Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Apple Tries Damage Control after Horrific Working Conditions at its Factories Exposed

Apple Tries Damage Control after Horrific Working Conditions at its Factories Exposed: "Apple's attempts at cleaning up its image after recent scrutiny of its labor practices are more about reputation than actual change.

President Barack Obama blew a kiss to Apple in last week’s State of the Union speech, praising the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, the late Steve Jobs, as the cameras panned to his widow in the audience.

Obama’s timing couldn’t be weirder. In the last month, Apple has released a damning audit that found almost 100 of its supplier factories force more than half their workers to exceed a 60-hour week. The company announced responsibility for aluminum dust explosions in Chinese supplier factories that killed four workers and injured 77. Hundreds more in China have been injured cleaning iPad screens with a chemical that causes nerve damage....."

3 comments:

Nate Klein said...

You know... all along... I knew there was something I really, really didn't like about Steve Jobs... and really I find it rather disgusting we somehow became so enamored with him people almost literally have to have been waiting until after he was dead to start digging this stuff up.  Though it's not that they didn't try.  I remember a  newscast about the technological waste problem in China, and funnily enough much of what was littering the landfills and trash-cities was of course Apple products.  But of course, that wasn't Apple's fault, they weren't even mentioned.

Seriously, these factories didn't spontaneously spring into existence after October 5, 2011.  And sorry, I won't take "oh he couldn't have known" as an excuse.  Just like I don't accept it from Ron Paul for the racist comments in his campaigns old newsletters or whatever they were.  You're at the top, it's your job to know these things.  Steve Jobs was a business man.  Plain and simple.  He wanted to make money, plain and simple.

I recall another news broadcast shortly after after his death, talking about his genius in inventing the iPhone, the phone/computer/mp3 player you could take anywhere for one price.  Except that wasn't Jobs' real genius.  Jobs' real genius was convincing us all that we still needed the overpriced laptop computer, the tv, the restrictive and proprietary mp3 player, AND the iPhone they claim was supposed to be all those in one.  Then the tablet.  It's shameful to me really.

Underground Politics said...

You make a lot of good points Nate. And I believe that Jobs actually did know but didn't really care. I remember hearing about this stuff last year but it's now coming up again. Plus, the month that Jobs died so did a lot of other technology geniuses. And we didn't really hear one word about it. Everyone just cared about Jobs even though what he did wasn't as big of an impact as what some others did. It really is shameful. I've seen people go crazy over the tablet, iphone and ipod. I don't think that they're that great and there's plenty of other technology out there that works just as good if not better than Apple products. I'm one of those people who refused to own anything Apple.

MotivatedinOhio said...

I agree completely.  He really didn't care about who made his product, or if they killed themselves or weren't allowed to talk to each other.