“Foxconn Electronics (the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry) has sternly denied a report insinuating that the company was making iPods for Apple Computer in sweatshops,” Kung Tien Huang and Rodney Chan report for DigiTimes.
“Edmund Ding, spokesman for Foxconn — a chief maker of iPods — said there were huge discrepancies between the truth and the claims in the report, which he said seems like a vicious attack on the company. He added that the company reserves the right to take legal actions over the report,” Huang and Chan report. “The British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, last week claimed that iPods were being made in Chinese factories by employees working in ‘slave’ conditions.”
Ding “maintained that Foxconn, as an international company, abides by the employment law in China, which stipulates that the minimum wage for a worker in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is 810 yuan (US$101) a month, and 700 yuan outside the special economic zone, Ding added,” Huang and Chan report. “The company also has been actively making improvements to workers’ living conditions, providing safe and well-equipped dormitories complete with free laundry service, sports facilities, libraries, and other facilities, the spokesman said.”
Full article here.
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Related articles:
Apple iPod ‘sweatshop’ story a ‘poorly researched sensationalist article’ – June 19, 2006
Apple rebuts Chinese iPod factory claims – June 13, 2006
iPods made in Chinese sweatshops? – June 13, 2006
Probably one of the many minions of MAFIASOFT spreading this FUD! There are millions.
Sue them, Hon Hai!
Sue those brown chiclet-lined pie hole bastrards!!!
“providing safe and well-equipped dormitories complete with free laundry service, sports facilities, libraries, and other facilities, “
I guess, the same can be said for many penitentiaries. Well, maybe not in China …
On the other hand, we all know why Apple and other computer “makers” have their products assembled in mainland China and Taiwan: a disciplined workforce who get paid ridiculous wages.
Personally, I would gladly pay 5 percent more if there was a guarantee that this money would go to the workers.
even if its true, most americans won’t care.
just like the “collateral damage” in iraq.
even if its true, most americans won’t care.
just like the “collateral damage” in iraq
There is a lot of FUD here. it seems like 160,000 or 200,000 workers is an awful lot to manufacture one electronic product. I only assume Foxcomm makes other things as well. How many workers exactly are on the iPod line? Sure we know what minimum wage is…BUT, is that what they are actually being paid?
it seems like FACTS are not forthcoming…. therefore this will drag on for awhile. And as Joell likes to say (repeatedly…lol), most consumers probably do not give a rats ass.
Yawn…Figures some dipsh*t would figure a way to spin this into an anti-American story. Jealousy knows no bounds it seems…
joell…
Shut the hell up
If you were making a salary something like 100 times the national average and you were able to save something like 50% of your wages because your employer provides most of life’s amenities you would not say you were making slave wages.
You Americans are so insular and so protectionist.
We live in a global village with a global economy. Get over yourselves.
Since China is a country where there is no free press and touching a nerve can get you locked up, who really knows?
This sweatshop stuff is non-sense. I ran on principle in 1992. I told the American people that I would crack down on Chinese human rights abuses that the Bush administration refused to acknowledge and I did. Why else would I accept a suitcase full of cash on behalf of the DNC, uh, I mean American people, and welcome China into the WTO, give them nuclear secrets and ballistic missile technology needed to hit a target 10,000 miles away within one meter accuracy ? No, no, the Chinese changed their abusive ways when I asked them for cash. Besides, them factory workers don’t even vote and have never contributed a dime to the party.
“…dormitories complete with free laundry service…”
heh heh heh…
Thank the gods it was sternly denied. Anything less would have left room for doubt. Now that we are certain there are no Foxconn sweatshops with Chinese characteristics, we can go back to our regularly scheduled sweatshop condemnations.
Seriously. Foxconn has been making various parts for the Mac and other computers for years.
<Moron who can’t write true stories>
Has anyone ever said something about sweatshops making Foxconn IDE cables? Because I think there might be. Let’s start a story about that. Because I hear wages go for less than $50 there. And they use children because “they’re more honest than grown men and women combined”. We can start another uprising and ask Foxconn if they have sweatshops for any of their various products. And it’s actually Apple’s fault for all of this!
Yeah. This will get published for sure. Just because. Thats how I know.I’m a troll and I’m not gonna let this one get over my bridge. It’ll put me and my greasy paper at the top foe weeks! Months!
</Moron who can’t write true stories>
No one takes British newspapers seriously anyway, they are just gossip mongers. To sue would be like taking your dear old nosey Granny to court.
Just forget the British press.
The government takes half of what I earn and when I spend what’s left the government receives more than businesses’ profit margin.
What do you call that?