SAD COMMENTARY ON APPLE PRODUCTS

Maybe Steve Jobs was a little too greedy in trying to maximize profits.

At Foxconn, one major manufacturer of Apple's iPhone, iMac, iPad and iPod touch, an alarming wave of suicides had finally caught the media's attention. Unfortunately, the claims date back to 2010, when 13 workers at a factory run by Apple supplier Foxconn committed suicide.

All jumped to their deaths from factory rooftops after claiming that the company ran military-style production lines on which employees were forced to work overtime for low wages. Living in dorms with up to twenty four workers in each room with barred windows and then working long hours each day makes life for these young people unbearable. These conditions have virtually created labor camps run by foreign plantation owners. They are indeed, the slaves of Apple.




Though Apple has been on notice for 5 years as the target of a campaign by USAS' Hong Kong partner Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), genuine changes have not taken place. Despite persistent efforts by SACOM to get Apple to stop the abuses at Foxconn, Apple's former CEOs Jobs and their current CEO, Tim Cook, had falsely denied the problem until recently.

Since January, 13 young workers at Apple's supplier factory in Shenzhen, China have committed suicide, and just a few days ago, a young worker died from exhaustion. Why? Working 36 hours nonstop without overtime pay, earning poverty wages, facing humiliation by company managers and being denied independent union representation.

While the economic crisis has pushed hundreds of electronics suppliers out of business, Apple has yielded record profits on the backs of its young Chinese workers. Under the direct pressure of Apple and other buyers, its supplier Foxconn has not been paying production line workers enough to even meet basic needs, compelling workers to labor up to 100 hours of overtime a month, close to three times the maximum 36 hours permitted by Chinese labor law.

Furthermore, Foxconn, responding to heavy public scrutiny, recently manipulated consumers to believe that it raised the wages of its workers out of its own benevolence, although it was actually in light of an anticipated raise in the government's minimum wage.

This week, Apple released its newest edition of the iPhone, selling for $200 a piece, but this price doesn't include the short lives of those lost who were being paid pennies per phone. At least Apple CEO Tim Cook now believes suicides are bad for Apple's business and these deaths certainly affect the working morale at Foxconn.

What is their solution? They draped fishing nets around the dormitories to catch suicide jumpers - and they brag about a paltry raise of minimum wage. The abuse and suffering at the labor camps in China will continue until Americans and other consumers around the world boycott Apple products.
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