Ok. I don't like apple a great deal, that is no secret. However, I know that a lot of people buy into their vision and the queues outside apple stores suggest many people don't share my opinion.
There was a lot of buzz over the iPad recently. Personally I don't see the point of it. To my mind, it's the least useful intersection possible between the iPhone and a notebook. There are no applications it can run that a notebook can't run faster, neither is it a phone or a convenient mobile form factor for GPS etc. Anyway, these are all technical reasons I think it's a pile of hyped up overgrown ipod touch.
So, I must have been living in a vacuum lately because somehow I missed this story. If the above criticism of the iPad doesn't put you off (and let's face it, if you like apple stuff, it won't), I am sure this will:
Courtesy of the torygraph...
A look inside the Foxconn suicide factory
As the Apple iPad launches in the UK on Friday, an investigation shared with The Daily Telegraph reveals the working conditions at the company in China which manufactures the device,
While Apple has risen to become the world’s largest technology firm, Foxconn, the maker of almost all of its devices, appears to have broken under the pressure of keeping up with new orders.
Two more workers attempted to commit suicide on Thursday by jumping from the top of dormitory buildings at its giant Longhua factory, according to sources at the site. Both survived and are currently hospitalised.
On Wednesday night, just hours after the chairman of Foxconn assured hundreds of reporters that the plant was under control, a 23-year-old man killed himself.
So far, at least 16 people have jumped from high buildings at the factory so far this year, with 12 deaths. A further 20 people were stopped by the company before they could attempt to kill themselves.
The hysteria at Longhua, where between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep, has grown to such a pitch that workers have twisted Foxconn’s Chinese name so that it now sounds like: “Run to your Death”.
Terry Gou, the 59-year-old billionaire who founded the company, yesterday turned his plane around on the way to Taiwan to return to the plant. In a meeting with his senior management, Mr Gou allegedly said that he would not now leave the factory until the suicides stop.
It would seem that the people there are simply being driven mad by the stress of working conditions:
An undercover team of seven Chinese investigators infiltrated the Longhua plant one week ago and told The Daily Telegraph that the trigger for the mass suicides is “inside the factory” rather than any personal or social impetus.
“The facilities at Foxconn are fine, but the management is poor,” revealed Zhu Guangbing, who organised the investigation. “Hundreds of people work in the workshops but they are not allowed to talk to each other. If you talk, you get a black mark in your record and you get shouted at by your manager. You can also be fined.”
He said Foxconn had lost tens of thousands of workers during the financial crisis and had been stretched to the breaking point by the volume of new orders, as products such as the iPad enjoyed monumental success.
“The machines keep moving and the staff have to keep up. The workers need practice to become really efficient, and with a heavy churn of new staff, they cannot adapt. In the past three months, the factory has been losing 50,000 staff a month because workers are burning out,” he said. “Even the engineers and the training staff have had to man the production line,” he added.
“Because Foxconn has had a large number of big orders, the workers are reduced to repeating exactly the same hand movement for months on end.
The workers we have spoken to say that their hands continue to twitch at night, or that when they are walking down the street they cannot help but mimic the motion. They are never able to relax their minds,” he said.
Overtime last year was an average of 120 hours per month per worker, bring their weekly hours up to 70 hours, above the maximum level set by Apple in its guidelines to suppliers. In the wake of the suicides, the company has now reduced the time to 80 hours per month, and is now considering raising its basic wage of 900 yuan (£90) a month by between 50pc and 100pc.
I think we got too used to the idea that sweatshops were all busy making sports clothing and footballs...
To be fair to Apple, Foxconn don't just make their stuff; many hardware companies are happy to delegate their production to them.
I just thought apple, with their self-aggrandizing "cult of better" hyperbole might "think different" when it comes to sweatshop labour. I guess not.
