Foxconn - page 17

Mike Daisey’s NPR monologue may have misrepresented his experience at Foxconn in China, but his main findings about working conditions there ring true.

Underage workers, health hazards and debilitating overtime are findings echoed by sociologist Dr. Boy Lüthje, who has spent the last decade researching labor conditions at China’s contract manufacturers where U.S. tech giants including Apple, Dell and HP make the electronic devices that populate our homes.

(You can read Cult of Mac’s exclusive interview with him here.)

Along with a team of researchers, he’s the author of a forthcoming academic work titled From Silicon Valley to Shenzen. The data here, Lüthje notes, is from late 2009 (before the wave of suicides hit Foxconn) but the general conditions remain largely unaltered. When it hits shelves, the book will include updated comments on Foxconn and Apple, he says.

Publisher Rowman & Littlefield granted Cult of Mac permission to publish an excerpt from Chapter 4, which similarities between electronics assembly plants in Mexico, China and Eastern Europe.

If you own an iPhone, laptop, Kindle, Android device, electric toothbrush, baby monitor or GPS navigator, it was probably put together by a worker in a Chinese factory.

Although Apple is currently juggling the PR hot-potato over working conditions at Foxconn plants in China, a situation made more murky by the factual takedown of Mike Daisey’s monologue, dozens of other global companies make their must-have electronics there.

For a wider perspective, Cult of Mac tracked down one of the world’s leading experts on modern labor in Asia.

The China Labor Bulletin (CLB) has spoken out after an episode of This American Life, which highlights the poor working conditions at one Chinese factory, was retracted last week, making it clear that this does not clear Foxconn’s name. “The press and stock investors will continue to watch how Foxconn treats its workers,” the CLB made clear.

Performer and monologist Mike Daisey has been all over the news since the This American Life radio show retracted its most downloaded episode ever in which Daisey talked about visiting Foxconn, the Chinese factory that Apple products are made in. This American Life said that Daisey’s story contained “significant fabrications.” The New York Times also edited an article it ran by Daisey to reflect the inaccurate re-telling of his experience at Foxconn in China.

To put it plainly, Daisey said he saw things he never saw and met people he never met. He’s been feeding his audiences false information for many months. For the first time in the show’s history, This American Life has run a special retraction episode to clear up the mess. If you’ve been following the Apple/Foxconn issue, you should really give it a listen.

This American Life‘s January episode “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” was the show’s most popular episode in history, racking up over one million downloads and setting off a chain reaction of reports that eventually resulted in Apple ordering an independent audit of working conditions in its supply change.

The titular Mr. Daisey has been covered exhaustively by Cult of Mac. He is probably best known outside of his NPR appearance as the man behind the one-man show “The Agony & Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, which Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wept at.

Unfortunately, Daisey’s integrity and honesty are being called into question after This American Life took the unprecedented step of retracting the episode earlier today,

Apple fans and journalists asking them why they stood in line overnight weren’t the only ones outside retail stores for the debut of the latest iPad.

Consumer groups protesting labor conditions at the factories in China where those shiny new tablets were made were also out making their voices heard.

I’ve been obsessing over my iPad pre-order so much since I placed it that I’m checking it tracking status almost hourly. I know it’s not going to arrive early, but I can’t help myself.

If you’re like me and you live in the U.K., you may have noticed that your iPad is listed as “out for delivery” today. But here’s why it won’t be arriving on your doorstep early.

Everybody has heard of how crappy Apple supplier Foxconn treats their workers. Long hours. Low pay. Shoddy conditions. Working at a Foxconn factory is in no way glamorous and wonderful, and it looks like even Foxconn is ready to admit as much. In an effort to reshape their image, Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory is looking to hire a Saftey and Security Officer and a Lifestyle Services Manager to make life a little bit more fabulous for their workforce.

Watchdog group SumOfUs has launched a new petition asking Apple to prove that workers at Foxconn factories in China weren’t subject to illegal overtime to make the iPad 3.

Specifically, they’re looking for Apple to turn over individual worker hours from November 2011-February 2012 to prove they’re not violating China’s labor laws which prohibit more than 36 hours of overtime per month.

Cult of Mac talked to SumOfUs founder Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman about what the group hopes to achieve with this latest petition, launched the morning of the iPad event as of this writing reached 41,500 of its 50,000 signature goal.

If you happen by the Palo Alto Apple Store Monday afternoon, that group of elderly women dressed in white dancing the robot to techno music on the sidewalk aren’t some funky flashmob.

They’re Raging Grannies, and they’re are mad as hell about worker conditions in China where Apple products are made.

Galvanized by a recent Mike Daisey story on NPR about Foxconn, they’re staging monthly protests outside the Palo Alto Apple store. They’ll be on the sidewalk grooving to bring more attention to Apple’s labor policies in China at 3 p.m. on March 12.

A small but determined group of protesters from consumer watchdog group SumOfUs gathered at Apple headquarters in Cupertino and headed inside the shareholder’s meeting to ask questions about working conditions at Foxconn.

Following the exclusive video tour of Foxconn by ABC Nightline anchor Bill Weir, the involved companies have responded with some minor clarifications and corrections. Apple, Foxconn and The Fair Labor Association (FLA) have all given statements to ABC News that clarify some specific aspects of Nightline’s report.

Employees at Foxconn factories in China claim that the company hid underage workers during the recent inspection by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) so that they would not be discovered, according to the organization Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM).

ABC aired an episode of Nightline last night showing exclusive video from inside “Apple’s Chinese factories.” In the video, presenter Bob Weir explores the production lines at Foxconn. Two things really stand out. First, the place is clean. And I mean really clean. Second, the iPhone is essentially hand made, with 141 human steps needed to assemble it.

Playwright Mike Daisey has released the transcript of his influential monologue, The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs, under a royalty-free license.

The move will allow Daisey’s hit play about the conditions in Apple’s Chinese factories to be performed anywhere in the world without restriction.Indeed, Daisey claims that more than 500 groups and individuals in 13 countries have contacted him because they want to stage it.

“No one has done this before,” said Daisey in an email to Cult of Mac.com. “Theater doesn’t do a lot of things like this, and certainly not with a transcript that could have been sold — I had offers from two publishers — for real money.”

Daisey said there’s interest from three major theaters in Germany, a mid-size theater in Spain and two in France. There’s an actor who is planning to perform it in Kurdistan, a group in Nova Scotia that is adapting it, and a group in New York planning to turn it into a full-on play.

“There’s a lot,” says Daisey. “It’s going to be interesting.

At this point, we’ve pretty much seen every part the iPad 3 has to offer: rear casing, Retina Display, logic board, CPU, Heck, we’ve even seen cables for the sleep/wake button, the volume rocker, the mute switch and other assorted guts. If you only had the digitizer and front glass pane, you could probably just slap all these parts together and build yourself an iPad 3 from scratch.

Oh hey, what do you know: here are the missing parts we need to build a complete iPad 3! Will wonders never cease?

The new front panel and digitizer, spotted by Apple.pro, confirms what we have long suspected: turned off, the iPad 3 will largely be indistinguishable from the iPad 2. Maybe a squidge thicker. The real distinction will be when the iPad 3 is turned on and that beautiful 2048×1536 kicks on.

Great, but when can we expect the iPad 3 to land. Only Apple knows for sure, but popular consensus indicates March 7th.

While investigations into the working conditions in its Chinese factories still underway, Apple has now commissioned an independent environmental group to review its supply chain and identify any environmental concerns. The reviews are set to begin next month, and will focus on the environmental impact of factories belonging to Foxconn and one other unnamed supplier.

This morning we showed you the preview of ABC Nightline’s exclusive look inside Foxconn that’s set to air tomorrow night. Apple has granted anchor Bill Weir unprecedented access to its Chinese supply chain, and ABC News has already published a fascinating report and gallery of pictures from its recent trip.

Following intense scrutiny from the media over working conditions in its supply chain overseas, Apple has granted ABC Nightline anchor Bill Weir exclusive access to its Foxconn factories. In a special edition of Nightline that will air tomorrow night, Weir will tour the largest ‘iFactory’ in Shenzhen, China.

What do you do when you’re sitting on a mountain of cash and have a labor condition crisis that has resulted in terrible PR? Give your employees a couple more dollars and hope that satisfies everyone, duh! Apple’s manufacturing partner, Foxconn Technology Group released a statement today that they have raised the wages of their Chinese workers by 16-25% this month. This is the second time wages have risen for Foxconn employees, but the first pay raise still didn’t resolve criticisms over Apple’s labor conditions.

As most recently referenced in Tim Cook’s comments on worker safety at Goldman Sachs yesterday, Apple is spending a lot of effort in 2012 trying to solve allegations of abuse in their supply chain. This initiative has most recently culminated in Apple going to the unprecedented step of asking the Fair Labor Association to audit their factories.

The FLA’s report isn’t due until March, but already, the Fair Labor Association’s president Auret van Heerden has spoken out, saying that at first blush, Foxconn’s facilities appear to be “first-class” in comparison to the garment factories the association usually monitors.

Speaking at today’s Goldman Sachs keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook began by bluntly addressing charges of worker abuse in Apple’s supply chain: Apple will not rest until every worker is guaranteed a fair, safe working environment without discrimination and at a competitive salary. Any suppliers who don’t take care of their workers will be fired.

Following claims that it isn’t doing enough to end worker mistreatment in Chinese factories, Apple has publicly asked the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to “conduct special voluntary audits of Apple’s final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China.”

The FLA acknowledged Apple’s request almost immediately and began its first inspections at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen this morning. Apple will be hoping that the FLA’s report puts the allegations that it is not doing all it can to bed and proves that working conditions are improving thanks to the company’s work.

As if Foxconn didn’t have enough to worry about with the protests today and labor conditions controversies of the past few weeks, it looks like their network servers suffered a huge security breach last night by a mischievous hacker group called SwaggSec that exposed the usernames and passwords of Foxconn’s clients and employees. What motivated the group to expose Foxconn’s vulnerabilities? Were they looking to make a statement on labor conditions?

Nah, they just wanted to screw with Foxconn for laughs.

Tourists wandering into Apple Stores in six cities around the globe found themselves in the middle of a media storm about the Cupertino company’s labor policies in China.

Members of two protests groups, who say they represent Apple customers, delivered petitions they claim are 245,000 signatures strong. Change.org and SumOfUs delivered petitions  to Apple Stores today in Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore.

Though the San Francisco protest appears as tiny as the one in New York, it did have one participant of note: Apple retail worker Cory Moll, who works at the downtown store.