Thread: Blood iPhones

Taken from somewhere else. Basically an op-ed. Link in quote below.

Apple not totally responsible. We know the Chinese have little if any, morals.

But how much is enough, for working hours and conditions?

China is starting to change as the many factory workers are starting even go beyond strikes, as they realize they want more, as they look around at this society which is spintered by the Ginni Index.

For those unfamiliar, iPhones are all produced in China by a company called Foxconn. It's a standard Chinese manufacturer. Foxconn has been in periphery of the media for the last year, for what has been referred to as a 'suicide cluster', (sources at bottom), which is exactly what it sounds like.

In the first 5 months of this year Foxconn's Shenzen factory has seen 13 suicide attempts, of which 10 were successful. In addition 7 workers died of unspecified causes (unspecified by company physicians), which family members assert to be related to overexertion, which comes about when workers spend 35 hours on the assembly line because apple is releasing an exciting new product in june.

A recent case saw foxconn cite a man's suicide note as cause to terminate their compensation to his surviving family, because he mentioned the compensation money in the note (below).

A poorly translated exceprt of the suicide note posted:

” Mum, you always tell me to die, now I will jump down from Foxconn. I really have to go, you don’t have to feel sad, Foxconn will pay some money, and as your son, this is the only way to return you.”


This note was presented in its original hand-written form, as well as in transcription at a recent Foxconn board meeting.

The shenzen facility houses around 450,000 workers. Foxconn employees live in company dormitories, which the CEO has recently fitted with anti-suicide nets. It's pretty much the same thing as the company towns of 19th and early 20th century America.

Following the Foxconn board meeting in which they figured out how to fuck over the dead guy's mother, the CEO gave a press conference, mostly about how he's really a nice guy who will probably be fired and had to miss his daughter's vaccination, and she cried over the phone to him... Fuck.

Then we hear Steve Jobs in Palos fucking Verdes say that "it's very troubling", and that they are "all over it". Ignorance is the golden ticket. In the modern political discourse it is entirely reasonable that the individual embodiment of the brand could pretend that his products were being produced by armies of happy little chinamen in a constant state of awe at the mere privilege of manufacturing America's favorite toy.

The whole apple community represents the epitome of the 21st century yuppie. They are savvy, clean-cut but still 'edgy', eco-concious, etc., etc. They are self-assured and content with their place in the wide electronic world from their cubicles to their home theaters, bound together in a comfortable package by the invisible thread of portability, namely the iphone.
But these luxury toys are made by workers who, until very recently, and in direct response to the suicide cluster, were being paid wages starting at $130 a month, which is shit-- Even for china. And that's line workers, not janitors or anything. They're worked longer than any pussy american (except maybe a day laborer) could even imagine.

And I'm hardly exempt. I have a 3g iphone which I couldn't live without, but i'm still contributing to this international complex of oppression. Our media obsess over minute details to which clever wordsmiths associate the fundamental principles of human existence from which our everyday lives are so distanced. While we squabble over the implementation of 3 year old, internationally enforced blockade or the handling of an absurdly bloated financial system, human beings equal to us in every capacity of existence spend their every waking moment in depressing factory-cities.

Americans are meddlers. Much as the 20th century played party to the reconciliation of european imperialism against the rest of the world, the 21st will see the reconciliation of consumerism with the simple fact that purchased happiness=indentured suffering


What matters more to you, foxconn boosting wages 33%, claiming to implement revised overtimes strategies, and starting a hiring freeze? Or getting your iphone 4 on time.

SOURCES:

FANTASTIC ARTICLE WITH HAUNTING PICTURES OF SHENZONG FACTORY: A young chinese grad student who spent a month as a foxconn worker. portrays the factory employees as desolate young men living for the sole hope of future prosperity.
http://micgadget.com/3793/the-real-...uicide-cluster/

Bloomberg: Jobs is "all over" foxconn after suicides
http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...-jobs-says.html

Asia One News: Foxconn
http://business.asiaone.com/Busines...627-224085.html

a chinese business lawyer with a blog talking about the psychology of the suicides:
Managing The Dragon » Blog Archive » The Foxconn Suicides

Xinhua- Chinese gov't stresses exporters' corporate social responsibility after Foxconn suicides
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english20.../c_13359440.htm

REGULARLY UPDATED, DEDICATED NEWS HUB: Made in China: Gadget, Foxconn's hell factory uncovered. Bad translations but the closest sources.
Foxconn’s Hell Factory » M.I.C Gadget

article with suicide note and citations of Foxconn's board meeting and press contact
http://micgadget.com/4943/foxconn-s...s-compensation/

We could go back to the Cold War days where instead of worrying what kind of poison China was going to put in their next product we could wonder when they were going to launch a barrage of nukes on us. Can you imagine an unfriendly China coupled with North Korea and the Middle East of today???? If we keep idle hands busy then they don't have time to conspire against us....it's like keeping a retard busy with a simple rote task so he doesn't go mental on you.....