johninnit

Here’s an important short video from SACOM, the campaigning academic group behind last year’s brave undercover exposé of working conditions inside Apple iPhone and iPad outsourced supplier Foxconn. The video highlights the firm’s Chengdu mega-factory, which works on the iPad for Apple, and uncovers evidence of broken promises to workers, poor safety, and a political culture where the firm seems to get away with whatever it pleases.

I am something of a phone geek. Oh okay then, I am rather obsessed by them, smartphones in particular. I’ve had 5 different smartphone handsets since ditching my standalone PDA for 2003′s splendid SonyEricsson p800, and whichever I’ve had, it’s always been my most treasured possession.

Now though, my choice of handset is giving me a bit more of a headache. (more…)

Taiwanese smart phone manufacturer HTC has had an extremely successful year, on the back of a strong product line. Increased sales at the company have nearly tripled the share price and more than quadrupled the wealth of husband and wife top team Cher Wang and Wenchi Chen in the last year alone. Wang and Chen are now worth a very tidy $8.8bn, and are sitting right at the top of this week’s Forbes Taiwan Rich List.

Which makes it all the harder to work out why exactly they don’t seem to be taking any action over worker abuses at their outsourced touchscreen supplier Young Fast Optoelectronics, where there are allegations of union busting, forced overtime for low pay, child labour and poor safety.

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Tomorrow is Make IT Fair’s day of action, focusing on working conditions in Apple Computers’ supply chain.

Apple are the target here as they subcontract most of the work in making their hugely popular iPhones, and they don’t seem to be too fussy about how the work gets done. (more…)

Oh dear. I’d been under the impression that Steve Jobs had been “all over” the Foxconn worker abuses issue, and things were getting better. Two new stories challenge all that though.

Firstly there are reports of mass arrests at Foxconn India, where workers have been striking for 18 days over pay, disputed sackings and the recognition of their union. 320 workers have been arrested along with union officials. And in China a new academic study, where teachers and students appear to have infiltrated the company for their research, threatens to lift the lid on working conditions. Apparently in some plants, interns (on vastly inferior working conditions) make up 50% of the workforce, the promised wage increases have been much smaller than claimed in public, 38.1% of the workforce claim management have invaded their privacy, and a shocking 16.4% have experienced physical violence at work.

So the shine appears to be coming off iPhones just as quickly as before.

Here’s a video from the unrecognised union at Taiwanese touchscreen supplier Young Fast Optoelectonics. Their members make the high tech display panels for mobile phones for several companies, including up and coming iPhone rivals HTC. And their members allegedly face harassment and sacking for union membership, poor safety and enforced overtime. There are even allegations of child labor at YFO.

I have a phone using one of these screens, and as it’s due for upgrade and I’m an unreformable smartphone geek, I’ve been looking into the gobsmackingly clever new Desire HD as a replacement for it. I’m concerned though that I really don’t want (another) phone which has been made under such terrible conditions for the people who produced it.

I’ve heard good things of HTC in the past on CSR – even saw one of their managers present a communications industry award to a union strike comms project ferchrissakes. But they don’t seem to be engaging at all over the very serious allegation that the key component of their flagship products is sourced from a sweatshop. (more…)

Bad day to be an HTC fanboi like me. LabourStart have a campaign running in support of YFOTU, the union of workers in Taiwanese mobile phone touchscreen manufacturer YFO. There have been some grim reports of working conditions at the company, with child labour, forced overtime and poor safety.

After seeing reports of bad conditions at iPhone component factories, I was feeling all smug with my non-union-busting HTC TouchHD (the third HTC handset I’ve had now, and a very nice one too), but it looks like mine may be just as bad. YFO have dismissed a number of union reps and members recently, which the union belives is in contravention of employment law. (more…)