Ain't Technology Great? Race To The Bottom

Like your iPad? Good price? It should be, for the labor that went into it. Foxconn, a Taiwan-based manufacturer of Apple products, has factories in China notorious for poor conditions and for a wave of suicides among its workers. Sweatshops? You ain't seen nothin'.

Zaid Jilani has an article at ThinkProgress that states that although Apple and Foxconn have agreed to limit overtime to 36 hours per week, workers typically put in 80-100 hours of overtime -- two to three times the legal limit.

Jilani reports:

In the wake of a huge wave of suicides at Foxconn plants, the company began reforming its practices related to the suicides. These changes included installing anti-suicide nets to catch workers who attempted to leap out of company windows. Yet workers are also being forced to sign a non-suicide pact as a condition of employment. As part of the pact, the employees families have to promise “not sue the company, bring excessive demands, take drastic actions that would damage the company’s reputation or cause trouble that would hurt normal operations” in the case of a suicide.

Workers at a Chengdu plant usually have to stand for 14 hours a day. Cell phones are forbidden -- even those without cameras. Jilani reports that almost all the workers live in company-owned dormitories, with 6 to 22 people per room. Factory rules apply to the living quarters, and workers are forbidden such personal items as hair dryers.

This information is from a new report from an advocay and research group based in Hong Kong, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), based on a comprehensive study in March and April 2011 of practices at several Foxconn factories.

Foxconn denies the reports.