Blog #30 – Reform Workers’ Conditions
After seeing the Daily Show clip about the Foxconn workers in China who toiled 35 hour shifts making 31 cents / hour, all while making electronics that many middle to upper class Americans use every day, I figured that we should see what some of the alternatives are, made right here in the U.S.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/MadeInAmerica/
Here is a website that doesn’t appear to be Super Team America – http://www.madeinamericabuyamerican.com/
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Foxconn’s chief, Terry Guo, apparently made these insensitive remarks about his workers while at the Taipei Zoo: ” “I have a headache how to manage one million animals’ at the company’s year-end party in Taipei Zoo earlier this month.”
Apparently, at Foxconn’s Wuhan facility in China, 150 workers were ready to commit a mass suicide if working conditions weren’t improved at their factories. This plant manufactures Apple, Nintendo, Sony, and HP products among other items. Only after two days were the workers talked down from the roof. In 2010, 18 workers attempted suicide from the same plant (14 “succeeded”). This latest strike began after January 2 when the company got a new work order for Acer computers, reshuffled the work teams and got the workers to begin assembly without retraining. The workers “had blisters” and the backs of their hands were “black” and the assembly line was sped up. And the working conditions at this plant aren’t unique: at one of Foxconn’s best plants in Longhua, 5% of its workers (24,000) quit every month.
For some perspective, Foxconn is the world’s largest electronics manufacturer.
About 1/3 of the workers on the roof quit while the rest returned to work. Also, the New York Times is disputing the number of people on the roof saying that there were almost 300 who staged the protest and not 150 as originally reported by Chinese officials.
Also, a journalist named Mike Daisey is in China right now following up on the story of the suicide attempts and trying to get to the bottom of this story. Daisey is a self-proclaimed Mac/Apple fanatic and has apparently bought into the ethos of friendlier tech, so he wants to know about the human costs of the technology he so blindly worships. Follow his stories at This American Life at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory .
Questions: (please do both)
1. We’ve discussed the idea of paying more for electronics if they are ethically made, especially here in America. But how much more would you be
2. What level of non-cooperation would you be willing to engage in to force American companies to treat their workers (or companies that make the parts for their computers/ electronics) better? Would you:
- stop buying the product?
- encourage others to stop buying the product?
- write letters / emails to the company president and / or Congress person to encourage them to stop this unethical treatment of workers?
- inform your friends and family about the poor treatment of workers who make the products we use?
- encourage others to join you in bringing these jobs back to America?
Treatment of Employees in an Ethical Manner – http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v12n1/treatment.html