Factory workers claim Foxconn hid underage employees before FLA inspection - Page 5

The same logic applies. Why would they have to when they have so many of the proper age that can work overtime without an age restriction?

What "same logic" do you mean? Why hide them working excessive overtime? Or why did Foxconn work them excessively and/or restrict breaks if they had older workers they could make the demands of?

It's unclear what you mean.

All of that. First of all, there is no way you can look at a 17yo worker and say "Hey, they've been working more then they are suppose to." They have documents with their name and age and the hours they work. Surely this is all automated to keep track of over 1 million workers. This can doctored, but why go that trouble at all instead of simply no hiring them

Secondly, why would they violate the law when they have so many other candidates they could hire that can do the job? You're arguing that by Foxconn not working employees that can only work restricted hours they are some in violation by not violating the law. It's fucking mental! It simply makes no sense unless your goal is to discredit Foxconn in order to slander Apple.

If you actually believe that Foxconn is hiring underage workers and then working them beyond what they are allowed to work per the law you'll have to come up with a reason that isn't limited to a conspiracy that involves Foxconn not working the employees. You'll have to give a clear and concise reason as to why they would hire these children in the first place.

ah. . . Solipsism. . . err... that was AI's claim, which even 9to5Mac picked up on today and attributed to this site.

Which entirely begs the question. What constitutes reasonable labor policies?

If you're Canadian, that would be a year of paid maternity leave.

If you're Finnish, that would be a minimum of 44 paid days off per year.

If you're Dutch, that would be a 28 hour work week.

So one could argue that the U.S. does not use 'reasonable labor policies' since we don't do any of those things.

Reasonable labor policies means 'in compliance with all applicable laws and requirements in the country where the person is working. Apple does that.

Actually the article's premise is that Apple and/or Foxconn ISN'T doing that, hiding the evidence so to speak.

China's industry standards and actual practices are very low compared to western standards and I suspect most of us would not tolerate China's working conditions from our employers(1).

Apple's image is all about holding it's products to incredibly high standards, supposed enlightened sensibilities and freeing people from drudgery, remember that iconic Apple 1984 commercial(2). Many of us expect the best from Apple, not minimal or merely adequate.

(1) https://www.chinabusinessreview.com/...03/rosoff.html
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsWzJo2sN4

Two questions.

One, what would these folks be doing, if they were not at Foxconn? Harvesting rice? Working at a less desirable electronics manufacturer?

Two, I keep hearing some folks mention them being paid a reasonable living wage. Um.....has anyone heard what the average wage in China is currently? Do they know these folks make like 3 times that amount?

Living and fair wages in China, are MUCH less than what they are in the US. Why do folks think these things are made in China?

You're keeping in step
In the line
Got your chin held high and you feel just fine
Because you do
What you're told
But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold

Just how deep do you believe?
Will you bite the hand that feeds?
Will you chew until it bleeds?
Can you get up off your knees?
Are you brave enough to see?
Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's
A charade
And behind it all there's a price to be paid
For the blood
On which we dine
Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?
Will you bite the hand that feeds?
Will you chew until it bleeds?
Can you get up off your knees?
Are you brave enough to see?
Do you want to change it?

So naive
I keep holding on to what I want to believe
I can see
But I keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?
Will you stay down on your knees? [8X]

Sounds like the workers are ready to bite!

Haha yeah probably right.

Soooooo tired of this kind of reports! Do something like massive boycott of Apple product or walk out on the job. All these inside reports only tells me they have disgruntle employees. As if we don't have in our share of water-cooler rant sessions? Should we be walking out on our jobs too? Our company has shitty management, can anyone do something about it??? May I claim mental abuse via poor management?

These reports needs to walk a fine line between reporting REAL conditions and not like "OMFG, they hired underage worker!" ... Where's the problem, the worker needs a job and there's work to be done? Seriously, apply common sense and stop crying foul when these reporters don't understand the culture in the first place.

Straight up... and ban me since you can as a GM... but that line is utter BULLSH*T!

You fail to take into consideration that Apple has innovated now at the least, 3 complete industries, and has set the bar to which ALL other devices, operating systems, and eco-systems are judged.

The result of the above is that Apple can not make enough of their devices to satisfy demand at the price points they sell their devices at, resulting in what many people label as "obscene" profits.

From those "obscene" profits, Apple has been able to pre-pay for many of the components that make up their devices, as well as fund the building of machines and factories, to assemble them... creating jobs in the process. Naturally, they receive prederrential treatment and discounts as well, but cheap(er) labor is not one of them.

May i also point out, that even their closest competitors are not so fiscally and financially clever and disciplined to copy that strategy, but have definitely profited from Apple's investments.

If your premise above is true, than let ALL of the tech beneficiaries pay... not a percentage of total company profits, but percentage of individual device profits... AFTER deduction of R&D, and associated investments mentioned above.

Just BECAUSE Apple is one of the only companies in the tech sector generating profits, is no reason to make them pay to right all the wrongs that the entire industry should be expected to bare.

Summary: IMHO to state that Apple's profits have come about to a large extent from 3rd world ie. cheap labor, comes pretty close to being blind to what Apple has achieved strategically. It also calls into question why you are a GM here, because you certainly don't understand what makes Apple the company they are, and most importantly, how they have achieved "the impossible" in a little more than a decade.

And that' exactly what I'm asking for.

Can we go back and reseach what these factories looked like BEFORE Apple got big? I would like to see this put into persective in regards to the late 90's, or even just 10 years ago.

Oh dear. Another person who is unable to correctly parse what I say, and instead reads what they think I'm writing, not what I'm actually writing.

By the way, I agree with most of your post.


No, I do not fail to take this into consideration. Stating that Apple "has benefited from the low manufacturing cost" does not equate to me thinking "that Apple's profits have come about to a large extent from 3rd world ie. Cheap labor". Yes, the vast majority of Apple's wealth has been generated due to their innovation; if this was not the case then all other companies using cheap labour for an equivalent amount of time would have accumulated an equivalent amount of wealth. However, one must acknowledge that cheap labour is a contributor to Apple's high margins.


At what point did I label Apple's profits "obscene"? Do you deny that $100 billion is "vast wealth"?


I really don't understand how so many people have failed to miss what I have stated over and over again. What I am advocating is Apple contributing towards the improvement of the living quarters of those making Apple products. How is that expecting them to "pay to right all the wrongs, that the entire industry should be expected to bare."?

There may well be genuine logistical and/or political and/or unintended consequence reasons that in reality would prevent the living quarters of Apple line workers being improved. But I find it rather sad that even as a thought experiment, people find abhorrent the idea of Apple spending 0.5% of their accumulated wealth on improving the lives of the human beings who make their products .

No, I believe my reading comprehension is correct in that you "stated" what I put in bold, and yes, I took it literally. Blame the writer not the reader.

Care to take a guestimate at how much percentage-wise Apple has added to their profits due to manufacturing in China?

And as apposed to their competition utilizing the very same labor force?

Has there been a breakdown in the costs that Apple has already born, by literally financing the production of their competitor's devices? Both in R&D and production facilities?

How about the costs for the "100s" of Apple employees already in China keeping an eye on and providing oversight? What's that cost?

What about those other Apple-funded opportunities like advanced education at Foxconn? Who else is doing that?

And while this last question will cause a stir, and is possibly below the line:
what percentage of the current workforce would even be able to touch a high-tech device such as an iPhone or iPad, to see and feel with their own eyes and hands, the future and possibly realizing their dream of actually owning one. Who's to say that more than a few of the hard workers, may actually make just that sacrifice and start developing Apps, using Foxconn and their experience there as a stepping-stone.

You do realize it is just this supposition, that created the American Dream, don't you?


And to a degree, I believe your intentions are good, albeit not very well thought out re: Apple coughing up another half a billion, where the majority of that sum "may" never see it's way to the pockets of the workers themselves.

Do you seriously believe that China would allow Apple to see to whom, what and where the actual sum would flow to?

Yes. A building or 2 could be built, but now what about the construction workers and their grievances? Do they also need to be paid Foxconn wages? What do they make now? Are their jobs also not dangerous and full of hard, boring, routine days? Who skimmed 30% of the sum and the material costs to build the buildings?


Again, please show where Apple has benefited more than their competition. Until then, I respectfully and fully disagree with that statement.

In fact, I would say they haven't UNFAIRLY benefited in the least. As apposed to the huge line-up of companies before Apple, and currently using Foxconn and the sub-contractors to create Apple-wannabe devices... who's really benefiting here?


Why again? You make the right conclusion in the first sentence. So why are there no other $100 billion tech companies out there? HINT: "High margins" in your qualifier sentence is what's wrong with the statement as a whole. Because if they could, the competition WOULD have higher margins as well.

So it really comes down to Apple's fault for having "high margins" and hence, should foot the bill... because ya know, "...Apple wouldn't even feel it (sic)".


Actually you didn't. I said "many people consider" that label. Although I believe that you "were" thinking in the "obscene" line of thought, if your vocabulary includes that definition outside of porn, considering your next quote:


"Vast" by all means. Unheard of, unbelievable, and laughable just a few years ago. Deserved and earned? I would say unequivocally: YES!


I don't think the majority of the posters here have a problem with your desire and heartfelt intentions. However, for my sensibilities and pragmatism, you just "framed" it sloppily and with some pretty broad (and dare I say stupid) statements.

Coming from a GM and supposedly real "insider", I would have expected the same troll-like statements from the legendary Slappy or TechStud. I actually had to do a double-take on the poster, and thought possibly the Forum security had been compromised.



As a "thought experiment": fine. It's as noble as Communism in print. Reality says: it probably won't work and/or pan out as planned. I'm skeptical in the very least, and adhere to, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

BTW: In one of your justifications, you even alluded to a PR coup of sorts: NO! It would backfire, and I would expect that from amateur "Marketeers" to dredge that canal of sludge, rather than "just do it silently".... which BTW, Apple has/had been doing up until that NYT smear piece.

PS. I, more than most people I know and deal with, consider the "human" and "humane" element in almost every decision I make. Not what's "best", but what's most productive and motivational to actually do the work at hand.

Work is work, but I/we do our best to make it as enjoyable and rewarding as possible. Sadly to say, there is always that 10-15% that will always demand "more", and refuse to see the opportunity through their narrow gaze of what's physically in front of their nose. To those "Refusniks", I normally suggest parting of ways.

The grass can be a greener shade of brown for some people. I provide the "paint and the brushes", but I refuse to create the "painting" for them, and no matter how many buckets of pure mint green I give them, it will always turn out to be "sh*t-brown" in their eyes anyway. Sorry, but I have little patience for that kind of attitude and thinking.

Apple as well as the other companies doing business and investing in China are providing buckets of green, giving a 3rd world population the means to escape their current destiny and shape/create a new one, both socially and politically. Things do take time though.

No I do not prescribe to taking advantage of the situation in the very least until the time comes when things "equal out", but an understanding of previous historical timelines and patience (a Chinese strength) is in order I think. The Chinese government seems to be guiding their people and development quite well actually. They're doing something "better" than America... heck... they darn near own it!

PSS. "Abhorrent" is the Western media Gag-Rag "thought experiment", that some of us older folks fondly referred to as "responsible journalism and reporting" years ago. Sadly, no more can be said than that the profession of Journalism is dead, and has become just a huge splash of dung-brown paint, thrown lazily, unprofessionally and in a trendy and populist fashion, at a dead-tree canvas!

"2-pence Click Whores" should be their new name. Maybe they should unionize. I've heard "bending over" is an occupational hazard and doesn't get paid what it used to!

This thread belongs in Political Outsider.

The topic is general as it starts out, but the discussion is anything non-political. People who have not traveled the world a bit to see what life is like outside the West and the city centers of developing countries (the 1.5 and rising world) don't have context to be able to understand the differences between cultures. And all we get is dogma and posturing. The voices in the thread who may have seem a bit are drowned out by those who have no hope of ever understanding because of a lack of life experience. Living in the West even for a long life won't help that so this isn't a youth commentary.

Aspects of both sides of the issue are correct. The real question becomes how do you change another culture that is 6x the size of USA+Canada with more than 10x the cultural inertia and tradition (200+ years vs 2000+ years). Should we actively try to change that culture? Is it morally right or wrong for us to try to change that culture? Can changing one factory (or very small set of factories) make any dent in a culture if the rest of the culture does not wish to follow? Should we force any part of the culture to do something the rest of the culture isn't doing? The West has been accused of cultural meddling for years, how would this be any different?

Working with China today is a drastically different thing that the Nineteenth Century Imperialism and Colonialism done across the rest of the globe and the worker abuses that were part of that era. We don't dictate the terms in China like the Imperialists did elsewhere.

None of the above questions has a clear answer one way or another, but without the ability to address those issues and understanding what the whole culture looks like in relation to the one little microcosm of Foxconn, et. al., getting all riled up about Foxconn is like trying to put the cart before the ox, but forgetting the cart and the oxen.

If those questions/issues make your head explode then why even try to comment in this thread? Now think socially responsible and figure out how to help in Hom. Where a REAL humanitarian crisis is underway, not a latte froth tempest in a Starbucks cup.

Yes, I stated what you bolded, that is clear. No, you did not take it literally. That was the point; you added your own spin.


For the umpteenth time, my issue is with the living accommodation, not wages. I wouldn't want this money to go the pockets of the workers.


Again with you adding additional spin to my statements. I never said that Apple benefited unfairly.



This is a simple mathematical fact. If the manufacturing costs were higher, Apple's margins would be lower. Hence, low manufacturing costs contribute to Apple's margins. Not make up the majority of, not directly correspond, not equate to, simply contribute.


Further spin that you added for yourself. I stated a fact, that is all. Fact: Over the last few years, Apple has accumulated vast wealth. Stating this fact does not equate to holding the belief that Apple having this wealth is obscene or that the wealth is obscene in and of itself.



The point I was trying to make here is that when I made the proposal, it was the notion itself (that Apple should part with 0.5% of its vast wealth to improve the poor living conditions of Apple line workers) that was attacked, not the potential logistical or political problems of putting the idea into practice.


Communism isn't noble, even on paper.


Agreed. The "reporting" of this issue has been truly lamentable.

Since people still seem confused about where I stand on this, let me state clearly that:

• I have no problem with the wages that Apple line workers at Foxconn receive.
• I have no problem with their working conditions.
• I have no problem with the hours worked with the proviso that any overtime is worked voluntarily and not "forced" (i.e. "you work this overtime or we'll fire you and find someone who will").
• Factory work is boring and repetitive. This is just an unavoidable fact and is an entirely illegitimate complaint.
• Apple has done more to improve the working conditions and pay of employees at Foxconn and other suppliers than the entirety of the rest of the tech. industry combined.
• Apple has directly funded and initiated employee education programs and I believe that this is a very good thing.
• The previous two points combined are just more contributory factors to me choosing Apple products over others.

If these Chinese workers hate these jobs so much, bring 'em back home to the US. I'd love to have one. Oh, and for the record, I am a liberal, meaning we should have the choice to work crappy jobs over no jobs! Also, I am an American & I started working at 12. It's easy to judge others, but we need a damned mirror!!!

Considering I wasn't the only one to misunderstand your intentions, just for the record...

Originally Posted by Mr. H
Because it's Apple who for years has benefited from the low manufacturing cost, which has enabled them to accumulate a vast amount of wealth that now puts them in the position of having the means to address the situation whilst suffering as-near-as-damnit no material impact.

You spun your web yourself.


OK. You suggest Apple building more dorms to the tune of $500 Million. So I will ask again: do you truthfully think that will be "enough" for workers to make them happy? Do you think it will call off the "Media Dog Pack"? I don't. Continuing the dog metaphor, I call it "barking up the wrong tree".


No you didn't. It was me stating that Apple did not unfairly benefit in the least, as opposed to their competition.


Not so simple if you can't go on record here and give your best estimate in percentage, as I asked the first time. Also put that percentage into the perspective that every competitor is using the same workforce. No you may not compare it to American wages and norms, because no other company is producing their products in America.

You specifically pointed out Apple's "high margins".

I say those margins have little to no bearing to where they manufacture, because every other company is paying similar costs due to everything being produced and assembled there. Actually, I believe Apple has incurred more costs in relation to their competition, because they almost single-handily created and initially financed the refitting from PC parts to high-end mobile. Or are you gonna argue that Samsung or RIM did that first?


I spun nothing, and your statement regarding Apple benefiting from inexpensive Chinese labor, is not fact, until you can provide numbers that show that they are gaining more than their competition. That will prove 'benefiting'. Fair and unfair are regardless of that fact if you or anyone else can prove it.



Your fact is correct. And again, I wasn't attributing "obscene" to you in particular; just the all-to-prevalent vernacular being used these days when talking about that kind of money. I assume people would be more comfortable if there was a "-" in front?


Well golly gee Mr. H... sorry, but "ideas and thought experiments" will be commented upon, specifically and I would hope, within a forum setting such as this one.

You've been complimented on your humanitarian heart. Take it and be done, because as unfortunate as it is, your premise is nothing more than a wish that has strings attached (many of them!) called consequences. I firmly believe there is no upside to your wish. What Apple is doing now, is good... and will become better with diligence, a firm commitment and time. Tim Cook has said as much, and considering he built the whole damn operation, I'm gonna believe that he will continue to prove and improve Apple's position. I'm gonna state as fact, that he sure knows a damn far more than anyone here debating this and what still needs to be done to keep everyone happy. Customers, workers... and let's not forget shareholders. This is a public co. we're talking about.


Actually, yes it does (did) look quite good on the original paper(s). It's the execution (literally!) and human nature that makes it untenable and a complete failure. You should read more, because it was very noble in it's infancy and before the fanatical/maniacal got a hold of it.

Agreed. The "reporting" of this issue has been truly lamentable.


Too bad you didn't write that in your first post on this thread. We could have saved some time, and I would have possibly....... nah...... your lead-off statement still sucks. Sloppy Mr. H., because only now can I see that it was just a hastily written line from someone that knows better.

PS. Still interested to hear your take on "how much" of Apple's margins are due to cheap labor. Care to entertain us further?

I for one have no problem with firms that try to improve the lot of those that have helped to make them profitable.

The world would be a very different place had it not been for the 19th and 20th centuary philanthropists who decided to share some of their wealth. This form of redistribution of wealth is very much a Calvinist principle (with Calvinism being the credo upon which capitalism was initially based).

Compassion and empathy are not a signs of weakness nor are they exclusively communist or limp-wristed liberal tenets.

Through its success Apple has found itself in position to be able to make a real difference to people's lives. If they were to adopt the suggestions made by the likes of MrH they might even find that a secondary outcome would be even greater profit resulting from goodwill.

Could not agree more! I have seen it with my own eyes!