Apple caught out again - a bigger problem in the electronics industry - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 12:27:47 pm
content: The video interview part is worth watching.http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/techknow/chinese-factory-employees-forced-to-work-in-noisy-and-toxic-conditions/news-story/df59507cb85a7db286076c76aa7a88d5. Apple is infamous for exploiting the vulnerable and the poor. Add to that Apple's cheating on paying tax and the net result is more profit for their shareholders at a cost to human compassion and decency.Maybe there should be something like Fair Trade for the electronics industry.http://www.thegoodtrade.com/. It would be a long time coming. No country, including communist and other third world countries should be exempt from a requirement to treat their workers with respect.The Jimmy Carter law which makes paying or accepting a bribe anywhere in the world by an American citizen an indictable offence should be adopted globally. In a similar manner, there should be laws to make CEO's and shareholders accountable for the welfare of all workers in their immediate or secondary supply chain. Maybe there should be like a CE mark for good corporate citizenship.I suspect the majority of electronics enthusiasts would disagree if it increases the cost of electronics. After all, what has morality got to do with getting a bargain?

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 12:49:35 pm
content: "Exhausted workers are seen slumped over tables in the factory canteen"If I'm not mistaken, taking a nap is just common practice there? Was in Taiwan some time ago and around noon folks would head to their desk, litteraly put their head down and sail away. They lights were dimmed all over the place.And I just sat there and had no idea what was going onAlso: people need to stop singling out Apple. The same factories will produce for every major 'western' brand you can imagine.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 12:50:28 pm
content: I remember the case where Nike opened a shoe factory in some rural Asian territory. The prevailing wages (for the minority who were employed) was shockingly low. Nike set wages at what were widely criticized for being too low (by developed nations standards). But even a basic assembly-line job was perhaps 2x what the town physician was making. So, he closed his surgery and went to work at the shoe factory, leaving the town with no physician. It is very tricky to unilaterally apply affluent western standards in places where conditions are so different. Change takes time.

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 02:54:33 pm
content: ... "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 03:11:07 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 18, 2018, 12:27:47 pmYou should look into Apple’s Supplier Responsibility program before jumping on the let’s-bash-Apple bandwagon. No other major electronics vendor even comes close to doing what Apple does to protect its suppliers’ workers. The problem isn’t that Apple allows bad conditions, the problem is that suppliers routinely attempt to cheat. Apple spends a fortune on independent audits and investigation to try and ensure compliance. Other companies simply take suppliers at their word, until whistleblowers make a fuss.As for the “cheating on paying tax” — umm, no, they’re in full compliance with tax law. If you think the tax loopholes in the law are too large, then lobby to get the law changed. You cannot get mad at a company (or person) for taking advantage of every tax reduction measure that’s present in the tax code!! (And in fact, since publicly traded companies are legally required to guard shareholder value,notusing the loopholes would open them to potential legal exposure.)Oh and of course you say this just 2 days after Apple announced that it’s going to be paying $38B (yes, billions) in taxes to the US government to repatriate a bunch of cash, under some new tax law. (Apple is already the US’s largest tax payer.)

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 06:59:03 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on January 18, 2018, 12:49:35 pmSleeping - yep, visited our manufacturing partner in Shenzhen a couple of times now. Lights dimmed/off after folk have eaten and they take their snooze time at their desk- we would head out to lunch since no work gets done during that time. Unlike workaholics in the US that will work through lunch... Was there early last year and there was a big company dinner put on by the owner, banquet dinner with more (much more) alcohol than was needed. Seems like folk were more than a little happy to work at this particular company. The whole area appeared to be full of similar size companies.cheers,george.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 09:07:56 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 18, 2018, 12:27:47 pmYep, serial apathetics can buy 20 -suspect quality- knockoff meters,instead of paying the same money for 3 decent ones with TRUE RMS and TRUE CAT ratings.They can sleep well at nightwithout a single thought about the overseas workers and families getting shaftedtreated like animal labor in a 'work for food' production line zoo...to produce those 20 meters of which 17 of them are hoarded somewhere gathering dust

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 08:12:36 pm
content: ? 14,357 is what an electronics engineer earns a month in India. That works out to $224.83 in US dollars.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 08:17:43 pm
content: Taking a nap in mid afternoon dramatically increases productivity. Its the normal practice in Latin America and also in 6% of US companies, especially ones that involve computing.Google has "nap pods" that isolate the napper from ambient sound and provide music..

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 09:42:45 pm
content: Quote from: georges80 on January 19, 2018, 06:59:03 amMy anecdotal observation is that Americans are particularly good at *working* but not all that great at getting stuff done. We spend a lot of time at our desks looking busy and burning ourselves out. I think we could easily get just as much done if we put more effort into spending time recharging outside of the office.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 10:38:05 pm
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on January 18, 2018, 12:49:35 pmIf I had the opportunity to turn out the lights and put my head down at work every now and then and not be bothered, that would be amazing!

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 11:58:15 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on January 19, 2018, 08:17:43 pmInteresting observation, never heard of this practice. But definitely agree that this might absolutely increase productivity.We are having a regular chat in the kitchen at my work though.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2018, 03:04:07 am
content: Quote from: tooki on January 19, 2018, 03:11:07 amIf you are married but you go to a brothel, you have complied with the law but have cheated on your wife by committing adultery. You wont got to jail for it, but you bring shame on yourself and your wife might divorce you. What is legal is not always moral.A parallel with Apple and the many other American multinationals (IBM, Microsoft, , Google, Chevron). They might comply with the laws created by stupid politicians, but these companies clearly cheat the taxpayers in countries which they do business. They are bad corporate citizens. Less money for the hospitals, welfare,, schools etc. They use whatever loopholes they can cheat us all. Our personal taxes are a lot higher because of their cheating. Not only that, legitimate and decent Australian companies are taxed at 30% and they pay their taxes.Chevron got their arse kicked and fined $300 million. These parasites took on "loans" from corporate HQ in the US at fake high interest rates, thereby sending all their taxable profits back the the US and paying nothing here in tax. IMO, the CEO and the CFO should have been jailed for fraud.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2018, 03:33:59 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on January 18, 2018, 12:49:35 pmAccording to some exp pat PRC Chinese I work with, no it isn't common. It is quite unusual in the electronics industry at least.Bad joke I know... "Foxconn workers for Apple use Windows".

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2018, 07:34:51 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 20, 2018, 03:04:07 amThe law and morality differ from country to country and culture to culture.Brothels are illegal in many places and in others it's not socially unacceptable for married men to go to a prostitute and is not seen as cheating, because it's just sex.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2018, 10:10:34 pm
content: Multinational corporations see themselves as the future and countries and their laws as an anachronism, that they tolerate in order to keep things divided up to their own advantage.So, many dont see themselves as any more responsible to any one country than to the others they do business with. People having to pay money for everything, is natural to them, and public services framed as public goods by social democracies are framed as a kind of theft of opportunity to sell in the value system of corporations. The WTO was sold originally as a way of channeling wealth to the developing world as a means to help them pay back the huge and obviously illegitimate debts they had incurred because of widespread corruption. What could be a better way to do it than by giving the jobs of the overpaid developed country workers to them to help force wages down. So this was how the WTO was sold. However it was never a serious proposal because it wasnt ever plausible that it could opr would be legal or legitimate, its a good example of a phenomenon thats been repeatedly illustrated by studies on organizational behavior. People who grow up abnormally affluent in an environment of extreme inequality have been shown to have both moral and perceptual deficits.For the world to harmonize wages and working conditions downward, would preserve the vast inequality they are most comfortable with.So these agreements share goals of eventual elimination, irreversibly, of public services and the concept of the public good (now renamed "services of general public interest" in keeping with their loss of public status) as soon as possible, irreversibly. Framing "state owned monopolies" as a theft of opportunity from (the richest people's corporations in the) poorest nations.Corporations must be blind to the worst excesses of governments, except as far as attempting to make money off of them.Even if a country is a brutal dictatorship, an MNC is obligated by international agreements to treat them identically to the best rated democracy. Making such calls is not natural for corporations so international economic governance rejects the concept pretty much. It wont go near questions of labor rules or human rights. What a national government does with its own people is its own business.This is becoming a convenient way to gradually and in a non-obvious way totally reverse the progress of the last 75-100 years and make it as if it had never really happened.Quote from: VK3DRB on January 20, 2018, 03:04:07 amActually, the worst corporate excesses title is one which has many possible winners in many countries around the globe. The concept of the corporation being an actual person should never have been allowed to happen.Corporations should be broken up and never allowed to become as large as they have. Also, people need to be brought into the legal picture of transnational "economic governance", a space where we currently have no legal standing (except as part of a market, the rights to whom are bought and sold)Unfortunately, that is where the real power rests today. This is why policy has been so spectacularly bad in many countries over the last two decades. Its just amazing that they have gotten away with this for so long.