A few hours ago, an explosion rocked Foxconn’s Chengdu manufacturing facility, which is one of the main producers of iPad 2s within China…. and it’s looking increasingly likely that the explosion might have occurred on the iPad 2 production line.
Faced with the ongoing PR crisis of suicides and alleged human rights violations of its Chinese contractors, it’s looking increasingly like Apple might shift a sizable portion of their iPad production to Brazil. To prepare, Brazil’s president lowered taxes on producing and purchasing tablets in the South American country.
Sources in Apple’s supply chain have revealed that Foxconn Electronics is currently facing supply and labor shortages that could delay shipments of both the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 during the second quarter.
Working conditions at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, have long been the center of attention. 1 million Chinese workers build electronics for Apple, HP, Nokia, Palm and Sony at the plant, some are reportedly as young as 12; having to endure long, repetitive work under notoriously harsh conditions. At last count, at least 14 Foxconn workers have committed suicide in the last 16 months.
The plant is now ordering its employees to sign an ‘anti-suicide pledge’, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail. Under the pledge, employees must not attempt to kill themselves, and if they do, their families can only seek the minimum in damages.
The New York Times‘ Bay Citizen website has published more remarks from Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak on the subject of Mike Daisey’s controversial one man show.
As previously reported, Woz was moved to tears by “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” a monologue about Apple and Foxconn, the company’s largest supplier in Asia that saw a rash of worker suicides last year.
Wozniak says he found the play deeply upsetting. He urges Tim Cook, Apple’s COO and current acting CEO, to go see the one-man show besucase the issues it discusses could hurt Apple financially in the future:
Tim should know about this very soon, so that he knows what’s in more and more people’s heads. The emotions and understanding and moral feelings that Mike brings out are very strong and could be a threat to Apple’s future, even though they are only simmering now.
The Bay Citizen: Apple Co-Founder Responds to ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’
Here’s the cover of the March 2011 edition of Wired magazine, which just showed up in the mail:
1 million workers
90 million iPhones
17 suicides
This is where your gadgets come from. Should you care?
Yes, you should care. We do. Kudos to Wired for shining a much-needed spotlight on this important issue.
The main point of performer Mike Daisey’s powerful one-man show about Apple and its Chinese factories is that in China, it’s cheaper to have people make products rather than have machines make those products. As a result, people are treated like machines. They perform the same tasks, day in, day out. They work excessively long hours and if they break down, they are discarded. Most tellingly, if they try to commit suicide, the factory puts up big nets around its buildings to catch them. Nothing about the work or the workplace is changed.
It’s these nets that Apple touts in its just-published Supplier Responsibility report, which details the progress it has made during 2011 in imposing standards on its overseas contractors. The report discusses child labor, factory poisonings and conflict materials. A whole section is devoted to the suicides in 2010 at Foxconn, its largest overseas supplier.
I think performer/journalist Mike Daisey has very important things to things to say about Apple, the electronics industry, and modern industrial production.
Go see his hilarious but upsetting one-man show at Berkeley Rep, or watch this great TechCrunch interview:
It may be the New Year, but sadly, it appears that the mere turning-over of the calendar isn’t enough to put a stop to the slate of Foxconn suicides: last Friday, a female engineer leaped from her brother’s 10th floor flat to her death after being insulted by a superior, ordered to quit, then sent to a psychiatric hospital on Foxconn’s orders.
The suicide is the fifteenth so far, although the first Foxconn suicide in 2011.
It’s close to Christmas, but not so close that there’s no stupid to report, so here’s your Yuletide dose: French site La Vie and photohournalist Jordan Pouille are again claiming that Foxconn is Hell on Earth.
Not that you’d come to that conclusion yourself, as the photoessay itself consigns itself to bookending shots of the barred windows at Foxconn’s dormitories (to prevent suicides) with shots of workers going to work, performing coordinated dances, shopping at malls, listening to pop music and shopping for food. What an Auschwitz, right?
If you had twenty seven billion dollars, what would your dream be? I’d probably get myself some of those ab implants I’ve had my eye on, and perhaps pay for an oiled massage or two from Amanda Seyfriend and Anne Hathaway that they would be contractually obliged to apply without using their hands.
Billionaire Eike Batista has a radically dream, though: he wants to steal Apple manufacturing from China and bring it to his home country of Brazil.
Yesterday was a big day for Verizon iPhone rumors. Hot on the heels of a rumor that Apple was working to create a reprogrammable SIM Module that might open the door to dual GSM/CDMA compatibility comes a perhaps contradictory report from the always dicey Digitimes that suggests that Cupertino has already awarded the build contracts for a CDMA iPhone to two of the biggest Asian electronics makers.
Remember that report that leaked Monday, in which 1,736 surveyed Foxconn employees detailed management transgressions including lying about pay raises to both workers and the media, enslaving interns and management physically beating their employees?
Foxconn’s responded to the allegations, “categorically reject[ing]” the findings and saying that their 937,000 employees all work in a “safe and positive environment.”
If you’ve got the money, you might want to buy any Apple products you’ve got your eye on now: starting next month, all of Apple’s products might get a price jump as their manufacturing partner Foxconn prepares to charge Cupertino more to make their gadgets.
Foxconn, the largest tech manufacturer in the world, is under fire yet again for alleged worker abuse… this time as part of a survey commissioned by the iPod maker itself.
As reported to China’s state-run Global Times, several universities working on Foxconn’s behalf in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have surveyed 1,736 workers. The results when compiled into the final report are shocking, to say the least.
Fake Steve tears down bullshit claims that the Foxconn suicides are below China’s national average (see Fast Company, ZDNet, Daring Fireball, Wall Street Journal, Alley Insider and others).
Working together with our colleagues in the PRC’s propaganda ministry we have developed a great new counter-narrative that we’ve been pushing pretty hard in background conversations with friendly hacks. Basically it’s the notion that Foxconn’s suicide rate is actually below the national average of China, meaning that if you’re working at Foxconn you’re actually less likely to commit suicide. That’s right. The truth is, we are actually saving lives in China.
Fake Steve continues:
But, see, arguments about national averages are a smokescreen. Sure, people kill themselves all the time. But the Foxconn people all work for the same company, in the same place, and they’re all doing it in the same way, and that way happens to be a gruesome, public way that makes a spectacle of their death. They’re not pill-takers or wrist-slitters or hangers. They’re not Sylvia Plath wannabes, sealing off the kitchen and quietly sticking their head in the oven. They’re jumpers. And jumpers, my friends, are a different breed. Ask any cop or shrink who deals with this stuff. Jumpers want to make a statement. Jumpers are trying to tell you something.
Fake Steve: Our new spin on the Foxconn suicide epidemic