Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by briantakita » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #638

briantakita wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'American workers should not have to compete with slave labor!' That's a powerful point! This is a big issue that will affect our lives & the lives of generations to come. Not to mention National Security issues & living in safe/strong neighborhoods. There are many reasons to promote ethical behavior & transparency with suppliers, on par with US standards. Ensuring that suppliers are ethical also disincentives indu…

> Ensuring that suppliers are ethical also disincentives industry/labor from leaving the US, as labor & compliance costs will be equalized. We want lower-paying jobs to leave, to be replaced by higher paying jobs. I think the focus should be on the latter: improve people's skill and productivity, and make sure that people can make the transition from the old jobs to the new, including a proper social safety net to se…

I agree that we should improve skill & productivity. The best way to create wealth & knowledge is to create a market for small & medium businesses. Employees can gain skills & learn about the industry to create their own businesses, which further evolves the market & creates more jobs & opportunity for advancement. Education with auto-didactic learning, tax law, & practical business is important, to help people reach the next level of wealth.

There's probably effective & ineffective ways of promoting citizens' interests with local, national, & international business; however if we care about our neighbors & our values as a country, we should invest in our neighbors who share these values.

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

#642

Post by onethought » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

dillondoyle wrote: post #555

onethought wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a single policy. Perhaps that’s a good one? Imagine a world where China and the U.S. were on better terms, start of the health crisis China helped provide huge amounts Of PPE required. Drs and epidemiologists from China with experience could have helped drs in the US. Instead they were coming off the back of a trade war over soy beans and hiding information from each other. Globalisation has effects that expan…

I don't buy that. it's not reality. To me it's two fold: - The US would not have a relationship say similar to Britain/US because of the fundamental differences and problems with CCP's behavior - Vis a vis the CCP's habitual covering up of anything embarrassing and Xi's / CCPs singular focus on maintaining and growing their own power. see COVID, SARs and the many examples from business to free speech & 'press.' It's…

The shoe IS on the other foot, and the US DID hide the facts. Their administration purposefully suppressed CDC information and pursued a herd immunity strategy without expressing it. You can't say "beyond trumps own incompetence and personality" without also saying "without Xi's incompetence and personality"... I don't think that is intellectually fair.

I'm happy to criticise china for the things it could do better:

- It's fast approach to full blown dictatorship, the death of the party, the rise of Xi

- Or its suppression/persecution of people actually trying to improve things for the Chinese people (Wuhan reporters, Rights activists etc)

But "Forced labour"... while developed nations like the US have prison labour? Persecution of Uighers, while Guantanamo is still a thing. Fix the things in your own back yard, which you have control over then from the moral high ground try and fix further abroad, otherwise no one (including the Chinese) pay no attention to what they see as just agg-prop. HN loves to jump on the latest china bashing and just make excuses/justifications US based domestic problems

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

#643

Post by CivBase » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #540

akritrime wrote: post #214

Recently, Apple's supplier, Wistron faced revolt after treating workers unfairly here in India. And India is not really the most shining example of protecting our workers from unfair and harsh working conditions. So, if such treatments don't fly here, I don't think they will fly anywhere else. The kind of labor expectation that these companies have after their stints in China is ethically incompatible with most other…

Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues. Governments really need to do the heavy lifting though because apart from refusing to hand over money/work they are very limited in what they can do.

> Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues.

Apple is currently incentivized to stay naive about the labor conditions of their manufacturing partners. As long as they can maintain ignorance, it's difficult to hold them accountable. We should demand better from a company as massive and profitable as Apple.

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

#644

Post by onethought » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

duskcloudxu wrote: post #534

onethought wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree “forced work” or slavery should be stopped. But go and visit these factories in China... the people are their voluntarily... because their alternative is worse than those conditions. Like I said economies develop, China should improve its workers rights laws, and slowly it has and will. We should avoid and remove slavery. Agree. But using developing countries as an example of why developed countries should be…

Mostly agree but highly doubt if China would change the worker rights laws. Actually they do not need change since they already got a good one (including 40 hour work week and overtime pay), but it's rarely enforced by local governments.

As the saying in China goes: "Government Policy, Peoples' Anti-Policy". If the government don't police the laws, then they aren't really laws.

Working conditions in a lot of Chinese companies are terrible in comparison to US/EU counterparts. Any evidence you need is just look at how much a Chinese company will change things if they hire a "westerner" (just for that westerner mind you)... It's ridiculous, China can and should do better.

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

#645

Post by onethought » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #554

onethought wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That fits the US foot as well... - Native peoples destruction (robbed of heritage) - Spying on allies (breaks international agreements) - Lobbyists and presidential pardons (massive corruption)

Yeah, well... I think the U.S. has some massive problems, but that's on another page and although I'd love to talk about these problems, let's stick with China for now. That a big enough pig.

Yes, my house is on fire, and that's a big issue that should be addressed, but check out the big fire across the road. Let's focus on that one.

(As someone who does not live in the US, it's hard to take the consistent negativity on China and the wilful ignorance on US domestic issues seriously, without just seeing it as propaganda...)

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

#646

Post by CodeWriter23 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

IMO this article launders slavery by referring to it as "forced labor".

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

#647

Post by zm262 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #586

mike_h wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s side-allegation, not what this article is about. And it’s a debatable one.

Are we reading the same article? You stated: > The central allegation is that a few thousand Xinjiang Muslims were offered employment possibly in exchange for political indoctrination It's a million, and they were not offered employment. They were "transferred" and forced to work in factories, among other places.

Did you know how such a whole number of one million come to be? Apparently eight persons were asked about their heresay and then someone extend the result to the whole population of xinjiang..

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

#648

Post by UnpossibleJim » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #205

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no necessarily disagreeing with you, as far as saying "it would be weird to refer to the people in Auschwitz-II as slaves", but may I ask why? I can't come up with a reason, really. They were dehumanized, worked to death, treated as property and less. Would calling them slaves be giving the Nazis too much credit, at that point?

Because Auschwitz-II took dehumanisation to a whole extra level of depravity, far beyond slavery. While you could logically argue that people there were also slaves, it would be an injustice to leave it at that. Generally speaking, slaves had some kinds of rights that were far better than those in Auschwitz-II. It's one thing to be treated as someone's property and forced labour, as a slave. It's another thing to be…

I'm just trying to get the comparison of terms down. While, yes, as an American, English is my first and primary language, I'm afraid some of its phraseology still confuses me. I think it has to do with parts of society that I don't understand, granted. The visceral reaction to the word "slavery" seems much more than to the more sanitized phrase "forced labor", or even "labor camp". Those are what we are what we're discussing here, like it or not. Uighurs are being sterilized and used as forced labor, but the phraseology is so sanitary as to not disturb our modern pallet of consumerism, we dare not draw a comparison to Nazis. While there are no crematoria, there are certainly shallow graves and executions, and parallels to be drawn. The word slave and forced labor is, at best, an argument of semantics of note only to those on the sidelines I'm sure, while those in bondage don't care what they're called.

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

#649

Post by darig » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #599

arentyouspecial wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t be like paying prisoners literal pennies is a way of getting around the law that made convict leasing illegal.

Convict Leasing is different, and people felt strongly enough that it was bad that the laws were changed (nearly 100 years ago!). Now the prisoners can get paid some wages in return for labor, in a mostly voluntary labor system. Unlike the CCP, every inmate had a trial and was found guilty of some crime, and is now repaying their debt to society - as it were. What did the million Muslims in the article get convicted…

Unlike the fairy tales you play in your head to convince yourself you're not a racist, many US inmates were wrongly accused and convicted - as it were. Society incentivizes the justice system to target the defenseless for victimless "crimes" so that they may demand restitution while reaffirming their baseless moral superiority.

You are their poster boy. Why?

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

#650

Post by onethought » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

jack_h wrote: post #563

onethought wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a single policy. Perhaps that’s a good one? Imagine a world where China and the U.S. were on better terms, start of the health crisis China helped provide huge amounts Of PPE required. Drs and epidemiologists from China with experience could have helped drs in the US. Instead they were coming off the back of a trade war over soy beans and hiding information from each other. Globalisation has effects that expan…

> As for citations: the US has just passed the second, largest stimulus package in its history beating or the first from a couple of months back. Are we’re ignoring this gorilla so much that people need citations? I'm going to push back on the tenuous link between the US being protectionist and the stimulus package. It's not like protectionist policies directly led to the economic problems the US - and a lot of the w…

> I'm going to push back on the tenuous link between the US being protectionist and the stimulus package. It's not like protectionist policies directly led to the economic problems the US - and a lot of the world - are experiencing thus requiring the stimulus package.

The trade war didn't improve the US economy. COVID actually squeezed the Stockmarket up (as interest rates hit 0 or negative) from stimulus (around the world).

I think you are probably right that it wasn't protectionist policies directly. But the US governments "Me, and Mine" (America First) approach has wilfully ignored good advice, policy and approach that has lead to its current situation.

It wasn't a bungled response to early days... it's consistent bungling from the first day until right this minute. (A pandemic with no generally available vaccine, wide spread infection, and no nationally coordinated mitigation = bungling, whatever excuses you make about US gov structure etc...).

China and US have always had a tumultuous relationship exactly because they don't try to resolve it, they see each other as rivals, and a threat.