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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

TBA / Tech Friendly Reminder: OUR IPHONES ARE STILL COVERED IN BLOOD

Posted by Erik Henriksen on Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 2:43 PM

The worst thing about the whole Mike Daisey debacle wasn't that Daisey duped a lot of people (including me, at TBA, almost exactly two years ago). It's that as soon as Daisey was caught falsifying some elements of his monologue, the other elements of that monologue—the ones that, by all other accounts, were legit—were tarnished too, as if Daisey lying about some things somehow made the things he didn't lie about easier to dismiss. But hey, reminder: Like a lot of Chinese supply factories, Foxconn, which makes a lot of Apple stuff—including the iPhone 5 that we're all going to really, really want tomorrow—is still a horrible place. From the Times:

Last week Chinese state-run news media reported that several vocational schools in the city of Huai’an, in eastern China, required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to help ease worker shortages. According to one of the articles, Huai’an students were ordered to manufacture cables for Apple’s new iPhone 5, which is expected to be introduced on Wednesday.

“They said they are forced to work by the teachers,” Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, one of the advocacy organizations and a frequent critic of Foxconn’s labor policies, said in an interview on Monday. Mr. Li said his staff had spoken with multiple workers and students who, as recently as Sunday, said that 10 of 87 workers on an iPhone assembly line were students.

“They don’t want to work there—they want to learn,” said Mr. Li. “But if they don’t work, they are told they will not graduate, because it is a very busy time with the new iPhone coming, and Foxconn does not have enough workers without the students.” (Via.)

The whole thing's worth reading. And is something to keep in mind tomorrow. You're welcome!

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