Chinese iPod slave labor
From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/19/mother_jones_goes_to_china/
"Apple Computer has vowed to cease driving its Chinese iPod assemblers like rented mules, after being shocked, shocked, to learn of abuses at several of its overseas factories. The Mail on Sunday recently broke the story, and identified poor conditions at factories in Longhua and Suzhou, operated by Taiwanese outfits Foxconn and Asustek.
The paper described workers driven more than 60 hours and more than six days per week, living in dormitories packed 100 to a room, earning £27 per month, and being denied visits from non-empoyees. The Longhua facility is reported to hold 200,000 workers behind its fences, chiefly uneducated young women and girls."
Even by Chinese standards, they are making less then %90 of the population.
Keep this is mind next time you plunk down big bucks for an Ipod or anything else made in China. Why buy American whenever possible? Lower energy costs of transport, American jobs, even crap jobs, are better then chinese, and outsourcing manufacturing to countries that don't even follow the min enviromental respect and laws we do. Not to mention a repressive horrible government with absolutely no plans for sustainability. Like high gas prices? Keep buying from China. And yes, you can actually buy from north america, if you put a little effort into it. And choose electronics that come from a somewhat better asian country with more civil protections and enviromental interests, like Japan.
China is a country undergoing an industrial revolution. They are in a great position to build modern, sustainable infrastructure. However, they have chose not to, due to a mass of disposable people.
"Apple Computer has vowed to cease driving its Chinese iPod assemblers like rented mules, after being shocked, shocked, to learn of abuses at several of its overseas factories. The Mail on Sunday recently broke the story, and identified poor conditions at factories in Longhua and Suzhou, operated by Taiwanese outfits Foxconn and Asustek.
The paper described workers driven more than 60 hours and more than six days per week, living in dormitories packed 100 to a room, earning £27 per month, and being denied visits from non-empoyees. The Longhua facility is reported to hold 200,000 workers behind its fences, chiefly uneducated young women and girls."
Even by Chinese standards, they are making less then %90 of the population.
Keep this is mind next time you plunk down big bucks for an Ipod or anything else made in China. Why buy American whenever possible? Lower energy costs of transport, American jobs, even crap jobs, are better then chinese, and outsourcing manufacturing to countries that don't even follow the min enviromental respect and laws we do. Not to mention a repressive horrible government with absolutely no plans for sustainability. Like high gas prices? Keep buying from China. And yes, you can actually buy from north america, if you put a little effort into it. And choose electronics that come from a somewhat better asian country with more civil protections and enviromental interests, like Japan.
China is a country undergoing an industrial revolution. They are in a great position to build modern, sustainable infrastructure. However, they have chose not to, due to a mass of disposable people.