Apple Factory Working Conditions: $50/month

[intelliot]

If you make more than $50/month, or you work less than 15 hours a day, you should be very thankful.

In brief, two factories were visited by Mail on Sunday reporters. The first factory was found to be forcing its staff to work 15 hour days for $50 USD per month. The second facility benefited from being in closer proximity to Shanghai, and workdays were shortened to 12 hours/day and workers were paid almost $100 USD per month. Security guards were paid up to $150 USD per month, although much of that had to be paid back to the company for housing and food. In addition to long hours, work days were said to often be accompanied by military-style drills.

This isn't necessarily true, but life for many is very difficult, especially in China.

Ars Technica

[wolf719]

i am a native Chinese, when i saw this news ifeel very sad,because in china this is true.the people are live a very hard life compared with the western country.100$/month is enough to feed a 3 person family and 150$/month for us ordinary people it already some kind of happy life!

i hate my government.i think China's poverty was caused by the government!

[IamTheKing9]

This kind of thing happens in India, too. But is seen rather rarely now-a-days. It would only stop if someone takes the initiative to talking to the people running the factories, or maybe tell the police about them. And that is something no one is willing to do. Not even the government, as wolf719 said.

[Justin]

I would almost propose that other countries should get involved to put an end to these things, but we all know where that would end up.

[mondine]

Yes, as a group, it's pretty hard to get consumers to pass up cheap goods
(no matter the cost in human suffering "somewhere else").

Here in Vancouver, there has been an ongoing, popular fight for a decade to keep Walmart
out of town. And yet, they've managed to lobby city council to consider
their application yet again.

The market forces seeking to increase their sales of goods and services
at any social price are huge and relentless.

[Anita]

The sad part about it is that in the U.S., especially,most stuff these days is made overseas by folks, including young children,working in inhumane conditions for almost nothing. There is very little that isn't made in some sweatshop in some underdeveloped nation that we couldn't care less about.

Here lately, many large American companies have been doing quite a bit of outsourcing so that they can do things on the cheap.

As for Wal-Mart, we don't have them here in Washington, DC. There is legislation that keeps them out forever. There are several of them in Maryland, but there is much controversy involved because the state ofMaryland has passed a law that forbids those huge Wal-Mart superstores, but Wal-Mart has gotten around the law by building two or three small stores [b]EMon the same block/EM/[b] in a couple of small towns. No wonder people hate them so!

[mondine]

Walmart has also used other bullying tactics.
Where they've been refused, they've been known to set up shop just outside of that region's authority,
thus killing off local businesses without even giving them the pittance of a few poorly-paying service jobs.

Of course, Walmart isn't alone in this, but serves as a rather obvious example.

[peterk]

It's very sad, don't quite a lot of companies do that though? When buying things I try to get the fairer for the workers one, but that is not always possible.