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Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#351

Post by nubb »

danudey wrote: post #327
izacus wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. As one of the richest corporations on the planet which always smugly tells everyone how nice they are and how much they respect people? Yes, fuck yes. They're not a mom and pop shop. They're a corporation that finds millions to lobby…

One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China. The supply chain is also important. One person who worked in Shenzhen commented that,…

And yes we see how well this is working out with the recent uprising at the Indian iphone plant.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#352

Post by judge2020 »

desiarnezjr wrote: post #335
ogre_codes wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then by extension if you buy any computer, consumer electronics, smartphone, manufactured toy, etc, you are complicit in human slavery. There are almost no computer or smartphone companies which do not participate in these markets. Samsung, Dell, HP, Lenovo (which is a Chinese company yet oddly gets ignored every time these discussions come up), Microsoft, LG, etc etc etc. All of them participate in these same indust…

And almost every company on that list will use the same factories, supply chain, and probably labor. There are not that many ODM manufacturers that have enough scale and capability to build high precision electronics. That would be companies like Foxconn, Pegatron (from the same founders of Asus), Wistron, Compal, etc., etc. Basically every factory that manufactures your Dell, Asus, Samsung (?), etc.

Intel might just be the only company where there's a chance your chip is built in the US and thus uses the minimal amount of forced labor necessary to mine and ship the raw material.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#353

Post by nabla9 »

barnacled wrote: post #229

And 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'...

It's called Public Relations (aka propaganda)

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#354

Post by Lutger »

downrightmike wrote: post #201
_pp0b wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equating slavery with forced labour belittles the gravity and awfulness of what actual slavery is (or was). Forced labour takes different forms, which includes forced paid work and by some definitions penal work. Slavery is when a person is treated as a property of another person. Being a slave may or may not involve forced labour. In addition, calling Uyghur work “slavery” in fact undermines the cause, allowing CCP…

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.

Don't forget tortured, gang raped and sterilized.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#355

Post by racl101 »

danudey wrote: post #327
izacus wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. As one of the richest corporations on the planet which always smugly tells everyone how nice they are and how much they respect people? Yes, fuck yes. They're not a mom and pop shop. They're a corporation that finds millions to lobby…

One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China. The supply chain is also important. One person who worked in Shenzhen commented that,…

> One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China.

So, potentially, if the phones were made in the US they'd be like Ferraris? Very expensive and only a few made at a time?

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#356

Post by xbmcuser »

Talyen42 wrote: post #273
barnacled wrote: post #229

And 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 supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely. No company on earth has ever been able to make a smartphone entirely themselves, and no company ever will, although i'd like to be proven wrong.

Apple annual income is more than the annual budgets of many countries they don't need to make everything themselves but they can have few thousand trained inspectors which monitor all the places where it products are being produced. If they are able to keep new phone designs months into production secret they are also capable of monitoring and finding about worker abuse.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#357

Post by insulanus »

zm262 wrote: post #315
barnacled wrote: post #229

And 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'...

I guess this kind of news paints the wrong picture, or more likely to believe in this kind of thing. The more likely case is that, there are a bunch of people who are unemployable having no skills or lack motivations to work or happen to be in miserable conditions (like the homeless in US) were forced (yes) to enter this kind of "de-radicalization camps", monitored (yes) and _given_ an opportunity to get employment (…

I translated your comment.

> The more likely case is that, there are a bunch of people who are unemployable having no skills or lack motivations to work or happen to be in miserable conditions (like the homeless in US) were forced (yes) to enter this kind of "de-radicalization camps", monitored (yes) and _given_ an opportunity to get employment (like an internship for students) and get _paid_ the market salary. Yes they were forced to have a job that they can potentially do (the work conditions are like other "normal" apple factory workers). If they decline, well they need to go back to the "school"..

This news makes it more likely to believe in this kind of thing.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#358

Post by moron4hire »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #215
tiahura wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you've never been incarcerated? There's all sorts of volunteering: such as fixing the TV or coffee maker, teaching other inmates to read, helping another inmate file a frivolous appeal, and so on. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/wh... [What's It Really Like To Work In A Prison Goat Milk Farm? We Asked Inmates] But what do the workers themselves think? I find Jeremiah Pate in the…

> They aren't thinking about what was fair on the outside. They were just thinking about their options in prison, and in that perspective, the farm looked pretty good. You're making the case that it is involuntary. "Do this or we shall do to you something worse against your will" is textbook coercion.

But it's the thing that would already be done to them if the work program was not available. We put criminals in prison because of the crimes they commit, not because of the jobs they refuse once they are there.

Re: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

#360

Post by monocasa »

esarbe wrote: post #79
tcbawo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With choices of two major political parties, US voters have do not have granularity to approve or disapprove long term/chronic/fringe issues or issues that disproportionately affect a small minority of the population.

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that there have to be two parties. And even if there was; make an amendment. It the case of the U.S., nobody is to blame but the U.S. voters.

Its a deeper structural issue that that.

As you say, there's no law mandating it, but here we are.

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