Friday, January 27, 2012

Apple's iPad and the human cost for workers in China...

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

(...)

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

 More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. Full story...

Don't miss:
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  2. A 10th. suicide at Taiwan iPhone firm Foxconn in China...
  3. Worker at Apple's Foxconn "worked to death," but...
  4. What everyone's too polite to say about Steve Jobs...
  5. Steve Jobs, the iPhone and Foxconn, China's sweatshop suicide factory... 
  6. Over 500 Foxconn workers in Tamil Nadu, India, jailed in labour dispute...
  7. Woman in China willing to sell virginity for iPhone 4!!!
  8. Chinese boy sells kidney to buy iPad 2...

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