Apple customers send quarter million petition to help iPad workers in China

The goal was to generate a petition with one million signatures for Apple to change its corporate behavior and protect its Chinese workforce; and as of Feb. 9, some 250,000 signatures have been delivered to Apple.

While Apple has helped change the way millions interact with the Internet, CBS News reported Feb. 12 that now millions of irate Apple iPhone and iPad customers want Apple to change the way it produces its slick products at the expense of child labor in China. In turn, there's been more worker suicides at Apple’s “Foxconn” factories where there’s been a rash of suicides over the past few years by those working on Apple products. “On Thursday a petition with some 250,000 signatures gathered online was delivered to Apple's flagship New York store demanding better treatment for workers in China who make iPhones and iPads,” reported CBS News. Other media have also pointed to an overall goal of collecting more than one million signatures online to try and get Apple’s attention. Apple customers want the company to sort out working conditions, and protect its workers in China. Campaigners (Apple customers) say they were motivated to act by media reports about supply workers' conditions.

Online petition demands Apple change

The recent “online petition” – already signed by 250,000 Apple customers with an overall goal of sending one million signatures to Apple – continues as of Feb. 13, with BBC World News reporting that the petition “calls on Apple to do more to ensure its Chinese factory workers are treated better.”

The campaign, on Change.org, follows numerous worldwide media reports about very poor working conditions at China’s “Foxconn” factories that make Apple products, such as the ever popular iPod, iPhone and iPad.

In addition, other outraged Apple customers have also been signing a separate SumOfUsPetition, that BBC News reports has already having “43,000 signatures,” and calls for “the iPhone5 to be made ‘ethically.’”

Also, BBC News stated that “Apple acknowledged the demands,” but there are not details about what Apple will do to stem the tide of suicides at Foxconn where young child workers have been jumping off of buildings due to the high stress of making Apple products non-stop to meet a world demand.

In turn, BBC News stated that the Apple’s chief executive “earlier said it cared about every worker in its supply chain.”

Apple must “Change” demand customers

One of the Apple petitions – dubbed “The Change petition” – was brainstormed by the Washington-based reporter Mark Shields who called on Apple customers to "release a worker protection strategy for new product releases,” saying that injuries tend to spike at times when staff are under the most pressure.

In turn, The SumOfUs movement focuses its efforts on the firm's next major smartphone update.

"Every time a Foxconn worker is killed or disabled making an Apple product, Mr.Cook bears personal moral responsibility," wrote Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the campaign's executive director.

"Apple is going to have much bigger longer-term problems than paying a few extra dollars for its products if it loses its lustre with ethical consumers," she added.

The petitions follow a New York Times investigation into working conditions in Chinese factories used by Apple.

“An anonymous Apple executive told the paper that the firm just had to say the word to bring about change,” reported BBC News; while stating how ‘suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn't have another choice,’ he is quoted as saying.”

In turn, Apple’s chief executive is finally talking about working conditions at Foxconn; while also defending the company’s position that all is good in China.

"Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern," Tim Cook wrote.

"Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we've made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers," Cook added.

Apple workers killing themselves

Images of protesters demanding that “abuses” at Foxconn be stopped have gone viral, and created an inconvenient truth for the mighty Apple Company that hoped to ignore the protesters since telling the world about their harsh conditions back in early 2011. “Now,” said one protester in China on BBC News, “we get an answer from Apple a year later.”

In fact, BBC News stated recently that “the issue about overseas working conditions hit the headlines two years ago when 137 workers at Apple supplier Wintek in eastern China were injured after they used a poisonous chemical - n-hexane - to clean iPhone screens. Last year four workers were killed in two separate explosions at factories manufacturing iPads.”

Taiwanese factory owner Foxconn, which employs an estimated 1.2 million workers in China, has come in for some of the closest scrutiny, “amid claims that at least 18 of its workers have attempted suicide over the past two years,” added the BBC News report; while The New York Times recently reported Apple workers’ accounts of “20 people being "stuffed" in a three-room apartment and a riot set off by "a dispute over paychecks.”

The Times also noted “that Apple's previous audits had turned up cases of under-age workers and staff being paid less than the minimum wage at unspecified locations; while Foxconn disputed the accounts of crowded living accommodations and the causes of the riot, and said that it had "never been cited by a customer or government for under-age or overworked employees or toxic exposures".

The New York Times pointed to how “Apple tends to be singled out because of the huge profits it makes - and many of the other big tech firms outsource manufacturing to Foxconn and other Chinese suppliers.”

Chinese child slave labor

On January 24, Apple announced “revenue of more than $46 billion” for the quarter ending December 31. Just try to imagine 37 million iPhones: that’s how many Apple sold in just the last three months of 2011 thanks for Apple’s manufacturer in China called ‘Foxconn,’” explained a Jan. 29 report on CBC News “Sunday Morning.”

This report also pointed to “The dark side of shiny Apple products” in a lead story headline that detailed massive child “slave labor” and “regular suicides” by those Foxconn employees – including young children -- “who make each and every iPhone by hand,” for what amounts to, state experts, “as slave wages.”

In turn, Foxconn’s clients include American, European and Japanese companies. Notable products which the company manufactures include Apple’s iPad, iPhone, the Amazon Kindle, PlayStation 3, Wii and even the Xbox 360.

Also, Foxconn is the “largest exporter in Greater China” of technology goods sold in America.

"I had never thought ever, in a dedicated way, about how they were made," said performer Mike Daisey, an admitted geek. That is the centerpiece of his monologue, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."

“The show is an on-stage expose of working conditions at a factory in Shenzhen, China, owned by a company called Foxconn, which manufactures electronics under contract for practically every major brand you can name, including Apple.

It is, as Daisey says in his performance piece, ‘the biggest company you've never heard of. Foxconn makes over 50 percent of all electronics in the world.’ The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen employs more than 400,000 people.”

The dark side of shiny Apple products

In turn, CBS News showed images of Foxconn companies -- that make each and every iPhone and iPad by hand – erecting massive circus-sized netting around the bottom of its building where Apple products are made. The netting is to catch those Chinese child workers – with many thousands under the age of 14 – leaping to their deaths due to the high-stress and long working hours (with many reported working in 12-14 hour shifts to meet Apple’s demand for more iPhone and iPad products worldwide).

In fact, one Foxconn worker named “Sun Dayong,” reportedly committed suicide after reporting the loss of an iPhone4 prototype in his possession. In reaction to a rash of worker suicides at Foxconn – with the company admitting that “14 died of suicide in 2010” by leaping off the building where Apple products are made – an investigative report was investigated by “20 Chinese universities” that described Foxconn “as labor camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime.”

Outrage continues in China

Meanwhile, leading world news agency’s pointed to a protest earlier this month at Wuhan, China, where “150 workers threatened to commit mass suicide because of worsening work conditions. The employees had asked for a raise but were told they could either quit with compensation or keep their jobs with no raise. The employees quit, but did not receive their compensation.”

Also, in response to the Foxconn suicides, CBS News and other media reported how “Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at some facilities.”

"If you've never been to the economic engines of China, these giant buildings stacked up with people, they're just staggering," said Daisey in the CBS News report Jan. 29. "It almost takes your breath away."

Daisey went to Shenzhen and said Foxconn wouldn't let him in, so he stood outside the main gate with his translator, talking to workers at shift change.

"In my first two hours of my first day at that gate, I met workers who are 14 years old," Daisey said. "I met workers who were 13 years old. I met workers who were 12. Do you really think Apple doesn't know?"

Why should iPhone users care?

So what then would drive Foxconn workers to commit suicide?

“The pressure to produce, especially to keep up with demand for a hot device like a new iPhone,” explains Mike Daisey.

"The official work day in China is eight hours long. That's a joke," Daisey said in his performance. "I never met anyone who'd even heard of an eight-hour shift. Everyone I talked to worked 12-hour shifts, standard, and often much longer than that: 14 hours a day, 15 hours a day. Sometimes longer than that. While I am in country, a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34-hour shift."

Also, CBS News stated: “We have repeatedly asked Apple for comment, and been told no,” and CBS News also repeatedly asked Foxconn for access to its Shenzhen plant. “No reply!”

Apple the leader in making money

"It is common for factories to hide working hours, to somehow coach workers on what to say when auditors come to the factory," Spaulding told CBS News during its Jan. 29 report; while also noting that on January 13, for the first time Apple released a list of its major suppliers, and with it its annual supplier responsibility report, showing that in 2011 it conducted 80 percent more audits than in 2010.

“The company's supplier code of conduct limits workers to a 60-hour/6-day week. By Apple's own data, only 38 percent of its suppliers complied.”
"Apple has said for decades that it wants to be a leader," replied Daisey. "Well, it's a leader now. I think they should be delighted that people actually expect them to lead and to rally the rest of the industry."

So where does that leave us, asked CBS News while noting that “in 2012 it's virtually impossible to stop buying and using electronics made in Chinese factories for Apple or anybody else.

Beautiful Apple devices at what cost?

"Our devices are so beautiful, especially the Apple devices. They're so gorgeous-looking that it seems as though they were made by a machine. But the reality is they're assembled by hand - thousands of people work with their fingers putting together the tiny components," said Daisey. "So much of our world is actually handmade, even though it looks so modern. It's built on the bones of this labor. And we need to actually understand that."

Also, it was announced late last year that Foxconn and Amazon formed a “joint-design manufacturing company.” According to analysts, “the move was meant to produce an Amazon branded smartphone built in China by Foxconn for some time in 2012.”

In turn, Foxconn’s website boasts having factories in Asia, Europe and South America – but not anywhere in the U.S. – and, all totaled Foxconn states “it assembles around 40 percent of consumer electronics products in the world.”

Overall Foxconn has 13 factories in nine Chinese cities that help serve its largest supplier, Apple; while Foxconn’s largest factory in Longhua, Shenzhen. China, employees more than 450,000 employees at its “Longhua Science & Technology Park” – a walled campus of about 1.16 square miles that’s referred to as “iPod City,” because it’s best customer is Apple.

Image source of Chinese workers at Apple’s Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China. Photo courtesy Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

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