1,000 Chinese workers strike at Apple and IBM supplier Around 1,000 workers at a Chinese plant that manufactures components for Apple and IBM downed tools this week in protest against enforced overtime, a rights group has claimed. The disgruntled staffers - about a third of all employees - at Jingmo Electronics Corporation (JEC) in south China's industrial district of Shenzhen …
"... to assume responsibility..."
How on Earth is this Apple or IBM's fault? They're the *clients*, not the workforce's employers!
This isn't about ethics or worker health and safety. It's about *money*, plain and simple: The workers are apparently quite willing to work the overtime, but they want to be allowed to do so on weekends... which pays *double* the wages.
If they were really all that fussed about their conditions of employment, they'd have walked out en masse. But they haven't. So it's clearly not about their health and / or safety. It's about wanting more cash.
There's been quite a lot of this kind of activity from Chinese workers in recent years. They've realised they're being taken for a ride by their employers (also, incidentally, Chinese; there's no way you can justify laying the blame on Western companies for this).
China's status as the world's primary source of cheap labour is entering its final chapter. Like Japan and Taiwan before it, the nation's labour costs are rising inexorably and there'll come a point where it won't be any cheaper to make something in China than it would be to make it in, say, eastern Europe.
Demanding products with stupidly low deadlines, yet refusing to pay more moeny perhaps?
Still we're ok, we get shiney things we lust over and the US companies make billion $ profits.
Everyones a winner so if those commies don't like it, they can just quit their jobs and take up begging.
Read their reports, they frequently audit suppliers. Ensure compliance with health and safety and often terminate contracts when the suppliers don't comply:
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/auditing-compliance.html
Where are the similar reports for other companies who use Chinese suppliers? I searched for similar for Microsoft and didn't find anything.
and if you didn't find anything that seems to be a plus for them.
Google Apple and any keywords like slave labor, employee abuse, sweatshop etc. and you will find tons and tons of hits.
Apple is responsible here because this is a pattern with them. They are a happy customer with their supposedly "watched over" supply shops abusing their workers to no end, but only care and crack the whip when it the story makes it to the press. Why has there been SO MANY articles of Apple factories getting in trouble, and no articles of Apple finding evidence of abuse on their own, or shutting down a supplier on their own, BEFORE they abuse story hits the papers.
Shame on Apple, you are paying for this human abuse, even if other carry it for you under another banner. And shame on Apple customers as well...you are the ones funding this whole slavery market...
And this from the same company run by Jobs, who wouldn’t even acknowledge his daughters existence until forced to do so by the counts, is concerned about unknown cheap Chinese labourers??? Auditors; same shit no matter who/where the company is.....
"An Apple auditor leads every audit, supported by local third-party auditors" = the fruity auditor is not allowed interact with the staff, that's what the "local" auditor is for.
During the audit, Apple cross-references data from multiple sources. We review hundreds of records (filled in by local third-party auditor) and conduct physical inspections (directed by local third-party auditor) of manufacturing facilities as well as factory-managed dormitories and dining areas. We also conduct interviews with workers (closely monitored by local third-party auditor) and senior management (would you believe them anyway) in relevant functional areas.
We track completion of all corrective and preventive action plans, with an expectation that they will be closed within 90 days of the audit (90 days are up, close the item)
Fixed this one:-
If we find issues that have been inadequately addressed, we continue to collaborate with the supplier toward further improvement in delivery deadlines.
If you look at the original article here:
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-377.html
It reads to me more like the workers work 7-11:30 a.m. and then 1-5 p.m., and are then told to do overtime 6-12 pm. That to me reads like they were already doing a 8.5 hour day, and were then required to work another 6-8 hours until 12pm, and sometimes 2pm (no doubt then getting up after less than 5 hours sleep to start another shift). And this is operating machinery etc...
The article also says the workers do 100-120 hours of overtime a month - based on the 5 day working week, average 20 working days in a month, thats and extra 5-6 hours working per day.
I don't know what you do on your 6 hour+ shift, but I doubt it is quite the same.
What a Saint Steve Jobs is eh?
I worked for Samsung in South Korea and 10am-10pm was quite frequent there, even for office workers (no overtime pay for office workers)
Plus we'd get asked to put in a few more hours till midnight or 2am, plus a couple of weekends too when deadlines were close.
It's a whole other reality there, but they all seem willing to do it as long as they get paid.
Same in China, all these workers want is more money, they don't really care about working more hours.
"What a Saint Steve Jobs is eh?"
What on Earth has this got to do with Steve Jobs? The man is dead… yes, it’s great to keep banging on about him as if he can do something, but if people really care about this type of issue, they’ve got to start looking at the living. Tim Cook might be a good person to start with:
1) He’s Apple’s CEO now.
2) Even when Jobs was alive and heading the company, all the decisions relating to moving manufacturing overseas and outsourcing it to contractors were made by Cook.
That isn’t to say that Jobs as CEO escapes any responsibility, but Cook was brought into Apple because of his operations expertise – that’s where his mojo is. Although one could say that Jobs ultimately was responsible for what Cook was doing, you would have to say the same about any other area of Apple. Some might be convinced by the argument of ‘Well, it’s true that Jonathan Ive has been in charge of Industrial design at Apple for nearly 15 years, he’s very hand-on in his divisions and has won many awards for his design, but it’s actually Jobs who deserves the lion’s share of credit because he’s CEO,’ but a blinking sight more will say nuts to that.
Just after Jobs died, I was discussing workers' conditions at companies that Apple (and many other major tech. companies) use with a friend. Something that he commented on that the focus (and he was going on news reports) seemed very much on Jobs – his concern was that he felt people had the attitude of ‘Well, it was Jobs’ fault and now he’s gone, so it’ll get better’. As he said, it’s no good pinning the blame on someone who’s dead and not looking at the living to improve things… and not just at Apple, either.
""We particularly urge Apple to take responsibility, as there are more than 300 workers working on the Apple keyboard assembly line," it added."
'But we apparently give much less of shit about the 700 who don't' it didn't add.
WTF as some of you people on? Seriously? You'd have to assume Jingmo had some hand in negotiating how many items were supplied at what price. Apple just don't drop out of the sky and say 'you will give us 10 million bodgers for three dollars each, or our wrath be upon you!' Presumably the management at Jingmo assured Apple they could supply that number of widgets and this price per unit over that period. You'd also have to assume they knew how many widgets their factory could produce per man hour of work, and what that would cost in wages.
So they either lied to Apple to get the contract and then found out they had to slave drive their workers to keep the promises they had made (which is bad enough) or they deliberately calculated the output they could manage assumingg they could force their staff to work completely unacceptable hours to fulfil the contract, which in any civilised place should be criminal.
As the oft quoted IT mantra goes 'Failure in your planning does not constitute a failure on my part'. Apple and Jingmo made a deal, and Jingmo said they could hold to that deal. They did so to terms, either knowingly or unknowingly, they could not fulfill without frankly awful working practices being imposed on their staff. All Apple have done in this is make a deal with a company to pay them to do something they said they could do.
If I was Apple, I'd be doing what I could to alleviate this, within the terms of the contract signed. But the idea that this is in any sense Apple's 'fault'? What?
During the summer, the lovely Ivana and I were enjoying tea with a pair of very nice Taiwanese girls.
One was midway though a marketing degree at a London university, the other had just finished a Masters in electrical engineering, (also in London).
The girl with the Masters was looking forward to her dream job back in Taiwan - at Foxconn.
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