Friday, February 17th 2012
Fair Labour Association Calls Apple's Factories "First Class"
Earlier this week, it was reported that Apple was conducting inspections of the manufacturing facilities of its foundry partners via independent agencies, to assess working conditions and well-being of workers. It requested the Fair Labour Association (FLA) to carry out the inspections. In addition to Foxconn, the FLA will inspect facilities of Quanta Computer Inc, Pegatron Corp, Wintek Corp and others. While the final report of its inspections will be released only by late next month, FLA revealed its first impressions of what it saw.
The FLA finds the working conditions in foundry partner Foxconn's facilities "above average". Auret van Heerden, president of the FLA commented on the Foxconn inspection: "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm." He continued, "I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," he said. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."
Mr. van Heerden went on to hypothesize the cause of worker suicides in China, which his organization has been studying since the 1990s. "You have lot of young people, coming from rural areas, away from families for the first time. They're taken from a rural into an industrial lifestyle, often quite an intense one, and that's quite a shock to these young workers. And we find that they often need some kind of emotional support, and they can't get it," he added. "Factories initially didn't realize those workers needed emotional support."
Sources:
Reuters, NewsBiscuit
The FLA finds the working conditions in foundry partner Foxconn's facilities "above average". Auret van Heerden, president of the FLA commented on the Foxconn inspection: "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm." He continued, "I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," he said. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."
52 Comments on Fair Labour Association Calls Apple's Factories "First Class"
All of these major corporation's need a wake up call.
As for farm life in Northern Ontario, there isn't much of one since we are buried in snow 6 months of the year.
A co-worker just came back from northern India and he is glad to be back breathing 'clean' air and not tripping over garbage in the streets.
(no offense Btarunr)
Still, even without siblings there are plenty of people you know by name around you. It's just not the same in humongous and highly organized factories like Foxconn.
Construction work is more dangerous and much more demanding, but from what I heard the pay is very good(used to be horrid though).
But Chinese people vastly prefer the academic route, so most parents demand their children to excel at school and go to a good university just so they can be educated degree-holding unemployed bums until finally settling for crap jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied.
I recognize that people I don't even know existed are suffering so that my money have more purchasing power. But my heart is not bleeding, I'm an insensitive fuck.:ohwell:
Still shitty pay.
You are welcome to work in a grocery store for 1700CNY a month AND have to pay for food, shelter and transportation.
What you get is a cheaper quality product costing you a lot of money. I do admit though, tbat quality has increased within China but still is far off vs. North American.
Honestly most of the posts in this thread seem to be coming from naive schoolboys. There's too many posts to respond to individually, but the cream of the moron crop is the poster who seems to remember Goebbels propaganda. Btarunr seems to be the only adult in the thread. Edit : That's unfair, there's a couple of others swimming in the sea too :)
They don't need to stop making profit's but they do need to start introducing equality and fairness.
If Dell, for example, decided to put their box prices up by 25% because they wanted proper pensions packages, sick leave, holiday pay for their Chinese workers then people would stop buying Dell.
>No name competitors
>as far as Samsung
>Samsung
Are you on drugs?
99% of corporation's are unfair, i'm not trying to stick up for one or the other but truth's need to be told.
Just look at the US for example, there is a group of 400 or so individual's that hold more combined wealth than 150m people! :eek: That's nearly half of the entire population!!! Does that seem fair? People work their asses off just to pay the freakin' bill's and have NOTHING, absolutely nothing to show for all their effort's. Except maybe a foreclosure or a constant call from credit collection agencies while those fat cat's are laughing it up and counting their $$$
People need to wake the fock up! Trickle down economic's does NOT work, hasn't anything been learned since the Reagan era?