SubscribeWhat’s Gore Doing About Apple’s Slave Labor?
Maybe Al Gore should forget about Global Warming, which might have an effect on the world in a few thousand years, and do something about the slave labor his company is engaged in — today.
(Al Gore is a member of the board of directors at Apple Computers.)
From the UK’s Daily Mail via Macworld Daily News:
I-Pod dormitories
Inside Apple’s iPod factories
Monday - June 12, 2006
By Macworld staff
Apple’s iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 ($49 US) per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday.
The report, ‘iPod City’, isn’t available online. It offers photographs taken from inside the factories that make Apple music players, situated in China and owned by Foxconn.
The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn’s Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: "This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle’s."
The report claims Longhua’s workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player, the report claims. They earn £27 per month. The report reveals that the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers.
Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 ($98 US) per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries", the report observes.
A security guard told the Mail reporters that the iPod shuffle production lines are staffed by women workers because "they are more honest than male workers".
The report also explains that the nano contains 400 parts, and that its flash memory is the most expensive component. The report looks at several salient components of the nano, and describes the product as a reflecting the global way business works today. This is because the iPod nano contains parts developed by technology companies from across the planet.
Apple is just one of thousands of companies that now use Chinese facilities to manufacture its products, the report observes. Low wages, long hours and China’s industrial secrecy make the country attractive to business, particularly as increased competition and consumer expectations force companies to deliver products at attractive prices.
Update, June 14: Since this report, Apple has issued a statement regarding the Mail’s claims. The company referes to its code of practice for suppliers and says it is investigating the claims.
But now we have this from ChinaCSR:
Foxconn Admits Breaking Labor Laws In China
Posted On 26th June 2006 @ 07:02
Foxconn, an original equipment manufacturer for Apple’s iPod, has admitted that their employees work about 80 extra hours each month, which is against the law in China.
According to Chinese labor laws, a company breaks the law if it asks employees to work more than 36 extra hours each month.
However, Li Zong, a spokesperson from Foxconn, says Foxconn’s complicated salary structure has caused misunderstanding among the media, and the company has paid the workers according to the minimum salary standards of the Shenzhen local government.
Li also says Apple has sent a special team to investigate, but has found no problem with Foxconn.
It was reported earlier that Apple’s iPod OEM paid very little to the workers and provided very poor working conditions for them in their Chinese factories.
So according to this report Apple’s investigation is over and they are satisfied with the working and living conditions there.
How progressive of them.
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3 Responses to “What’s Gore Doing About Apple’s Slave Labor?”
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September 5th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Gore thinks he has convinced Bush buckle to Demo environmentalists:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200....._gore_dc_1
Gore predicts shift in Bush climate policy
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent 2 hours, 12 minutes ago
OSLO (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President
Al Gore predicted on Tuesday that
President George W. Bush would shift to do more to fight global warming, under Republican pressure from California to New York.
“I think there is a better than 50-50 chance that
President Bush will change his policy in the next two years,” Gore told an audience in Oslo after showing his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming during a tour of Europe.
“Many of his strongest supporters are changing their positions and are becoming vocal in asking him to change,” Gore told about 300 people including Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy.
The United States and Australia are the only two industrial nations outside the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, which caps emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels burned in factories, power plants and cars.
Bush, who narrowly beat Democrat Gore in the 2000 election and will stand down in January 2009, has said Kyoto’s curbs would harm the U.S. economy and unfairly exclude poor nations from a first set of targets to 2012, by which time 35 nations will have to cut emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels.
Gore praised California for passing the first bill in the United States to cap emissions after a deal between Republicans and Democrats last week. The bill aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 25 percent, back to 1990 levels by 2020.
He also said many right-wing Christian religious leaders, major business leaders and mayors of cities from Seattle to New York were seeking cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide in a break with the Bush administration.
CRITICAL MASS
“We are still a ways away from the critical mass that’s necessary (to change U.S. climate policy) but we are getting there,” Gore said. “There is a burden of implausibility that the President is now carrying with his position.”
Many scientists say a build-up of heat-trapping gas will bring more droughts, heat waves and powerful storms, spread deserts and could raise sea levels by almost a meter by 2100.
Bush said earlier this year the United States should break an “addiction” to oil but has rejected Kyoto-style caps. The administration is investing heavily in clean technologies, such as hydrogen, and says more climate research is needed.
If Bush did not shift, Gore said it was very likely the next U.S. president would do more to cut emissions. Gore has said he has no plans to run again but has not ruled it out.
Earlier in Helsinki, he said drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were vital.
“Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now … the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization,” Gore said.
(Additional reporting by Sakari Suoninen in Helsinki)
September 5th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
What would Gore have us do? Stop commerce? Halt our way of life? Screw that dodo~! He flies, he drives, he stays cool in the summer, warm in the winter, he wears clothes, he eats, he enjoys sanitation facilities, he uses the internet he invented…all of which contribute to global warming. When he stops, I will stop. When he loses his entourage, I will lose mine. When he gets rid of at least six of his SUV’s I will not mow my lawn one extra day a month. When he does what he says is necessary, I will use the resources he frees up for my comfort. Eff his fat ass.
September 20th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
since Al Gore is running for Pres again, lest we forget his Ipod use and SUV use cause so much global warming that Gore should commit hari kari. but wait Al Gore’s just spouting lies that he truely believes:
Note how even bad news for the global warming crowd is rebutted with SLANDER.
Colorado State professor disputes global warming is human-caused
http://www.reporterherald.com/.....sp?ID=6894
Publish Date: 9/19/2006
Views ‘out of step’ with others are good for science, academic says
By Kate Martin
The Daily Reporter-Herald
Global warming is happening, but humans are not the cause, one of the nation’s top experts on hurricanes said Monday morning.
Bill Gray, who has studied tropical meteorology for more than 40 years, spoke at the Larimer County Republican Club Breakfast about global warming and whether humans are to blame. About 50 people were at the talk.
Gray, who is a professor at Colorado State University, said human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants.
“I think we’re coming out of the little ice age, and warming is due to changes to ocean circulation patterns due to salinity variations,” Gray said. “I’m sure that’s it.”
Gray’s view has been challenged, however.
Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said in an interview later Monday that climate scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that most of the warming is due to human activity.
“Bill Gray is a widely respected senior scientist who has a view that is out of step with a lot of his colleagues’,” Pielke said. But challenging widely held views is “good for science because it forces people to make their case and advances understanding.”
“We should always listen to the minority,” said Pielke, who spoke from his office in Boulder. “But it’s prudent to take actions that both minimize human effect on the climate and also make ourselves much more resilient.”
At the breakfast, Gray said Earth was warmer in some medieval periods than it is today. Current weather models are good at predicting weather as far as 10 days in advance, but predicting up to 100 years into the future is “a great act of faith, and I don’t believe any of it,” he said.
But even if humans cause global warming, there’s not much people can do, Gray said. China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gases, and alternative energy sources are expensive.
“Why do it if it’s not going to make a difference anyway?” he said. “Whether I’m right or wrong, we can’t do anything about it anyway.”
But Pielke said it makes sense to reduce humans’ impact on the climate.
“There are uncertainties. It’s not like you
change your light bulbs today, you’re going to have better weather tomorrow,” he said. “It’s even better if those actions you’re taking make sense for other reasons, like getting off Middle Eastern oil or saving money.”