I phone is a “core violation�

[wolfvid]

NYT  ...comments invited....

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=Apple%20Says%20Chinese%20Supplier%20Made%20Changes%20After%20Suicides&st=cse

February 22, 2011 Workers Sickened at Apple Supplier in China By DAVID BARBOZA  SUZHOU, China — Last week, when Apple released its annual review of labor conditions at its global suppliers, one startling revelation stood out: 137 workers at a  factory here had been seriously injured by a toxic chemical used in making the signature slick glass screens of the iPhone.       

Apple, describing it as a “core violation” of worker safety, said that it had ordered the contractor to stop using the chemical and to improve safety conditions at the plant. Apple also said that it would monitor the medical conditions of those workers.       

But in interviews last weekend,  nearly a dozen employees who say they were harmed by the chemical said they had never heard from anyone at Apple.       

Instead, they said the contractor — a Taiwanese-owned company called Wintek — had pressed them and many other affected workers to resign and accept cash settlements that would absolve the factory of future liability, charges  the company denied.       

“We hope Apple will heed to its corporate social responsibility,” said Jia Jingchuan, 27.  He said exposure at the Wintek plant to the chemical, known as n-hexane,  had left him with nerve damage and made him so hypersensitive to cold that he now must wear down-insulated clothing even indoors. “Usually someone my age doesn’t wear this type of pants,” he said raising his voice. “Only 50- or 60-year-old men wear something like this.”       

On Monday, however, a Wintek spokesman denied that the company was pressing workers to resign or sign papers absolving the company of future liability.       

The company said it was working with medical professionals to assess the health of workers. Jay Huang, the spokesman, even suggested that Wintek would pay for medical care should the symptoms persist after workers resign.       

“Wintek’s policy of handling this is to put workers’ benefit as the first priority,”  he said.       

Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., declined to discuss the Wintek case but said the company was committed to the highest standards of social responsibility in its supply chain. “We require our suppliers to provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect and use environmentally friendly manufacturing processes whenever our products are made,” she said.       

Many workers, though, say they do not trust the factory because some managers continue to press injured workers to resign, sometimes by insisting they work longer hours even though their health is impaired.

Mr. Jia, a machine repair worker, was among a group of Wintek employees who gathered Sunday to discuss the case in a worker’s bare, unheated one-room apartment a few miles from the factory.       

Some members of the group said they were still suffering health problems while working at the factory, which employs 18,000 workers at an average monthly wage of about $200, after overtime.       

Wang Mei, 37, a quality inspection supervisor at Wintek, said she was hospitalized for 10 months because of  n-hexane poisoning. She said  she would like to leave the factory, but only after  receiving assurances that Wintek would cover her medical bills if her health problems persisted.       

“It’s not that we want to work here,” she said Sunday, as she tried to explain why she remains at the factory despite recurring symptoms, such as soreness in her limbs and fatigue. “We want to fight for our legal rights.”       

Another woman came into the room waving a letter from a Chinese insurance company, turning her down for life insurance because she had been poisoned at the Wintek factory.       

Although many workers said they had not heard from Apple and had been pressed to leave Wintek, one worker said that an Apple employee had arrived at the Suzhou factory on Tuesday and had met with a few affected workers.       

The workers also said Wintek managers appeared to be softening their position early this week by telling several injured workers that they would no longer be required to sign documents if they choose to resign.

The Wintek injuries underscore the challenges Apple faces in trying to source goods from China, which dominates electronics manufacturing with low-cost labor and highly efficient factories that often operate around the clock.       

But China is also known for factories that routinely flout labor and environmental laws.       

About 18 months ago,  workers at the Wintek factory started complaining of sore limbs and  extreme weakness. Some employees had difficulty climbing stairs or even buttoning a shirt; others said they had dizzy spells and pounding headaches. “My palms started sweating and my legs got numb,” Mr. Jia said. “At first, I didn’t think it was related to work.”       

According to Wintek, doctors later discovered that the factory’s workers, scores of them, were suffering from heavy exposure to n-hexane, a toxic agent the factory had begun using to clean the sophisticated touch-screen glass panels it  makes for the Apple iPhone. Some workers said they were hospitalized for months with what doctors told them was nerve damage. Because the workers had insurance, Wintek and the government paid the medical costs and  some  compensation  during their sick leave.       

Wintek said it began using n-hexane  in early 2009,  after the factory received a large order for the glass panels. The company says n-hexane evaporates quickly and was considered more efficient than other cleaning agents.       

But the compound is also considered a narcotic, which in high concentrations can disrupt the central nervous system of humans and induce vertigo and muscular atrophy, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the United States Department of Labor.       

To draw attention to their plight, some affected workers organized a protest early last year. They also hired a lawyer, lobbied local government officials and even set up a microblogging site with links to their medical records.       

In its report, Apple said n-hexane was no longer being used at the Suzhou factory and that Wintek had repaired its ventilation system.

But Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a labor rights group in Hong Kong, said Apple and Wintek were slow to address the problem. “We heard rumors about the poisoning in 2009, and after a strike at the factory in January 2010, we went to the No. 5 hospital and found some of the workers,” Ms. Chan said. “When I visited workers in the hospital they said the Wintek management did not care about the situation. And after this case was exposed by the media, Apple never approached the workers or made an apology for their suffering.”       

Apple’s first mention of the case came last week, in its annual overseas supplier assessment, which the company has released since 2007.       

This year’s review was particularly sensitive because it was the first since several suicides last year among workers at Foxconn Technologies, one of Apple’s biggest suppliers in China. Some labor rights advocates had attributed the suicides to harsh working conditions at its huge factory compounds, some of which employ 300,000 people.

In the report, Apple praised Foxconn for its response to the deaths. Foxconn hired counselors, raised salaries and even put up nets on some of its buildings to prevent suicide attempts.       

But Apple also said it had discovered that some of its other Chinese suppliers had employees younger than 16, the legal working age. One supplier factory had 42 under-age workers, the company said.       

Well aware of the pitfalls of outsourcing manufacturing to China, Apple and other global brands often hire independent auditors to make surprise visits to supplier factories. They also press factories to agree to strict codes of conduct and to ensure worker safety and compliance with China’s labor and environmental laws. One of the injured Wintek workers who agreed to be interviewed Sunday,  Yao Xiaoping, 22, a migrant worker from  Shaanxi Province,  said he had  left the factory and had accepted compensation of about $12,000 but now feared for his future because of the n-hexane poisoning that he said had left him with sweaty palms and weak limbs.       

“I went back to my village but everyone knows what happened to me,” he said, fighting back tears. “So it has made it difficult for me to find a wife there.”       

  Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.

====================================

ok how do you respond to this by taking individual responsibility?

do not buy Iphones? boycott Apple?

call wolf a fascist and nationalist and idiot , moron,  ass?

shrug and say fuck 'em they are only Chinese $ 200 a month is a fortune to them - shut up?

what to do when you find out that the object you rely on the most is tainted with poor peoples blood?

I expect some controversy......

[wolfvid]

  Apple report reveals child labour increase Apple's annual report says 91 children worked at its suppliers in 2010, and 137 workers were poisoned by n-hexane

   

• Tania Branigan in Beijing
  
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 February 2011 12.43 GMT 
  
• Article history
  
•   [img alt=Apple logo height=276 width=460]
    Apple said it had strengthened its checks on age because of concerns about falsification. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images  Apple found more than 91 children working at its suppliers last year, nine times as many as the previous year, according to its annual report on its manufacturers.
  The US company has also acknowledged for the first time that 137 workers were poisoned at a Chinese firm making its products and said less than a third of the facilities it audited were complying with its code on working hours.
  Apple usually refuses to comment on which firms make its goods, but came under increased scrutiny last year following multiple suicides at electronics giant Foxconn, one of its main suppliers.
  Last month, anti-pollution activists accused the firm of being more secretive about its supply chain in China than almost all of its rivals.
  The report says Apple found 91 children working at 10 facilities. The previous year it found 11 at three workplaces.
  It ordered most to pay the children's education costs but fired one contractor which was using 42 minors and had "chosen to overlook the issue", the company said. It also reported the vocational school that had arranged the employment to the authorities for falsifying student IDs and threatening retaliation against pupils who revealed their ages.
  Apple said it had strengthened its checks on age because of concerns about the falsification of ages by such schools and labour agencies. It also audited 127 facilities last year, mostly for the first time, compared with 102 in 2009.
  The report shows a marked decrease in compliance on working hour requirements of a maximum 60-hour week with one day off. In 2009, only 46% met the standard; last year that fell to 32%.
  Only 57% were compliant with its code on preventing working injuries and 70% or fewer met standards on air emissions, managing hazardous substances, and environmental permits and reporting.
  But there were some signs of improvement in other areas. Compliance on wages and benefits improved from 65% in 2009 to 70%.
  The report also says that 137 workers at a Suzhou supplier were poisoned by n-hexane, a hydrocarbon, last year. Previous reports had indicated 62 employees were affected and Apple had declined to answer repeated queries about the incident.
  A spokesperson said it had "provided more transparency" regarding the company and Foxconn given recent concerns.
  The report said Apple was "disturbed and deeply saddened" by the Foxconn deaths. Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, and other executives went to Shenzhen to see the facilities and the firm commissioned an independent review of conditions.
  "I think it is positive that after such a long delay Apple has finally acknowledged the [n-hexane] problem," said Ma Jun of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, one of the organisations that criticised the US firm last month.
  But he added: "This report shows that Apple is still not ready to accept public scrutiny ... We have listed the names of some Apple suppliers but there is no mention of them [here]."
  Debby Chan, of Hong Kong's Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour campaign, said there was no way for others to monitor the behaviour of suppliers because Apple would not identify them or even say how many it had.
  "I regard this report as a means of image-building rather than ensuring compliance with labour rights," she added.
  Apple said that immigrant workers in countries such as Malaysia had been reimbursed $3.4m (£2.1m) in "exorbitant" recruitment fees since 2008 thanks to its checks. It has also increased efforts to crack down on the use of potential conflict minerals and expanded social responsibility training.
  It is unusual in publishing its audit report and said 40% of the facilities audited last year said Apple was the first company to check them for social responsibility compliance.
  The report also said that 99% of facilities met its freedom of association requirements.
  But independent unions are not allowed on the Chinese mainland and Geoff Crothall, of Hong Kong's China Labour Bulletin, said: "It is Henry Ford-style freedom of association: You can have any union as long as it is [in] the All-China Federation of Trade Unions."
  Last month, Apple reported record profits of $6bn for the fourth quarter of 2010.
  • This article was amended on 16 February 2011. The original misquoted Geoff Crothall as referring to the Associated Federation of Trade Unions. This has been corrected to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
   
  

[studiomprd]

" Ailing Steve Jobs Appears at Apple Product Event (iPad-2) to Standing Ovation "

[wolfvid]

[tt]iphone users are sitting ducks, I phone makers are agents for Big Brother...

[/tt]http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tracking-prompts-privacy-fears

  iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go Privacy fears raised as researchers reveal file on iPhone that stores location coordinates and timestamps of owner's movements

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 April 2011 14.06 BST 
  
• Article history
  
•   [img alt=iphone tracking height=276 width=460] Apple’s iPhone saves every detail of your movements to a file on the device. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian  Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.
  The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.
  For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.
  "Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.
  Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."
  Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said: "This is a worrying discovery. Location is one of the most sensitive elements in anyone's life – just think where people go in the evening. The existence of that data creates a real threat to privacy. The absence of notice to users or any control option can only stem from an ignorance about privacy at the design stage."
  Warden and Allan point out that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced: "Apple might have new features in mind that require a history of your location, but that's our specualtion. The fact that [the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate is evidence that the data-gathering isn't accidental." But they said it does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself.
    [img alt=iphone-data-map height=276 width=460]   Map shows location data collected from an iPhone that had been used in the southwest of England  Although mobile networks already record phones' locations, it is only available to the police and other recognised organisations following a court order under the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act. Standard phones do not record location data.
  MPs in 2009 criticised the search engine giant Google for its "Latitude" system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts. At the time MPs said that Latitude "could substantially endanger user privacy", but Google pointed out that users had to specifically choose to make their data available.
  The iPhone system, by contrast, appears to record the data whether or not the user agrees. Apple declined to comment on why the file is created or whether it can be disabled.
  Warden and Allan have set up a web page which answers questions about the file, and created a simple downloadable application to let Apple users check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The Guardian has confirmed that 3G-enabled devices including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner's computer.
  If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualisation of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone.
  Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, said: "If the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been." He suggested that Apple might be hoping that it would yield data for future mobile advertising targeted by location, although he added: "I tend to subscribe to cockup rather than conspiracy on things like this – I don't think Apple is really trying to monitor where users are."
    [img alt=iphone data height=152 width=460]   The data inside the file containing the location and time information. This is used to plot the map above  The location file came to light when Warden and Allan were looking for a source of mobile data. "We'd been discussing doing a visualisation of mobile data, and while Alasdair was researching into what was available, he discovered this file. At first we weren't sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualised the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements," Warden said.
  They have blogged about their discovery at O'Reilly's Radar site, noting that "why this data is stored and how Apple intends to use it — or not — are important questions that need to be explored."
  The pair of data scientists have collaborated on a number of data visualisations, including a map of radiation levels in Japan for The Guardian. They are developing a Data Science Toolkit for dealing with location data.
  Davies said that the discovery of the file indicated that Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously.
  Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data: near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program, used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".
  It says that "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."
    Privacy invasions via technologyApril 2011: iPhone location
  British researchers on Wednesday revealed that iPhones (and 3G-enabled iPads) keep track of where you go, including timestamps, on a file that is backed up on your computer and shifted onto any new iPhone or iPad you get. Apple hasn't said why the file is created or whether the tracking can be prevented.
  October 2010: US Transportation Security Agency's X-ray scanners
  The "porno scanners" (as they quickly became known) offered a clothes-free vision of people passing through the backscatter machines (whose level of X-ray exposure was also questioned). People who objected to going through those were obliged to go through remarkably intimate examinations – none of which endeared the TSA to air travellers.
  April 2010: Google captures Wi-Fi data
  In a series of increasingly embarrassed blogposts over the course of April, May and June, Google admitted that while its cars were driving around to capture its (already slightly controversial) Street View pictures of locations around the world, it had also captured Wi-Fi network names – and data from the open ones, potentially including passwords and usernames. The dispute over whether Google should delete the data, and whether it had broken the law in various countries, rumbled on for months.
  December 2009: Eric Schmidt
  In a speech, Google's then-chief executive Eric Schmidt suggested that: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
  His words provoked an outcry from privacy rights campaigners, who pointed out that privacy is a right, and that it protects every citizen from abuses by those in power.
  
  

[wolfvid]

Foxconn employees asked to sign 'no suicide' pledge by Chris Ward (RSS feed) on May 5th 2011 at 11:00AM

English tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail is reporting that employees working for Foxconn, assembler of many Apple products, are being forced to sign pledges not to commit suicide. The report from the tabloid paper points to an investigation conducted by the Centre for Research on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom). Sacom claims it uncovered "appalling" working conditions at the Foxconn factory that include excessive overtime and public humiliation.

While the Daily Mail cites the Sacom study as evidence of abysmal working conditions at Foxconn, the Sacom report investigates factory conditions across China -- not just Foxconn -- and, in fact, congratulates Foxconn as being the only employer to pledge to meet government limits on overtime.

The anti-suicide letters seem to have been first published on the Shangaiist website, where there's some discussion on the exact translation of the supposed leaked Foxconn employee letter. The contentious, final paragraph states:

<blockquote>  "In the event of non-accidental injuries (including suicide, self mutilation, etc.), I agree that the company has acted properly in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, and will 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."

</blockquote>  But what Shangaiist author Elaine Chow translates as "will not sue the company," others translate as "will not make demands outside of law and regulation."

In fact, this anti-suicide pact that new workers are asked to sign seems to point them towards sources of help should they have problems, including a trade union hotline -- not quite the dismal picture painted by the Daily Mail.

[pre]http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/05/foxconn-employees-asked-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/ [/pre]