is not using a sweat shop, this story is complete BS. This isn’t to defend Apple, the story just isn’t accurate or representative of the truth. You can’t use our standards to judge the rest of the world.
sweaty people need jobs too.. what’s the deal. Better to build iPods than to have to whore yourself and your children.
I say.. who cares.. let these people work..
China hides its system behind the name Socialist Peoples Republic .. utopia. Apple should be fair to the contracted workers over there.
I dont agree with sweatshops. I think its wrong that Apple is using them (if they are). I think the Chinese Government should try to regulate this better. But seriously do you know just how many companies use sweatshops to make their products. Just about everything that has a made in China or made in Taiwan or any sticker like that on it was probably made in sweatshop by underpaid, under feed, over worked people. It just goes to show that in countries like America and the European coutries how well most of us have it.How many Dull boxes and the other Winblowz boxes do you think are made by little 12 year old kids that work 15 hours a day and are feed only once?
Wow. My house payment take half of my income too!
And to top it all off there are security cameras at the jobs I go to. They are always watching me.
I live the the United States to where CEOS make 100 Times the income of the average worker.
Where is my story?
Guess what… most of the world is made in China. Don’t believe me, check everything. The Microsoft Keyboard I’m typing on was made in China. Why? Repressive government and cheep labor. The world looks away because it makes (Insert anything) cheap so people will buy lots of them. Hey Wal-Mart, which country made all those American Flags you sold after 9/11. That’s right. China.
Getting off the soapbox now.
It’s not possible to do business in China ethically. That’s why all of ’em are there.
Why are people so eager to jump on this anti-
corporate, bleeding heart bandwagon? It is
bullshit folks! WAKE UP!
Check out this site for some ethical reference (computer and otherwise):
http://www.ethiscore.org/
2¢
Hooray for MDN! I’m heartened to see that they don’t blindly support everything and anything Apple does…MDN has principles, too!!
At £27 they are probably doing better than most in their village. I smell some nasty M$ PR suits at work here.
I hope they keep it this way. It keeps the cost of the iPod down. If it was made by American workers, we’d have to pay nearly $1,000 USD per iPod just to cover parts and labor.