By Sophia Cheng
The Horrific Labor Practices Behind Your iPhone
As long as corporations that market popular brands to consumers demand fast, high-quality work at rock-bottom prices, consumer electronics will be made in sweatshops.
September 1, 2011
The world’s largest electronics manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group, has a plan for ending the grisly run of worker suicides that have drawn it unwanted attention over the past two years: replace human workers with one million robots. It seems the best way to interrupt rising global outrage over worker abuse in iPhone factories is to just get rid of the workers.
With a labor force of 1.2 million people, Foxconn is China’s largest private employer and biggest exporter. It manufactures familiar products for the U.S. market. Through contracts with Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Sony, it makes the computers, phones, laptops and printers that we use every day—including the iPhones and iPads that many people will use to read this very article.
In Foxconn’s highest-paying factories, located in China’s coastal cities, workers earn just $1.18 an hour, and that only after a recent 30 percent increase in wages. But the manufacturer’s loudest critics point out that blame for horrific labor conditions isn’t Foxconn’s alone. As long as multinational corporations that market popular brands to Western consumers demand fast, high-quality work at rock-bottom prices, consumer electronics will be made in sweatshops.
“Foxconn’s labor conditions are very poor, but its root causes are low prices from multinational companies and tight delivery schedules,” says Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch. “Workers are only seen as fitting production needs rather than as individual human beings.”
More:
http://www.alternet.org/news/152270/the_horrific_labor_practices_behind_your_iphone
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