

Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad - steveward
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?ref=business

======
memset
Wow. I'm kind of appalled by everyone's response which amounts to "meh this
has always been happening, nobody cares."

Possibly the central point of the article is not that "Apple is bad" but that
most of us are quite oblivious to the working conditions which bring us cheap
and fun gadgets.

We recognize that we cannot avoid benefiting from cheap labor on a daily
basis. But just as (according to the article) companies could choose to
enforce safety standards, we too might be swayed to demand better from Apple
and other companies if we had a bit more exposure to the realities of the
situation.

And the article drives home the point that we (customers) don't really care;
if we did, we would stop buying [widgets] and [company] would enforce those
standards.

Nothing new, sure, but it helps to put a face on the reality of the situation
in terms of icons that all of us can recognize.

~~~
salimane
something to notice too is that the work and attention required to assemble
Apple's products are greater than other companies thus Apple expose workers to
more health damages

~~~
Someone
I do not follow that logic. Surely, "work and attention" do not cause health
damages, do they?

I do not think there is any correlation either way, but one could argue that,
say, putting together a 'work fast, but the end result must be spotless' item
is less risky for one's health than putting together a (purely hypothetical,
for the sake of the argument) 'we do not care about shards on the glass
screen; blood spots on the screen are OK, too, but do it in ten seconds or we
will not make a profit' product.

------
idspispopd
Apple smear campaign built around the existing problems in large-scale SE
Asian(esp. chinese/vietnamese) manufacturing. Perhaps unfairly so because
Apple not only actively addresses these issues, but also Apple's vendors are
far above the average, and on an increasing upward trend in resolving these
issues.

Despite being a hot topic - factory suicide rates are usually well below the
USA/China averages.

Also many of the problems don't stem from greedy factory owners, but rather
cultural issues. Such as the vast numbers of rural workers who prefer 18-hour
factories simply because they can earn more in the few years that they'll be
stationed (often saving a dowry or similar nest egg.) In the factories I'd
engage we had to pay staff more than what they would earn in their 18 hour day
to entice them to work in our "more ethical" 12 hour days. We still found
numerous examples of staff using the extra time allocated to them to go and
work at smaller factories which would offer short-shifts (deliberately to take
advantage of our staff.)

Additionally underage labor is a problem, with workers deliberately falsifying
documentation so they can work underage. Now elaborate history checks are
required to ensure that the staff member isn't below the appropriate working
age.

In conclusion, Apple release their summary reports on their manufacturing, I'd
challenge other large companies to be this honest, because it's going to be
far worse. (Especially in IT and toys.)

------
jyrkesh
Unfortunately, I don't have time to read all seven pages of this article, but
what I did read seems awfully sensationalist. Not only does Foxconn make
products for a whole host of other tech companies (as others have pointed
out), but aren't there factories with terrible working conditions all over
China making things for all sorts of Western industries? And what exactly does
an explosion have to do with labor conditions in what's been described as a
hyper-clean, hyper-organized factory (albeit to the point of overworking their
employees)? Sounds like a terrible accident to me.

My main point here, though, is that none of this is anything new. Chinese
factories are continuing to abuse their workers to increase Western profit
margins. Short of completely reforming the Chinese government, what's the
alternative? Employing Americans instead so that even more Chinese people
starve?

Again, I hate to act like I read the entire article (and I'm now realizing
that I probably could have in the time it took to type this out), but I just
saw a lot of extreme language.

~~~
memset
TFA - on page 6, I realize it is difficult - says that the the explosions were
caused by aluminum dust filling the air which was not properly ventilated.
According to the article, these factories are not "hyper-clean or hyper-
organized."

The article is singling out Apple, but it also contrasts their attitude to the
attitudes of HP and other companies which manufacture electronics goods in
China.

~~~
glenra
These factories can have multiple parts. Final electronics _assembly_ \- the
most photogenic stage of operations - tends to be done in clean, well-lit,
well-organized, air-conditioned spaces by young women (age 16-20) wearing
color-coded paper hats (you don't want aluminum dust _or_ dandruff getting on
your circuit boards). But some of the earlier _manufacturing_ stages where you
mold plastic or cut metal to make an outer case shell (that is an eventual
input to the later process) can be hot and dark and grimy and smelly.

------
heed
This doesn't justify any sort of mistreatment the employees of Foxconn may be
receiving, but why is Apple always made the focus of controversy? Nintendo,
Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon products are manufactured there as well.

~~~
loceng
Probably because they have $96 billion in cash.

------
nextparadigms
Maybe it's a _good_ thing the Foxconn employees will be replaced with a
million of these in a few years:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1qJyAWZeV4>

Work that requires you to do one thing 5000 times a day shouldn't be done by a
human anyway.

~~~
nandemo
Yes, I also think is intolerable that those people have to do grudge work for
such low pay. Let's hope they become unemployed soon.

~~~
nextparadigms
They're not committing suicide because of the low pay. Nobody is forcing them
to take the job so I don't think being paid triple the money would do much to
lower the suicide rates. It's the job itself that's making them kill
themselves. They can't handle the working conditions or the work itself.

~~~
ghshephard
From the wired
article:<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/all/1>

"Out of a million people, 17 suicides isn’t much—indeed, American college
students kill themselves at four times that rate."

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
They should wait until the suicide ratio gets more alarming to do something
about their employees conditions?

------
glenra
Can anyone make sense of the claim that N-hexane dries faster and therefore
suppliers using it can _clean more screens per unit time_ and thereby save
money? That seems ridiculous on the face of it since it's hard to imagine a
task easier to do _in parallel_ than wait for screens to dry. Heck, imagine it
took _24 hours_ for screens to dry after being cleaned with alcohol - you'd
just make that cleaning the _last_ step on the line, stack the product into
your staging trays with the screen still damp, let them dry overnight, resume
the process from there the next day. Sure, it takes longer before the _first_
piece comes off the line, but that's in the noise - after that you're
producing units at the same rate with a one-day delay as you'd be producing
with a one-minute delay. No?

------
Game_Ender
Can anyone put some of these figures into perspective? How many injuries per
worker and per dollar are there in the iDevice supply chain vs. 1950's
american manufacturing, present day american manufacturing, other electronic
manufactures?

~~~
glenra
FoxConn has about half a million workers in Shenzhen, which means if you just
go by the cases we've heard about, the documented injuries-per-worker rate
(and the suicide rate) seems to be _unusually low_. Less than that for most US
cities, most chinese cities, most US colleges. In order to think the overall
accident rate or suicide rate among these workers is _unusually bad_ , I think
one needs to bring in additional assumptions to the effect that what we see is
just "the tip of the iceberg".

------
kmfrk
The different between a movement against the Foxconn conditions and a hetz is
how everyone keeps singling out Apple.

Do they want Apple to change the conditions, or do they want everyone to do
it? Is it a relevant story to them because of the working conditions or
because of Apple's involvement?

I imagine what revealing and and informative articles someone like Pro Publica
might be able to do, because they don't have these weird proclivities and know
that in order to change a problem, you have to cover it in nuance, detail and,
keep running with it, until it picks up and inspires people to effect change.

This by comparison reads like a bland piece with some choice quotes peppered
around it. If they had made the article with Apple as an _example_ or example
case, then it would be more interesting; the NYT are, after all, the best
people in the world at making infographics, in my opinion.

I can't help get the impression that the NYT are ruining what could be a great
debate and movement by this silly focus on Apple's part in something that is
so much larger than them.

------
joeg
Why focus on Apple? Because they are so large and successful they can actually
apply enough pressure to resolve issues. Simple answer.

Even more to the point, read the articles. Some entrepeneur has an oppurtinity
to get sales by re-building tech manufacturing in the US because. People will
buy the products because they want to re-invest in America.

------
aeontech
I don't see how anything specified in the article is exclusive to Apple. Reads
like linkbait, honestly. I was expecting rather more from NY Times.

------
Cl4rity
Other factories never have any mishaps or accidents that kill humans. Nuclear
reactors never melt down and hurt anyone. And so on and so forth.

------
fleitz
Where exactly does the author of this article think the PC he typed it on is
made? Or for that matter the servers that power the NY Times website.

If the NY Times doesn't like how the iPad is being made perhaps they should
pull their content from Newsstand. Wait until the NY Times finds out how many
loggers die each year to cut down the trees to make its paper.

~~~
miratrix
"Apple typically asks suppliers to specify how much every part costs, how many
workers are needed and the size of their salaries. Executives want to know
every financial detail. Afterward, Apple calculates how much it will pay for a
part. Most suppliers are allowed only the slimmest of profits."

"Many major technology companies have worked with factories where conditions
are troubling. However, independent monitors and suppliers say some act
differently. Executives at multiple suppliers, in interviews, said that
Hewlett-Packard and others allowed them slightly more profits and other
allowances if they were used to improve worker conditions."

The article clearly explains that Apple management does care, but that their
drive for secrecy and control makes it much more difficult for them to affect
change. Maybe he typed it on an HP computer instead.

------
temphn
I seriously wonder what made the NYT start this drip-drip campaign against
Apple. How many factories produce tens of millions of units without any
industrial accidents?

The New York Times is weird. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead in Iraq
and elsewhere, due in large part to conditions the Times' Judith Miller and
other media sources helped bring about. There is no reporting on that. All
computer companies can be called to account for complicity (and yeah, unto
their suppliers' supplier!), but never a newspaper for starting a war.

------
beatle
Human Costs Are Built Into an Xbox/Dell Laptop/Samsung/HTC/RIM/Motorola
Android Smartphone/Kindle Fire/Google Chromebook/Sony TV/etc.

~~~
droithomme
All right. Pretend the word Apple is replaced by "a client who wishes to
remain anonymous". Is what is described in the article OK now and not
newsworthy, or does the article describe disturbing things about labor
practices that are intrinsically newsworthy?

~~~
beatle
Why single out the iPad?

A) page views

B) hedge funds trying to short AAPL by spreading negative news the day AFTER a
record-breaking quarter.

C) A & B

~~~
droithomme
Sure I understood that from your first post.

I am interested in your opinion about the larger issue. Is what is described
in the article OK now and not newsworthy, or does the article describe
disturbing things about labor practices that are intrinsically newsworthy?

~~~
beatle
No its not ok. But WHY single out the iPad?

