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Anorak News | Apple’s still being complete bastards to the Chinese workers

Apple’s still being complete bastards to the Chinese workers

by | 4th, August 2013

APPLE’S being complete bastards to Chinese workers. Well, so says a new report out today from China Labor Watch: Apple’s still being entirely bastardly towards the workers in China that make so much of their kits. After all that stuff over the suicides at Foxconn a couple of years back, this new report insists that everything is still terrible at the new company, Pegatron, that Apple is using.

The heinous crimes against worker rights include:

For example, at AVY there are 10 showerheads for about 120 workers.

Hmm, I think that’s a higher ration than there was at prep school when I were a lad.

For example, in Shanghai, China’s most expensive city, where the average wage is $764, workers at Pegatron only earn $268 before overtime.

There’s plenty of people in London only making 35% of the average wage for that city. Just about everyone serving booze and food for example.

Each Apple supplier factory we investigated failed to provide more than eight hours of training to workers, falling short of the 24 hours required by Article 15 of China’s Provisions on Safety Training of Production and Operation Entities.

They only make 17 complaints and these are three of them. I can’t really see that this is some set of appalling crimes that cry out for vengeance. Actually, they seem like the sort of first world problems that you’d find in London or across the US.

What’s getting missed here is that it most certainly used to be true that conditions in China were appalling. As recently as 2000, manufacturing wages were around $1,000 a year. But that was all the legacy of the previous 50 years of communist idiocy: it’s been these last few years of rampant capitalism that have made things better for everyone. Yet it’s the capitalism that people seem to be complaining about, not the communist stupidity.

Go figure, hunh?



Posted: 4th, August 2013 | In: Money, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink