Workers Poisoned Making Touchscreen Hardware 260
SocResp writes "A chemical called n-hexane has been poisoning the nervous systems of Chinese workers who assemble touchscreen devices for Apple and other companies, an investigative journalist from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates. For companies with soaring profits and share prices, and elaborate product development and marketing, it seems they should be all the more culpable if they fail to take care of the production workers."
This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:5, Insightful)
Production lines in other countries don't incur the cost of US worker-safety regulations.
It's scary to think you're so obtuse (Score:1, Insightful)
"It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates."
Gee whiz, can it be this is the first you've ever heard of a sweat shop?
How is this news? Why the fuck do you think things are made in China? Do you think the Chinese have a skilled work force, or higher technical skills, or something of the sort?
Human life is cheap there. It always will be.
Re:What's there point exactly? (Score:1, Insightful)
does this mean there will be a price hike?
Only if these lines are owned by outside companies. If they are owned by CHinese nationals, or by the Chinese gov, then no. There will be no extra protection and no extra pay.
Apple.... and those others. (Score:4, Insightful)
You know...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod, which is irritating as hell.
The same thing happens with tablets now.
It's nice that they still drag Apple into a conversation like this...but it's still bullshit.
Quit saying Apple, ipod, ipad, etc unless it is a story actually about just them.
Re:Someone mod down this jerk (Score:1, Insightful)
How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire nationality is expendable. Shame on you.
Fixed it for you
Extras implies that some are expendable not the entire race.
Re:Someone mod down this jerk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:1, Insightful)
And what the fuck are you typing this post out on? An Apple 2?
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:2, Insightful)
People always whine about poor working conditions in 3rd world countries, but then end up buying their products anyway because they're cheaper. I do that too, but I'm not being dishonest about it. Frankly, I don't give a damn if some chinese people die to bring be cheaper iPhones and other goodies. The fact that jobs are being transferred to countries with non-existent worker-safety regulations tells me that most people also don't give a damn.
No such thing as free trade.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:1, Insightful)
My bigger point, which you gladly skirted, is that China gets away with this because of the volume of product that they produce. If people would reign their consumption habit in a bit we may not have this issues.
Re:And the damages from waste? (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
And that China will quit subsidizing.
And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.
The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.
Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The market will fix this. Nobody will buy iPhones when they hear about this. And all iPhone consumers in the market will hear about it.
Right?
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:3, Insightful)
You may not give a damn but I'm willing to bet the workers do. The problem is they're either not aware (very likely) or they're forced to choose between that and eating.
The fact that you're too much of a chicken shit to post your opinion with a name suggests that you do in fact give a damn, enough at least to not associate your own handle with your own oxygen wasting stupidity.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not give a damn but I'm willing to bet the workers do. The problem is they're either not aware (very likely) or they're forced to choose between that and eating.
The fact that you're too much of a chicken shit to post your opinion with a name suggests that you do in fact give a damn, enough at least to not associate your own handle with your own oxygen wasting stupidity.
The root of the problem is the same blissful, ignorant indifference that is causing the USA to become a soft-tyranny style police state. The products' marketing don't mention the working conditions that made it available at that price, just like the politicians' campaigns don't mention that the removal of freedom is how many of their goals are accomplished. No one really wants to take a look beneath the surface. It's out of sight, out of mind as though there are no externalities, as though there are no secondary and tertiary effects.
Re:Worker safety in China (Score:3, Insightful)
British Petroleum has been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. China doesn't give a shit about basic safety requirements. Providing major ports like Shanghai are heading to North America and Europe a bazillion pairs of Nike Asskickers, iTubePhone and lead-based children's wear, China and the Chinese manufacturers could care less about safety. In China, whether you died to make the Kuomintang great, or died to make Mao's insane steel output quotas great, or died so that Marxist purists could funny hats on anybody who had anything approaching independent thought, or died so that the world could fill to the brim with Chinese goods, one thing has always been clear, and that is that the average Chinese citizens has been completely expendable.
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a limited time offer (Score:4, Insightful)
The only comfort I take in the Global Economy is that eventually every part of the world will be industrialized and we'll run out of cheap labor hellholes to have our gadgets made in. I still remember in the 60s when Made in Japan was synonymous with cheap plastic crap. The process that has taken place in Japan since WWII is repeating at a faster pace in places like China and Mexico. Now those countries have a growing consumer class that is looking for cheap labor in other places. After the cycle happens across South America and Africa, the party will be over and so will the culture of endless business growth based on cheap labor.
Re:Someone mod down this jerk (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that there are enough actual proponents of this mindset out there that it isn't necessarily taken as over-the-top.
He didn't say it should be that way (Score:5, Insightful)
Just that it is that way. And I agree, I've been there.
When you have a lot of labor to throw at a problem, the relative value of that labor becomes less. If you can get more workers for cheap, you'll use more of them and less expensive equipment and you'll use less expensive safety equipment too.
And I've seen this in China myself. Even if the process is supposed to be safe, the line managers are rewarded for running the lines fast and at low cost, so shortcuts that don't seem to hurt anyone lead to bonuses at the end of the quarter.
And yes, some of these shortcuts do hurt people long term, but its not obvious. That's why we have safety rules in the US. It's why China has them too, but never enforces them.
Let me give you just one example. In China I saw a guy welding stuff using an arc welder and no mask. He had a piece of cardboard to shield his eyes and he'd move it aside and squint when he needed to see what was going on. Yes, he was destroying his eyes. And complaining about what people post on slashdot isn't fixing the problem.
Hey China - here's a message from god (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear China,
You have a unique and valuable natural resource. You have been selling it at a deep discount so you could get a firm grasp on the balls of every modern nation on earth. Let's call that mission accomplished. You can now start raising the price, and using the increased profits to clean up your country before you kill off the very resource that has created all this wealth. Sure, some bottom-feeders will go elsewhere, but those who stick with you will pay more, and allow you to actually improve your country.
Don't do it all at once - just practice boiling a frog by slowly warming the water. A small increase every quarter will do. However, don't let me catch you pocketing the profits. If you don't start buying scrubbers for your smokestacks, and water treatment plants, I might have to come down and smite your ass.
With Love
God, Buddha, or whatever higher power is in style this week
Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
The market will fix this.
Huh? I know you're trying to be clever and sarcastic, here, and normally I'm the first to attack free market purists, but I don't see anyone claiming that this kind of thing will be solved by the invisible hand.
This is, put simply, a classic example of a negative externality. The only solution is government regulation or taxation.
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:4, Insightful)
wrong. Even if we cut it in half. They would still be made in China, Chinese companies would still have horrid working conditions. The only change would be that there is even MORE demand for those jobs, and less of an incentive to treat the workers like human beings.
The only fix is to get China to have some decent labor laws. The best way to do that is add a large tarif for any goods coming into the US from a country that doesn't meet our basic federal laws.
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player who is as large a twat waffle as Apple fanboys.
I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player, period. Which I think disproves the GPs point more immediately.
Motorola Droids have touch screens.
McDonald's ordering computers have touch screens.
Why not say "Chinese manufacturers of Motorola's Droid..."
or "Chinese manufacturers of McDonald's Touch screens"?
GP is 100% valid. It was the *exact* same deal with the "horrible suicide rates at 'Apple's manufacturing plant".
Does anybody know that the suicide rate there is less than the national average in China? Does anybody know that Apple accounts for about 3% of the business at the plant? No. But Slashdot, CNN, and every other news site, just like this story, reports it as "Apple and others".
Why they do it? Buzz words attract attention. I *really* doubt it is any kind of conspiracy to hurt Apple. Its just the news sites trying to get people to see the headline and go "ooo I know what that is."
Re:It's a WalMart world after all (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that a guy using a 7-year-old laptop is not the kind of hyper-consumer who tries to e.g. eat enough food to kill himself. But don't let me get in the way of your hyperbole...I know you're just dying to hate some stranger on the Internet.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a member of the human race, it's your problem. If you have a conscience, it's your problem.
Re:chemistry of n-hexane (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:4, Insightful)
So is it their problem then that there are homeless people near where I live?
Seriously, the US is supposed to keep its nose out of everybody's business... but now we're supposed to set the example. So which is it? Do we starve them by not buying their products or do we exploit them by buying them?
Either is fine, but what are THEY doing to solve their OWN problems? Call that apathy if you like, but the critical factor that is being glossed over in order to criticize the US here is that they are allowing this to happen. It doesn't matter how many insightful-mod-bait rhetoric you spew, they still need to stand up and defend themselves.
Re:It's a limited time offer (Score:4, Insightful)
wrong, the U.S.A. is being transformed into a cheap labor hellhole right before your eyes.
Re:WHAT?! (Score:2, Insightful)
If that's not a typo I wish I had mod points.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments are artificial; man-made. Pain, suffering, poverty, these are realities. One-sixth of the world's population is suffering from malnutrition.
When one of us suffers, we all suffer. Yeah, it begs for birth control but we haven't figured out how to get over the religious bias that for millennia, has said: make more babies for armies and to plow fields.
The single global government idea, while with merit, goes against the grain of the fact that we all consider ourselves tribes, a heritage of our nature as animals. If you don't believe we're tribes, look at the denominational list for churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship in your town/city.
There is such a thing as social justice, and we're all responsible for it, ultimately.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow this is just silly. How narcissistic can one be? This problem has nothing to do with the US and everything to do with China. If a US company did offer to pay more do you think that they would use that money for safe working conditions or do you think they would just take more profit?
I am all for buying from free nations but that alone will not do much to solve the problem. Until China cares about the Chinese nothing will change.
The rest is just unrelated.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I buy products made on assembly lines with nonzero accident rates, made from metals mined under dangerous conditions (ALL of them are), made from oil drilled and refined under dangerous conditions, processed using energy from coal mined under dangerous conditions, transported over dangerous roads, etc.
Fact is, every product -- even those made entirely in 1st world Western countries -- required some danger somewhere in its manufacturing process. You can fairly claim that Chinese manufacturing is unnecessarily dangerous, but you can't set the bar at zero.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:3, Insightful)
mod parent insightful
As for all AC's, F.O.!
The true reason for offshoring has nothing to do with cheap products. It does have to do with greater profit margins. Most people pay what the sellers ask for, if this is not true then why does the price of consumables remain constant yet the cost of production drops. If the cost of production drops then the price of the product should drop as well. But it does not. The use of import tariffs artificially raise the price of imports comparable with American made products. To not use tariffs would force American manufacturers to drop prices in line with imports. How un-American would that be? American manufacturing executives state that they cannot drop the price since it would not be cost effective blah, blah, blah, yet these same executives still get bonuses in the range of million of dollars. Why is dat?
For example, say an American made tennis shoe costs $35 to make, to be sold at $125. In China, the shoe is made at a cost of $10, yet still sells for $125.
China as well as India are manufacturing products the way we did back is the 20's, before unions and the EPA as well as health care. Early in union history, the American worker was protected and as a result, gained a higher quality of life. Something happened within the unions and the workers became secondary to union longevity. As long as manufacturing executives continue to make record profits, this will not change.
Eventually, one would hope, the workers in NAFTA, CAFTA and any other AFTA, will wise up and unionize. Unfortunately, manufacturing executives, worldwide, use the American model as a "how not to do it" model. These people will show their true colors in eliminating all attempts to organize the workers in the foreseeable future. They will also make the environment a non-issue.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the situation in China is the same as the situation everywhere. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. The problem the Chinese have is that they fear their government, and with very good reason. So long as their political elites are an "untouchable" group who can stomp on their own citizens with no fear for their own personal safety, that will remain the case. It's sad that it comes down to that. What you'd like to believe is that human beings with political power would help other human beings to prosper, that government can be your friend and your buddy who looks out for you. This is absolutely not the reality and never has been.
Right now Chinese people fear their government and justifiably so. Until and unless this changes, the government of China cares only for the numbers such as its GDP and does not care about the human cost necessary to achieve it. It has no incentive to sacrifice economic gain in order to safeguard things like good working conditions and basic human rights. If it did that, the numbers would not look as good to it.
The problem everywhere is that people don't understand a basic fact: government represents force and "might makes right" and seeks to maintain a monopoly on the use of force. That is the ONLY THING that makes government different from any other entity. You can dress it up in terms of polls and party affiliation and such, but ultimately government derives its existence from the point of a gun, from superior brute force or threat of force and not from superior wisdom or reason. It is therefore fundamentally untrustworthy and thuggish. More government equals more force and thus, more care that must be taken to ensure that such force is used within strict boundaries. Advocating more government to solve problems that don't require force to solve leads to more subjugation and less freedom.
The USA's Founding Fathers understood this reality. They knew that the only difference between a tyrannical government and a "good" government was size, managebility, and accountability. These three things are one as they are all related. As size of government goes up, managebility and accountability of government goes down. Eventually it has no purpose other than to perpetuate its own existence. The Chinese are finding this out the hard way, in the form of a government that will happily let them ingest poison so long as the money keeps flowing.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:3, Insightful)
The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.
Yes, some of them could still lie and use Y while claiming X was used, but we can test and check and at least we'd still be setting the right example rather than the wrong one. And if we actually refused to turn a blind eye to violators, and actually took our business only to those who behaved ethically, then we'd be helping them help themselves and doing so without sticking our noses in.
Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.
Re:And the damages from waste? (Score:1, Insightful)
And is anyone asking companies to pay for the costs/injuries from reclaiming materials from the waste stream?
Actually, a very large number of Americans (and other westerners) ARE asking that China do JUST THAT.
And in America, waste cleans YOU.
In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
And that China will quit subsidizing.
And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.
AFAIK China is the world's largest producer of pollution filters, and of green energy devices.
China is the last country on earth to still have the US$ as lead currency, and strangely the US has a problem with that.
China stopped dumping rare earth metals on export markets. Happy now?
Various African nations are asking the USA to stop subsidizing.
China honors the treaties and agreements it has. Unlike the US, it never needed to get out of the Kyoto protocol.
The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.
Meanwhile, Milton Friedmann something something greed is good and pure.
Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately the situation in China is the same as the situation everywhere. When the government fears the people, there is liberty
It's become more and more difficult over time to get together and throw a revolution. This is what worries me...
The Chinese are finding this out the hard way, in the form of a government that will happily let them ingest poison so long as the money keeps flowing.
We find excessive emissions from power plants and other places with smokestacks as rapidly as we can send people up them to inspect them in THIS country. The FDA has become a vehicle for green-lighting harmful products in THIS country. The auto companies keep selling us bigger and bigger vehicles which consume more and more resources keeping the refineries going 24x7x365 in THIS country. It's time to come down off your high horse and realize that exactly the same shit is being done to Americans, and the only difference is one of degree.