Quote:
Originally Posted by
island hermit 
Apple's high margin has nothing to do with this.
Of course it does. Apple achieves high margins by lowering the cost of manufacturing and forcing their manufacturers to accept impossibly low margins. (Walmart frequently does the same.) That forces the manufacturers to obtain the lowest-priced labor pool they can possible obtain and that forces the workers into poor conditions. It's very easy for Apple or any other such company to say, "well, they're not our workers and the manufacturer accepted the contract," but IMO, that's not good enough.
While it's not slave labor per se (the workers (or at least most of the workers) decided they wanted to work there), it's akin to the green grape pickers of the 1970s who also worked under abysmal conditions.
If the workers are actually treated well, as another poster above maintains, then I think Apple needs to do the appropriate communications to prove that.
Apple's products are luxury items that are marketed to people who have money. I'm not maintaining that the Chinese factory workers need to be treated to the same standards as western workers, since the standard of living is different. But they need to be treated with a minimum of decency - one that doesn't make us cringe at their condition.