Only the title of a new book about Apple and its main supplier Foxconn from Taiwan reveals the problem: ’Dying for an iPhone’.
In the book it is revealed: namely, how thousands of chinese migrants and students are still subjected to slave-like conditions at the factories, which among other things builds iPhones, iPads and other expensive Apple equipment to the Danish consumers like you and me.
For, while Apple and Foxconn can put billions of dollars – often in warm havens – fighting the low-paid employees, according to the book to get the ends in their life to hang together.
hourly wage remains so low, that after the payment of rent and other necessities, as Foxconn also makes money on is much back a bit.
The employees must, according to the book does not talk together, even if they stand for hours next to each other long the assembly line at Foxconn. Photo: Bobby Yip/Ritzau Scanpix
See also: On the way to Denmark: So roughly pay Amazon in China
Some of the staff need therefore to work as prostitutes or work so many hours, that their life consists solely of standing at an assembly line or to sleep in the filthy lejekaserne, as Foxconn are renting out to them.
the Question is, according to the book what so is the worst. For the working day at the factories are run with military discipline.
It is forbidden for employees to speak with each other. Do you do it anyway, it costs a written warning.
the Longer the toilet, than 10 minutes also becomes highlighted and can lead to penalties.
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the Front of the book.
The behind
It is the british researcher Mark Selden, who, together with the researchers Pun Ngai and Jenny Chan from Hong Kong has kulegravet the humiliating working conditions that Foxconn and therefore Apple offer thousands of low-paid employees in China.
Attempt to organize themselves to obtain better conditions, so far, failed. Foxconn get the employees to sign contracts where they promise that they will not participate in protests or go in a trade union.
If they discover that other employees violate the ban, they should immediately squeal to management, according to leaked documents.
The chief executive and founder of Foxconn, Terry Gou, consider also its employees as a burdensome necessity. During a visit in a zoo in 2012, he said thus, that ’people also animals – and to manage one million animals gives me a headache.’
Apple publishes periodic reports on the working conditions at its subcontractors and guarantees, to follow up on the criticism.
According to the book is the fine reports, however, most of all, smokescreen and spin, covering over a second and a harder reality.
the Solution to a wave of suicides, as the frustrated young employees committed in 2010, was also cheap and practical: There was set a net under the buildings, which grabs ’springerne’.
See also: Amazon is going to conquer Denmark: the trade Union movement stands ready at the border