Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
241–250 of 820 posts
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#242iPhone suppliers workers supposedly. Maybe we should also talk about the prison labor complex in the US as well then and the 13th Amendment: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-11/californ... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/california-wildfires-p... https://www.freedomunited.org/news/forced-prison-labor-in-ca... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat... https://www.motherjones…
I think it is better to raise this on its own merits rather than as a simple response to another case of human rights abuse.
These issues are not separate and treating them as so lacks nuance. This conversation is not about whether genocide and forced labor is bad (which I hope we can all agree that it is), it is about The ethics of Apples business practices. The company in question (Apple) is already based in a country which performs its own version of state mandated forced labor along with a myriad of other human rights abuses. How is this not relevant? Knowing this, why should we expect Apple (or other US companies) to treat business in China any differently? What makes one okay and the other not?
Ignoring this connection diverts attention away from other, systemic issues in our global market system which incentivize companies to operate in this way.
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are kept in camps, monitored constantly, have no privacy, are searched constantly and on top of that, they are forced to work or go to detention. That is slavery. There's also the problem with them getting gutted for the organ transplants that China's own doctors have reported to be 4 times higher than they should be for the population size. So it is work, or go to detention and possibly get gutted.
What sources are you getting the organ transplants information from?
Odd to me that your question -- a genuine question -- would be downvoted.
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#244"forced labor" It's slavery...modern day slavery. Why are we mincing words? We stand on our soap boxes and preach about historical injustices and how we need to repair them. Well here is your chance to prevent a future historical injustice, and all it takes is for you to take a stand, instead of quietly consuming the products and leaving it for future generations to atone for methods by which those products were prod…
> Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock said the company has confirmed that Lens Technology has not received any labor transfers of Uighur workers from Xinjiang. He said Apple earlier this year ensured that none of its other suppliers are using Uighur labor transferred from Xinjiang. >“Apple has zero tolerance for forced labor,” Rosenstock said. “Looking for the presence of forced labor is part of every supplier assessment…
> supplier assessment we conduct, including surprise audits. These protections apply across the supply chain
like in India?
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#245I flagged this article and I really would urge everyone to actually read it before commenting.
I am very very concerned about China’s disregard for human rights, and I believe continuing to do business with CCP controlled companies is immoral.
That said, this is unsubstantiated accusations against Apple, which Apple directly contradicts. I believe Apple has a lot of leverage and resources and probably doesn’t want to do business with anyone who will make them look bad.
I feel very skeptical of this article.
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#246And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits. And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...
Apple's magic (i.e. brainwashing) clearly seems to work!
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#247"forced labor" It's slavery...modern day slavery. Why are we mincing words? We stand on our soap boxes and preach about historical injustices and how we need to repair them. Well here is your chance to prevent a future historical injustice, and all it takes is for you to take a stand, instead of quietly consuming the products and leaving it for future generations to atone for methods by which those products were prod…
It’s not slavery. They’re similar atrocities though. It would be weird to refer to the people in Auchwitz-II as slaves.
Oh fuck off. A quick web search reveals that Auschwitz.org refers to slave labor as slave labor in numerous places.
> On July 4, 1942 at the latest, regular selection was introduced for the Jews arriving on RSHA transports. As a result, an average of only 20% of them were kept alive and placed in the camp as prisoners capable of performing slave labor. They were employed mostly in constructing new parts of the camp, or at German companies involved in maintaining and developing the military potential of the Third Reich. They were transferred on a mass scale from Auschwitz to sub-camps set up nearby or in Upper Silesia, or to concentration camps in the depths of the Third Reich.
http://auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/jews...
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh absolutely, they work very hard on this and deserver a lot of credit for it, but then so do Apple. They have some of the strictest policies and most thorough inspections in the industry and this still keeps happening to them.
I don't think it's comparable no. The effort put by Fairphone to build an ethical tech company is not comparable with what apple have been doing. There's a lot of information on their website and it's worth to have a look: https://www.fairphone.com/en/impact
I mean, Apple also has a lot of information on their website and it's also worth looking at:
https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/
They also have annual reports for the past few years just about this.
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#249I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...
> I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations... I don't think so. Nothing happened with Tibet, or after the Tiananmen Square event AFAIK. 20 years ago, the people that signed all the trade deals with countries such as China claimed it would lead to improving democracy and human righ…
> the republic of China has never been more autocratic
This is a more nuanced issue than it might seem in some ways though. I have some first hand experience since many of my coworkers are native Chinese living in different parts of China.
Trade has enabled the growth of a previously non-existent middle class in China and they have started to assert political power in ways not immediately apparent to Westerners.
One example is the "Beijing smog" that everyone knows about. The Chinese middle class are becoming unwilling to tolerate the total environmental devastation that was the norm two decades ago. They have put a lot of pressure on the CCP to keep the air cleaner and as a result many dirty industries like iron casting have had a huge number of restrictions put on them in the last 5 years. I would consider this a direct result of the political willpower of the Chinese people.
In my experience though, the reason things like the treatment of the Uyghurs or Tibetans have not changed is simply because the average Chinese person does not care or wish to rock the boat.
Before you finger wag about that, consider the American treatment of South American migrants that has come into the spotlight in the last 4 years. I would say that the reason it has not changed has the same root cause. The average American does not care, or silently approves and thus there is not enough pressure on the ruling party to produce change.
Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Forced" is the word the article uses. We don't know if that's accurate or hyperbolic. I think issues like these are worth scrutiny and intense investigation, but I'm not going to pull my pitch fork out just yet. It's so easy to sit in my desk chair, read an article like this and have an armchair outrage moment.
pulling out your wallet without thinking is as bad as pulling out a pitchfork. Perhaps worse, since you are holding the global poor to a higher burden of proof than the billionaire elites.
That's fine, but tell me where I can buy an ethically sourced phone? I develop for iOS, Android and Desktop systems. Each of these devices have thousands of components from different vendors that I have to support. The parent article is talking about some glass.