Foxconn and “Miss Chen” on CNN

Interesting. Why is this such a big deal all of the sudden?

What about Nike and other companies like that?

What about Nestle, the most evil company in the world?

 

What about USA having wars here and there for economy reason nonstop from WWII?

What about CIA helping USA companies in South America (banana trade for example)?

 

And out of all of this people are focusing on Apple LOL

There is only one way this will ever stop and that is for the consumer to boycott the product. In Apple's case, it will never happen. You may as well ask everyone to turn off their internet, cable, and phones.

Like I said before, no Apple products will ever be bought by my family. Nor will any product be bought if I find that the company does this kind of stuff to their employees, or abuses their workers in any way.

 

First Quarter - The Company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion

Second Quarter - The Company posted record second quarter revenue of $24.67 billion and record second quarter net profit of $5.99 billion

Third Quarter - The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion

Fourth Quarter - The Company posted quarterly revenue of $28.27 billion and quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion

That's why.

People don't want to hear it if it's the Martha Stewart Line or Polly Pocket Play Sets because they aren't news or high profile enough. (Remember Kathy Gifford crying on Live for a year because they outted that her clothing line was done by children) They don't care about Apple either. The suicides have been going on for years at the production facility. What was the answer to that? They put up suicide nets around the building and made all the workers sign a piece of paper promising they would not try to take their own lives. WTF? You gonna fire them and cut off their benefits if they do? Oh, wait. There are no benefits.

Apple is no better than the consumer when it comes to playing ignorant. As many times as I have had walked a facility with CEO's and watched as they physically turned their heads, eyes, and whole bodies away from blatant safety violations, it doesn't surprise me. Hell, I was let go on one job in a 'work force reduction' 30 days after I reported the VP of my region for waving a loaded gun around in the office. 

Ignorance doesn't cost them anything in the short term and that's all that matters anymore.

makes you wonder why people do look away when this happens i have been in 2 companys ( chinese ) in my old job and have seen equal
I´ve seen half starved employees ^-workers with no mouth or breathing protection while grinding toxic minerals...and many more things even kids... watched it while we passed through and right afterwards i went to my boss and talked to him.
My question was simple how can someone live with themselve in peace knowing ábout all that and still supporting such a slave labor system?
After i have seen a money greedy smile on his face i quitted... His company is still purchasing from them of course I reported what i had seen there to the local authorities promising to look into it. They didnt if you hear about children working you normally lift your butt from that chair immediatly grab your keys and drive over there to check... But they dont care

Please remember stories like this during election years while the candidates are saying how we must let companies do anything they want, how unions must be killed, and how the rich must be coddled for everyone's good.  End of political speech.

This is politics. Nuff said!

Here is a list of Foxconn major customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers

People who even mention Apple without mentioning the others are just ignorant or hypocrites. The problem didn't start with Apple, and it won't end with you not buying an iphone if you get an Android instead.

No... it was a news item on CNN.

Again: Simply noted a news item on CNN. I have no ulterior motive as this is a follow up, AND I published a list of the other companies doing business with Foxconn in my prior articles.

I can certainly believe there are more, and perhaps worse conditions... but we aren't hearing that workers are jumping to their deaths. Not sure why, but someone can whip up a theory for us, I'm sure.

Apply making large profit does not make it the most important company to focus on.

 

Research Nestle. Everyone else is small change compared to how many lost (mostly kid) lives are because of them.

Never said it made it the most important.

It just has the highest profile right now. If people were lining up 3 days in advance for Martha Stewarts new sheet collection and she was making the kind of money Apple is, you would be hearing about her. There is not ONE media source that does not have an agenda. And if you have an agenda, you have to manipulate. And to manipulate, you need to be the loudest, biggest, etc. And THAT takes money. SO who do you turn to for the money you need to manipulate the masses and push your agenda?

When are you people going to learn we are but puppets of the media and the hands up the medias asses are so many, I don't know how it functions at all.

The world has yet to become the Utopian Disney paradise we were so accustomed to when growing up. The reality is that people we're likely being killed in Iran and Syria because America's attention was turned to the Super Bowl. Everything is much more grey in reality. History is marred by these stories and the plight of workers to unruly and "evil" corporations. Hell, one look at labor laws makes employment seem depressing.

This doesn't really seem that different to when the West was going through its own Industrial Revolution. Given enough time, things will change in these countries and they'll become just like us, and their jobs will get outsourced to somewhere else. Won't that be swell!

It was a news item about a political problem. Uvah was wrong to say 'nuff said, but the relationship between U.S. consumer electronics prices and Chinese labor practices such as those at Foxconn is absolutely political. Except perhaps for some of those folks who believe that markets are natural phenomena just like weather or plate tectonics.

There is no such thing as a simply noted news item. Fact-focused journalism is invaluable to civil society, but we in the U.S. need to get over the delusion of so-called objective journalism. There is no escaping subjectivity because the basic choice of what stories to publish in what venue are individual judgment calls. Responsible journalists, both amateur and professional, need to own up to the fact that we all have personal 'biases' (better called ideas and opinions) about how the world actually works and how we might prefer it to work differently.

Unless we end up making the worst go-to-war decision ever, the US relationship with the PRC is going to be centered on trade and the connections between commercial laws and the larger political cultures here and over there. This fact has already had a long round in Congress during those years when MFN trading status for China was an annual debate that featured prominent appearances by radical anti-Communists and a fascinating coalition of pro-life and human rights groups opposed to the draconian aspects of China's population policy. Current concern about nearly-slave working conditions in Chinese factories suggests a broadening of the connections because the groups that are concerned about decent working conditions and low-cost consumer goods are potentially far more numerous than that earlier wave of hassle-the-Chinese folks. 

Corporation: a clever device for separating individual profit taking from individual responsibility. Capitalism: a socio-economic-political system that advertises the free market place, while actually, savagely subverting the 'free market place by "managing," via corporations, both labor, and customers. "Its not personal, its just business." My opinion, it is ALWAYS personal. Western consumers, including myself, have some less expensive products because of what amounts to slave labor. Try to start a labor union in China, and you get 20 years in prison. (Might be better than working there!-LOL.) Make no mistake: living off the slave labor of other humans is a form of cannibalism. (or vampirism, if you prefer). We live better because we consume their lives, we suck their lives dry. At least Hannable Lector was honest about his choices.

You can't say that, it takes all the needless moral outrage if you say its all just part of a system. Wait...

Nicely put....;)

Yeah, it really sucks.  Worst system ever, aside from all the others that have been tried.  We are so effing spoiled.

Time for Communism... oh wait you got shot by the socialist worker friendly government if you protested about your crushing poverty or about corruption in the government under that system. In fact the human rights abuses and poverty were much worse, just ask anyone in China.

Time for Anarchy, but then there are no human rights at all....

Capitalism is system based upon freedom, and the ability of people to come together and exchange goods within a free market with fair laws. It's really that simple. You don't like people being able to trade goods? What exactly is the other option, except the before mentioned communism where the government redistributes everything? If you don't like the system then you are free to join an agriculture commune somewhere and wash your hands of it. However I suspect you will do no such thing, instead you will enjoy the huge benefits of capitalism and the freedom of choice it offers you and continue to compose little blurbs about how corporations and capitalism are out to get people. Corporations seek profit and by doing so hugely benefit society as any economist will tell you. Western quality of life and technology would be far worse without them, and yes that includes you. If you think they are doing something wrong I suggest you become politically involved, your political rights don't end with voting.

Yes globalization allows some corporations to do immoral things but no they don't secretly control the government. America is still a democracy, corporations can only offer people products and you don't have to bloody buy their stuff. Unlike governments which can arrest you, and Obama who can apparently force you to buy health insurance.  

Complete ignorance is the only excuse for not finding this to be drive by journalism at it's worst.

 

Anything starting with this pile of journalistic shit work for a premise should be ignored for the tripe it is.

 

The suicide statistics they stated were evidence that it's an absolutely fucking wonderful place to work at.  The national average in China should put that north of 30 by that time in the year, closer to sixty if the workforce is largely male.

 

Tripe.

 

Our so called abuse of poor Chinese workers is a terrible thing to be doing though, it's so damned stupid...

 

Exporting all of our basic manufacturing over seas has just about run it's course.  Manufacturing was difficult to move, the software we replaced it with as it disappeared is not.  Envy the poor Chinese factory worker that lives twice as good as they would have ten years ago.  In another ten years, they might be in better shape than you are, on account of them actually producing something besides red ink.

 

Nothing is ever 'that simple'.

As a former philosophical anarchist who was converted to small-d democracy, I have to call bullshit here. There's a major difference between anarchy and chaos, and that difference is respect for other people. The reason I left anarchy for democracy is that our species is still too inclined to use organized violence as a political tool. The reason I wish I could still claim to be a philosophical anarchist is that no other political philosophy can match it in terms of respect for individual human beings.

 

Well said. The fact is that all the names for "different" political and economic systems were similarly invented. It's all an excuse/justification and intellectualization for man's sado-masochistic and hateful drives to use others to his own ends with disregard to the fact that everyone deserves to be treated equally and treated as you would be treated. The fact that one person, or a few people thought of or organized a place to virtually enslave others does not make them worthy of living like kings. It makes them worthy of a term of equal servitude under similar conditions.

In fact, that's why programs showing company CEO's spending time working alongside the average worker are popular... and why CNN's "Heroes" is so popular. They recognize that all are equal and show what everyone should be doing and the way to act toward "others".

Enough of "things" before people.

"אל תעמוד על דם רעך" - Do not stand idly by. It also (literally) means do not stand upon another's blood.

"ואהבת רעך כמוך" - Love others as you love yourself. The Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you, and do not treat them as you would not wish to be treated.

It's not at all as complex as others would have you believe.

Enough of all this savagery.

I didn't really mean that there would be complete chaos where we murder each other, I just meant that in anarchy there wouldn't really be legally enforced human rights.

Firstly a capitalist is a person who's business is making money through investments in business. The term in widely misused. Capitalists do not make products. Capitalists are not concerned with human rights. Capitalists are concerned with investing money and their profits. Capitalists are often immoral because they believe in an Ayn Rand way of life where I comes first and there are no consequences. Laissez-faire capitalism. There is no "State", everyone is for themselves. The Chinese for example are not true capitalists because of their totalitarian/communist government.

In the U.S.A. we have a system that is supposed to protect the people from predatory capitalists but "Money talks and bullshit walks" is the way it goes here.

While people have valid complaints about multinational companies abusing people in China there is a history of people in the U.S. being abused. Asbestos and tobacco are two good examples. Many lives ruined all for the sake of profit.