“If you see somebody dressed as an iPod Thursday during your morning commute to Grand Central, you’ve stumbled upon a protest,” Emily Laermer reports for Crain’s New York.
“Protestors are planning to deliver 250,000 signed letters to Apple stores in six cities around the world to petition the company to fix poor working conditions in Chinese factories,” Laermer reports. “The protest has been organized by Change.org and SumOfUs.org, two websites that have collected signatures online. New York protestors will visit the new Apple store in Grand Central Terminal. Other cities include Washington, San Francisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore.”
“‘We are asking Apple to clean up its supply chains and practices in time for the iPhone 5 to be the first ethically produced product,’ said Taren Stinebrickner Kauffman, the executive director of SumOfUs.org,” Laermer reports. “Around a dozen organizers from Change.org are leading the protest in New York and will be joined by local protestors.”
Laermer reports, “‘Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain,’ CEO Tim Cook wrote in an internal note to Apple employees, published by 9to5mac.com on Jan. 26… ‘We’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, here’s a great idea: Let’s protest the very company that has done the most to improve worker conditions at their supplier companies’ factories in China while ignoring and buying products from other companies’ that do absolutely nothing at all. Ah, the “logic” of vapid pawns.
Hey, as long as you don’t impede our visits to buy many Apple products in counter-protest, feel free to waste your time however you like.
We assume, of course, that these will be a totally nude “protests” since your clothes and shoes were made by workers enduring far worse conditions than any of those assembling iPhones, iPods, Macs, or iPads.
(BTW: Shhh, don’t tell ’em, but Apple doesn’t even have a retail store in Bangalore, or anywhere in India for that matter. No matter, that particular “protest” will be at least as effective as all of the others combined.)
What we wrote last week:
Overheard at FUD, Inc.:
Well, boys, those were some $%&@!# earnings. WTF are we going to do now? Apple’s isn’t just taking a bigger slice, they’re taking the whole $%&@!# pie!
There’s no new iPhone yet, so we can’t take something like attenuation and blow it all the $%&@!# out of proportion. There’s no new iPad, yet, so we can’t say that it’s so thin it cut off a little old lady’s arm in Sheboygan. We need something to give the public a least a little pause or we’re $%&@!# dead.
Hey, what about the old “Chinese slave labor” angle? Make those $%&@!# Jobsian perfectionists look like greedy $%&@!# evil overlords. Use their money and success against them. Ooh, I like it. I really like it.
Yeah, yeah, dummy, I know we all use the same Chinese company for assembly. And, yes, my little $%&@!#, I know they’re the best paid factory workers in China, because of Apple, no less. Don’t ever say that aloud again, you $%&@!#. Nobody cares about the facts. This is $%&@!# FUD, Inc.! All of our $%&@!# phones attenuate, too, you $%&@!# moron!
Perception is everything. Repeat it enough times and the $%&@!# suckers of the world lap it up like candy and start repeating it like parrots.
Quick, call up our friends at the paper!
Yup, the $%&@!# suckers of the world have lapped it up like candy and will be repeating it like parrots at a handful of big city Apple Retail Stores – and some poor reseller’s store in Bangalore – this Thursday.
Much more information about Apple Supplier Responsibility here
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Citymark” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple in China: Should we applaud instead of condemn? – February 3, 2012
Rush Limbaugh: The New York Times has turned on Apple; they wouldn’t do this if Steve Jobs was alive – February 1, 2012
Most of your Apple iPhone and iPad was Made in the U.S.A. – February 1, 2012
Trump to Tim Cook: Make Apple products in the United States – February 1, 2012
Most of your Apple iPhone and iPad was Made in the U.S.A. – February 1, 2012
BSR: New York Times’ Apple-Foxconn article contains untruths, inaccuracies, and misleading info – January 29, 2012
Your iPhone has to be made In China, and Apple can’t absolve your guilt (if you have any) – January 28, 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012
In China, human costs are built into iPads and tens of thousands of other non-Apple products – January 26, 2012
Equivalent of Greenpeace. Protesting against Apple equals more publicity.
they need to be hit with this, from a Chinese labour activist:
“Although I know that the iPhone 4 is made at sweat shop factories in China, I still think that this is the only choice, because Apple is actually one of the best. Actually before I made a decision, I compared Apple with other cell phone companies, such as Nokia,” he said through a translator. “And the conditions in those factories are worse than the ones of Apple.”
http://blog.laptopmag.com/labor-activist-apple-best-at-auditing-factories-still-not-doing-enough
Exactly my…”opinion”. I haven’t worked in a Chinese sweat shop but I can’t imagine any of them being a “great” job…but they’re better than most alternatives. I just don’t, honestly, get why Americans would give a flying f*ck about “sweatshop” conditions in China?!? There’s PLENTY to worry about here @ home. Sure, it’s the PC thing to do…but you REALLY don’t know what’s going on…only what the latest attention seeking whistle blowing whore is spewing.
Except this is worse</i than Greenpeace’s approach – it’s exactly counter to what the protesters actually want to accomplish.
Forbes, of all places, actually has a good take on this, with a killer conclusion:
Boycotting Apple for better Foxconn wages and conditions is like having sex for virginity. Entirely counter-productive and exactly the wrong thing to be doing.
With all the press Apple is getting on this, they are going to have to respond somehow. Perhaps they will create some more American jobs or clean up Foxconn (no more all-night shifts etc.) Not a waste of time at all.
They did respond:
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/
You didn’t get the memo?
You are an abject moron which, given your chosen moniker, is wholly unsurprising.
Curious choice of moniker, yes. Another reason people shouldn’t get tattoos…
I’m sick of these self-righteous idiots who know nothing. I’ve waited for a long time for Apple to be healthy enough to be a big target, but still don’t consider it “Evil.” Not so sure about Google, Samsung, and Microsoft, however. And watching some moron brainwash Bill Maher last week made me want to grab Elvis’s gun and shoot my TV.
it’s interesting that Apple is singled out here… How many items do we have in our homes cheaply produced in Asia by workers paid a fraction of what western cultures consider “minimum” wages? I get the concern, but there is so much worse going on in China than what Foxconn is doing- where is the outrage over that? How about some outrage over China’s lack of protections for its own people? Even my ideas are too simplistic for this issue. Scapegoating Apple will not help this situation
> no more all-night shifts etc.
LOL… Any factory operator in a competitive industry would feel fortunate to have the volume of business that requires operating three shifts 24/7. More shifts = more employment opportunity
Every industry and service out there has a night sift. You ever notice that your lights stay on when the sun goes down, or you are able to get on the internet?
I wonder if the organizer has received any large suitcases of cash from Samsung, Google, Microsoft, or another Apple rival that can’t compete with the amazing growth of Apple.
idea: counter protest at the Microsoft store for working conditions at the X-box factories.
I would’ve suggested protesting outside a Dell or HP store, but there’s no such animal (none big enough to matter anyway)
Hell, protest Microsoft for the misery of American workers forced to endure using their products on a daily basis. Now there’s a crime against humanity.
If they’re so pro- American and concerned about human welfare, stop buying gas! In fact, don’t buy anything- everything for sale in this country is related to both China and Kevin Bacon!!!
Would the objective posters on this board be as defensive if it were GOOG or MSFT being accused of such things? Nope. It’s all about honesty folks. Either it’s right or it’s wrong. It’s not about immature fanboys. Geez!
It`s amazing
So the smelly people of Occupy Wall Street will have something else to do.
I bet that if you dig deep enough into those protesters, you will find the following for sure:
A.- The hear of this protester group are being paid by another big company currently losing market to Apple.
B.- Most of those people don’t worry about other companies they buy products from, like Walmart, Tyson or even electronics gadgets.
C.- Most of them doesn’t currently have a job and they are part of this movement because they agree to some payment.
D.- Almost if not all of them owns already an apple product or a copy of a apple product.
F.- NONE OF THOSE PROTESTERS have actually asked a Foxcom employee about how they fell in their current work and how was their previus work.
How are they not protesting vs HP, Dell, Samsung, others?
The truth will only be known by allowing the protestors to first work a year as a Chinese peasant farmer, then move up to a year of work at Foxcon. See how loudly they protest then.
Change.org are a bunch of asshats. If you run into any of these so called protesters please kick them into their hypocrite ass for me so their Chinese slave labor pants will spit out their Chinese save labor cell phone.
Thanks.
What, did Zuccotti Park run out of places upon which to defecate?
Misguided, knee-jerk, self-righteous Libs. Always good for a laugh!
what????? This is not Obama’s fault ….your slipping dude… I was sure you would figure out a way to blame Obama for this attack on Apple… Maybe I just didn’t edit long enough!
Uh….where did he blame Obama?
Or did you do that for another laugh…?
Apple should just pull their business from Foxcon and then these idiots can go see how all of those workers like being unemployed. I’m so tired of these busybodies insisting they know what is best for everyone, while having absolutely no clue how we got where we are in this country today. Why are so many people so proud of their ignorance these days?
There is an old saying in the non-US world: “You can always tell an American . . . . but you can’t tell ’em much.”
Most of these protesters must be scamming the working class by getting benefits while protesting a company which is employing thousands of Americans and others around the world. Get a job. Ask Obama he’ll see to it right away. After his next golf outing on your dime.
Please see my comment to F2T2 above. Applicable to you too.
Do you think they’d be like Monks and do a real protest by dousing themselves in gas and setting themselves on fire or are they wimps?…
Dang it, WIMPS!!!!
Sponsored by Samdog.
Samdog: I approved the message
I’m doing a few things differently this year.
1. I’m making a mental note of who is protesting what.
2. When perusing the forums I’m noting who calls whom an ‘asshat’ (or some similarly imaginative pejorative) and who is restrained.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Incredible, but par for the course.
It took up to 18 comments before the inevitable asshole made this into a liberal issue. Good comment F2T2…you win the asshole award. I am sure they are all commie pinko fag liberals. LIBERALS I tell you!!!!!!
Sheeeshhh…..flip the record over and play a new song.
histrionic much?
I couldn’t get on their website, but it is described on a search engine (not google) as
“Change.org is the web’s leading platform for social change, empowering anyone, anywhere to start petitions that make a difference.”
In other words, anyone with a grudge can ….. well…… Grudge!
They should be forced to a duel to the death against the Occupiers.
Either way, the world will be the winner in the end.
just two days ago I was talking to guy, a trained anthropologist, who worked with homeless kids in Africa and Asia for years (he distributed food etc). I was talking about this Apple thing and he told me an incident. He said clueless ‘humanitarian activists’ forced the closing down of a rug making company in Northern India that hired young people -some by U.S standards underaged – to work. They all ended up on the streets and asked him “why are rich white people so evil? What did they do to them? Now they and their families are starving”.
activist dudes: if those young people in China weren’t working in Foxconn they would be slaving on some farm for one third the pay (and if you think farming is fun you ain’t seen paddy fields before).
I know it’s hard but that’s the reality of it and I’ve worked in Asia when I was younger for years. Westerners think every kid in the world even the most poverty stricken areas if they dont work in factories are going to hang out at Mall or on the beach like them …
Activist Go Close Foxconn.. if you want to really want to see suicides…
Because of high publicity last year, Foxconn was forced to increase wages by a whopping 30%. Apparently, this didn’t bankrupt the company, so it seems to me that there’s plenty of profit cushion for Foxconn to work with.
Having spoken to many people who protest at events such as this one, I can say that majority of these people are (contrary to what many here seem to believe) honestly concerned and genuinely believe that somebody is making massive profits in China by exploiting people unfairly, and that the engagement of good-intentioned people will produce positive change. These people are essentially naïve, much in the same way Americans were naïve when they were hoodwinked into supporting an invasion of Iraq based on non-existent evidence.
If they were protesting against Dell, or Lenovo, or Huawei, nobody would care. Apple is the largest company in the entire world (by market cap). The only way any protest (legitimate, misguided, or malicious) on any cause would have meaningful impact would be if you go after the highest-profile target out there. Let us not forget, Foxconn makes hardware for 40% of American brands; by going after the biggest one, you essentially fix the problem for all of them (which includes Dell, HP, Gateway, etc).
most of these ‘protestors’ are spoit rich people (all Westerners are by comparioson rich to many in the third world) who have never been ‘over there’ (I have worked there for years before coming back to N. America)
they have the modern twisted version of Mary Antoinette : “Close the Bread Factories, the peasants should be eating cake”.
As for “increase wages by a whopping 30%. Apparently, this didn’t bankrupt the company,”. Did you do any research? The protests etc and extra costs was a contributing factor in significant profit drop for the company. Oct financial report: “Hon Hai Precision said it earned Tw$19.18 billion ($640 million) between July and September, about nine percent lower than in 2010.”
The problems and rising costs in certain areas of China has caused Foxconn to open factories elsewhere in China (good for the folks over there but bad for the original area) and overseas (like Brazil).
“”The costs from shifting production facilities from coastal areas in China to the inner part of the mainland peaked in the second quarter and since then have gradually fallen,” said Edison Lee of Grand Cathay Securities in Taipe … The company’s Foxconn unit started moving some of its production to central China last year in a bid to cut costs and scale back its massive industrial campus in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, which has been plagued by a series of employee suicides in recent years.”
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-parent-taiwan-foxconn-profit.html
One of the reasons in the recent suicide threats at the Xbox line was the closing of the line.
so the end result of the protests is less work for people of Shenzhen.
I don’t even want to get into hit apple as it’s the ‘highest profile target’ but only to say protestors who do so merely invalidates or cheapens their cries of ‘justice etc’ as they are not just themselves : to beat up on the company that is probably doing the most for workers (go read the Chinese press who say apple is way better than the others) while letting their rivals have an advantage.
sure the factories are tough and things can improve but the protestors are going at it without much knowledge and in the wrong way.
In one word… ‘idiots’!
If CNY and NYT suspended their knee jerk ideology against a growing company they would examine the issue on a level playing field. The Chinese are lining up in droves to work for Foxconn. What do they not understand?