Video: Riot at an Apple Inc. Factory. Why These Jobs Are No Longer in the USA

A few days ago, the New York Times announced that thousands of workers had (and are still) rioting at the Foxconn Technology factory in Taiyuan, China. Five thousand police had to be called in to quell the riot. Windows were shattered, police cars overturned and fires were set.

One source reported that components for the Apple I-Phone number five are made at the factory.

The cause of the riot is not clear, but some sources say there was an incident between security and workers that triggered the riot. But the reason is probably more widespread than that.

Why are these jobs overseas? The authors of the story, David Barboza and Keith Bradsher, report that “Analysts say worker unrest in China has grown more common because workers are more aware of their rights, and yet have few outlets to challenge or negotiate with their employers.”

In other words, beside the massive difference in pay between workers in the US and in China, the Chinese workers have virtually no rights in the workplace to negotiate pay increases, hours worked, overtime pay, as well as health, safety and environmental standards.

Foxconn has had problems with workers committing suicide on-the-job last year at one of their factories that produced exclusively for Apple, Inc. Here’s another fact; this riots demonstrates that the race to the bottom in China continues, as well as in the USA. The difference between the old wages here in the USA, as well as the higher amount of dollars needed to maintaining higher factory standards, worker safety and environmental standards here, compared to in China, go into the pockets of the rich, (such as the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Wall Street Mitt the Complete Twit Romney) via higher corporate earnings, surging dividends, and rising share prices. That’s why the jobs are in China and not in the USA, where they belong. Standards are higher in the USA.

The rest of us 99 percenters are made to suffer lower standards of living, as our income is redistributed to the 1 percent via trade treaties that all US jobs to be exported or created in foreign nations.

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Apple Inc and other manufacturers: Why those jobs aren’t coming back

The cost of labor is only one factor in why a US corporation chooses to relocate or create jobs overseas. The labor cost in the US to produce a $1500 computer is about $25 per computer compared with about $9 in China. The difference appears miniscule, but it’s a serious factor. But there are more sinister reasons that help shape the decisions of CEOs to ship or create jobs overseas. Apple executives gave us one of those reasons.

“Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.”

In other words, slave labor is paramount in deciding when and if to move jobs overseas. Click the link below for the complete story.

Apple, America, China and the big squeeze

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There was a reason why Apple Inc. builds their stuff in China and Taiwan and elsewhere; some of it has to do with money, but there are other reasons, as well. An example is provided below.

“The chemical n-hexane used in the Taiwanese-owned Wintek factory caused dozens to faint, fall ill and complain of headaches and other mild symptoms. But many workers were hit harder, suffering nerve damage in their hands and feet from exposure to the chemical, the use of which is regulated in China. The lasting impact of their exposure to the toxin remains unknown, and Apple has repeatedly ignored requests for comment on the situation. They did mention the case in their 2010 corporate supplier report, but said the matter had been solved.”

The full story is below.

Steve Jobs death doesn't absolve Apple Inc.

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Audit finds illegal overtime and unpaid wages at Apple factory

Steve Jobs sure knew what he was doing. An independent audit has discovered that workers at an Apple factory were forced to work overtime without pay. Why would we be surprised?

“The Fair Labor Association (FLA) said employees at Foxconn, which produces products including iPhones and iPads, typically worked more than 60 hours a week during peak periods but were paid unfair compensation for overtime.”

Click here for the complete story

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A Trip to The iFactory: ‘Nightline’ Gets an Unprecedented Glimpse Inside Apple’s Chinese Core

Nightline has an interesting story that fails to mention a few things. One of them is that if you build a computer in China that sells for $1500 in the USA, the labor cost per unit is about $9. The labor cost per unit of the same product made in the United States is roughly $24. So why does Apple have its factories in China and not in the USA if the cost difference per unit is not all that much?

The Nightline story isn’t going to tell you that Steve Jobs could have his Chinese factory employees working 12 to 16 hour shifts on a moments notice, and they couldn’t and can’t do anything about it. The story isn’t going to tell you that the workers could be fired for just about anything. Nor are they going to tell you that it is very difficult for employees to quit. The story isn’t going to tell you about the environmental hazards workers toil in. It does tell you of the numbers of workers that preferred to commit suicide rather than work for Apple. But these are the reasons why the jobs are there and not here; labor and environmental standards are higher in the USA. Steve Jobs wanted virtual slave labor. Sounds like a nice guy, a visionary. Right.

By the way, the jobs aren’t here, so the iPads are imported into the United States from China, helping to swell the US trade deficit, which is technically with China, but in reality with Apple Inc., as well as the rest of US corporations doing business there. Wall Street and the rich are the primary beneficiaries. The difference in compensation from the jobs that should be here (higher wages) but are over there (lower wages) goes into the pockets of the rich, year after year. That includes savings from lower environmental and labor standards over there. That’s one of the major reasons the rich are getting richer and the rest of us US citizens are descending into third world status. Your government officials are legislative whores of the wealthy.

When you’re reading the story, remember you’re really reading about how income is being redistributed from the 99 percent to the rich.

Click here for the full story

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Steve Jobs Warned Obama: You’re Gonna Be a One-Termer

In the days following Steve Jobs’s death, publisher Simon & Schuster decided to release its authorized biography of the Apple founder a month earlier than planned. The book, written by Walter Isaacson and simply called Steve Jobs, will be out on the 24th, but details are already leaking.

According to the Huffington Post, which got a hold of a copy, Isaacson paints Jobs as a gruff supporter of Barack Obama, telling him: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency” when they met in 2010. He encouraged Obama to work more closely with businesses, citing “regulations and unnecessary costs” that might make an American company build factories in China, and criticized teachers unions for blocking much-needed education reforms.

Jobs and Obama did not quite have a love affair, but the Apple chief was willing to help:

Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can’t get done “infuriates” him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times. Jobs even offered to help create Obama’s political ads for the 2012 campaign. “He had made the same offer in 2008, but he’d become annoyed when Obama’s strategist David Axelrod wasn’t totally deferential,” writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary “morning in America” ads did for Ronald Reagan.

The book also described how Jobs was “angrier than [Isaacson] had ever seen him” when Google released its Android operating system, which he felt infringed on patented iPhone technology:

“Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,’” Jobs said, according to Isaacson. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

Jobs also slammed Google’s work, telling Isaacson that “outside of Search, Google’s products — Android, Google Docs — are shit.”

The author has also issued some previews of his own in the form of a 60 Minutes appearance set to air on Sunday. In the television interview, Isaacson explains why Jobs initially declined to undergo surgery to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping instead that alternative therapies would be enough to cure the disease:

“I’ve asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,’” Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking … we talked about this a lot,” he tells Kroft. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it …. I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”

The 656-page book, which is based on years of research and dozens of conversations between the writer and his subject, also addresses less weighty topics, such as the contents of Jobs’s iPod, which included Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma, and the work of his onetime girlfriend Joan Baez.

This post has been updated with additional information.

Steve Jobs Said He’d ‘Go Thermonuclear War’ On Google Over iPhone ‘Theft’ [HuffPo]
Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery [CBS News]

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