• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.

For years, Apple Computer has received little scrutiny for its business practices. The company has brilliantly markets itself as the hip alternative to the corporate giant Microsoft. Apple’s “Think Different” campaign featured images of John Lennon, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The ad said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Here in San Francisco, I often see apple stickers on Priuses. It’s a statement. I don’t use a PC. I use a Mac.

And a consumer study by the Reputation Institute has Apple and Google sharing the #1 spot as the world’s most reputable companies.

But various organizations are starting to expose Apple for the way Chinese workers are treated in overseas factories and its support for major corporate tax breaks.

On June 4, US Uncut, the groups that exposes tax dodgers, held a National Day of Action at Apple stores in 15 cities across the country.

The group wanted to raise awareness about Apple’s support of the ‘Win America Campaign,’ which would give an $80 billion dollar tax holiday to Apple and other major corporations, including Microsoft, Oracle, and Google. Apple would receive $4 billion, which equals the salaries of 90,000 teachers, according to US Uncut.

According to AlterNet, demonstrators in at least four cities were told they would be arrested if they entered the stores.

Joanne Gifford, US Uncut’s California organizer told AlterNet that at the action in San Francisco, Apple’s security detail was particularly aggressive, trying to take bullhorns and grabbing cameras. She said she’s been part of many protests at Bank of America branches, and BP and Verizon headquarters, and they were must less militant than Apple.

And then there are the working conditions of the young people who make iPads and iPhones at Foxconn, a factory in Shenzen, China. Foxconn made international headlines last year year after several workers jumped to their death saying the workplace is like a labor camp.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t get much attention from activists. It does get media coverage, but it tends to stop there. The Telegraph reports that late last month, a 23-year-old male Foxconn worker killed himself.

According to the Hong Kong-based organization Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, at least 18 workers have attempted suicide since last year. Only three survived.

It’s gotten so bad, the company has put nets around the building to catch people who jump.

Zhu Guangbing and six others, recently infiltrated Foxconn to talk to workers and see the conditions for themselves. Guanbing told the Telegraph that workers are not allowed to talk to each other. If you talk to a co-worker, you will be yelled at and fined. Workers say their hands twitch at night because they repeat the same hand movement for months on end.

The average employee works 70 hours a week and earn as little as $200 a month, which is not enough to buy the products they make.

Lin Fengxiang, a 23-year-old, told Guangbing: “I know why all those people jumped. In here, nobody gives a damn about you. Too bad I’ve already got one foot on this boat. It’s hard to get off now.”

So why has Apple been given a pass? Is it because so many of use their products? Is it because this is how multi-nationals operate? Have we become numb to human rights abuses?

A video about Foxconn produced by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior says: “When you use an iPad or an iPhone, take a moment to think about worker’s rights. Only you can improve their lives.”