Mar 16 2012
iPad 3 Rollout Draws Thousands, Even as Chinese Working Conditions Remain Grim
Long lines are forming outside of sleek Apple computer stores around the nation today as gadget trend-setters wait to be the first to own an Apple iPad 3. The popular tablet is smaller than a piece of paper, thinner than a copy of Vogue magazine, and, bestows the user with a degree of class status.
Apple products were once unambiguous symbols of a fresh, forward thinking ethos, but the highly publicized abuse and terrible working conditions of the Chinese laborers who assemble its goods has recently warped its image. Workers assembling Apple products at the Foxconn factory in China, which employs 1.2 million employees who also live on company property, report being packed into dorm rooms with as many as 20 people, working 24 hour shifts, and sustaining injuries from chemicals and machinery. Attention was first drawn to the factory after a rash of worker suicides. In the wake of consumer complaints last month, Apple announced the Foxconn factory would be monitored by the Fair Labor Association.
Today, outside Apple’s flagship store in San Francisco, the hip urban neighbor to the tech-sector hub in Silicon Valley, Change.Org is holding a demonstration to keep pressure on Apple to improve working conditions overseas. Change.org says labor monitoring is a step in the right direction but it’s calling on Apple to release a plan for how it will protect workers during the production blitz for the iPad 3 launch. Apple has not announced plans to raise the wages of Chinese factory workers, which are about $2.00 an hour at the Foxconn factory. Meanwhile Apple’s profit margin is an astonishing 51%.
GUEST: Sarah Ryan, a senior Campaigner with Change.Org
Visit www.change.org/foxconn for more information.
One Response to “iPad 3 Rollout Draws Thousands, Even as Chinese Working Conditions Remain Grim”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/this-american-life-mike-daisey-retraction-foxconn_n_1353933.html?show_comment_id=141667011#comment_141667011,sb=1225701,b=facebook&access_token=AAAAACuIpepUBAAt2YrdW4JERX1KYZBFWZCitTeYRZBC4YOfUuagWKjVijvdbKEsNkr2VyXXiLAWaSIqLdc1CTz7GJ1OnC4ZD&expires_in=0
I’m sure you’re aware of this article by now, but I think you should bring attention to it on the show for the sake of journalistic integrity. particularly since you had a guest on today that cited the show as her source for Hexane being used as FOXCONN, which is one of the facts that was retracted.
That being said, the conditions at FOXCONN are undisputedly horrible and I’m pretty angry at the guy who originally recorded the story for feeling that he had to exaggerate it for dramatic effect and present it as journalism. The sad thing is that Daisy didn’t have to lie at all to show how brutal the conditions are at FOXCONN, and the fact that he did is going to turn a lot of people off towards any kind of activism to help make things better for the workers there. It’s the same effect that the Kony 2012 video had and it makes me really sad to know that public opinion is going to be soured by this. I respect you as a journalist and an activist, so I’m sure you can walk that fine line of not letting your politics make you dismiss this while not discouraging people from supporting change.