iPhone factory workers say they haven’t been paid, cause millions in damages

Well, Apple doesn’t include chargers on their new iPhones to protect the planet and their keynotes are feel-good orgy of virtuosity. Hard to believe they exploit people...

This shit isn't new, and it's not like Apple don't know about it. They will move to a new supplier, do a press release condemning them. Rinse and repeat, see you in a few years when the next thread pops up.

To be honest, Apple will simply blame Wistron suspend them. In the end these folks here will loose their jobs, and Apple will simply switch manufacturing suppliers.

The problem is the big corps have zero accountability when operating in developing nations. On the flip side, developing nations are desperate to attract big firms in order to bring profits in.

For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.

> Smash it up, make noise and don't let Apple ignore this.

Huh? It was Wistron that was witholding and lowering wages, not Apple.

> No doubt they respond with the usual "When we worked with factories promising us cheap labour and massive profit we didn't realise people and the planet would be exploited. No one could have known".

Again, wut? That cheap contract labor helped the Chinese middle class, and also helped China set up the most advanced technical manufatcuring pipeline and supply chain in the world, and now China is the first place the western world goes to make their stuff. No doubt that conditions were sometimes terrible (like creating nets around the building in case workers would try to commit suicide), but those workers (probably) got paid their promised wages and the China realized some benefit.

It's not always all exploitation by Apple all day everyday. And again, those Indian folks are employed Wistron, not Apple.

Well, in all seriousness smashing things does send a bad signal to everyone and motivates companies to look for other options. Paying peanuts for hard work is certainly bad but not having jobs in the first place is even worse.

No. Destroying another's property is not right regardless of the wrong they did to you. Both parties here are in the wrong.

this may be a bit OT but for some reason, that recent book "blockchain chicken farm" or something like that popped into my head, where a chicken can be cryptographically verified to be organic, etc, in every stage of its "production".

I realize this isn't the whole solution - part of this is Apple's heavy handed way of squeezing margins, but for at least the "supply chain labor compliance" part, could blockchain be a useful tool for labor unions and workers' rights to ensure that workers are paid their fair share?

I said sardonically to a friend that with a strong authoritarian state, the protests don't occur or don't make the news, so thank you police state for our cheap gadgets. And yeah, our consumerist mindset traps us too: if faced with 2 phones of similar capabilities, 1 costs 500, 1 costs 200, which would you pick? (Even the more expensive product doesn't mean better working conditions for the factory workers, just for the Silicon Valley bug coders)

Talking about exploitation, imagine condition of the miners of the minerals needed for the phones..

That's why it is the richest company. In this world you are unlikely going to get rich by being honest and decent.

If you take in account that the public company works in their shareholders best interest, i would say it is done with silent approval of shareholders. Ugly, mutated form of slavery.

It's quite a low wage, but not 5 rupees an hour: 8000 / 160 = 50. 50 rupees an hour is probably a decent wage in a small town / city in India, but would be a tough wage to live on in Bangalore.

>Edit: it is 50 rupees per hour, not 5 (I need coffee). Leaving the error as is in the comment above. The larger point still stands though

If better opportunity existed for them they'd be doing that.

Since better doesn't exist, don't take away whatever exists for them for now.

At least, they don't get thirsty while working ...

I never really understand the exploitation argument. If I offer you $1 an hour and you agree, is it exploitation then? Maybe if you demand $6 I just go somewhere else. And maybe if I offer $1 you go somewhere else.

The point is that the job market is also a market with supply and demand. If we can agree on a price, why is it exploitation?

Those salary dont make any sense. I suspect there are something going on with contractors and Winstron.

Does that account for inflation? Because I believe you could buy way more for $100 in the early 19th century...

I find all these slavery comparisons in poor taste. Across history you will find slaves that were treated well, accumulated wealth, were educated and held in high regard - yet they still legally were the property of another person. The fundamental distinction with slavery is not a bad paycheck.

In this case, the distinction wasn't a bad paycheck either. The compensation was fine on paper, it just wasn't actually paid out, which is plain fraud. If the response of these workers is to ransack the place, that just tells you how bad/corrupt the legal system must be.

> > Self-hire _slaves_ [in the early 19th century U.S.]

Note that what you're referring to in that quote is what was called wage slavery. Today we just call it a job where we're not an owner. Back then such activity was considered a form of slavery and was frowned upon. It was semi-acceptable only because it was considered a temporary means to save up enough wealth to become a business/farm owner.

> paycuts without cutting jobs seems to work better in Indian corporate culture as opposed to USA

Most of the folks I know who've had jobs affected by this had a mix. Some people were laid off, some had hours cut, some had pay cut - sometimes at the same company (different workers affected differently). I don't think there's an across the board "one approach fits all" that companies have taken in the US.

Don’t worry, though. It’s just Apple. /s

If you don't want to be a hypocrite, you should also keep this in mind when buying from any company that partners with Wistron. Though it seems difficult to find a full list of partners.

>Within 16 months Wistron was making Dell handhelds and Microsoft's Xbox videogame consoles, according to industry reports. (Wistron doesn't identify its customers.)

https://archive.is/qxS5s

> Along with that shiny new phone comes curse of thousands of poor people.

Okey, do you have an alternative? Google is even worse.

Any recommendations to prevent supporting these companies? I've bought used for years as to not support a company directly and the initial damage had already been done. I'm interested to hear more ideas. How many phone companies are actually good with their manufacturing?

> when a TRILLION dollar private company screws people over

It's an Apple supplier, not Apple. Besides, what does it matter that it's a trillion dollar company? It implies that if say 1 million small companies worth 1 million, would fare better in forcing a large supplier like Windsor or a large number of smaller suppliers, to respect India's local labour laws vis-a-vis their employees. That's a ridiculous assumption I think. If anything I trust that Apple's market power will force Wistron to pay out its workers according to the terms they agreed, much quicker than if Apple was, say, a small-time no-name company.

It's entirely right to be outraged about this, don't get me wrong. But I don't see the cause being related to Apple being a trillion dollar company. Nor do I see Apple screwing people over.

Tons of small and large companies in India screw with local labour laws all the time. If anything I'd expect that Apple suppliers would do so less on a per-worker basis. That's an assumption I'd like to see tested. The current system (courts or trial-by-media) will likely work for Apple holding its suppliers accountable. For a small company? Not so much.

We just outsourced slavery and it makes us a bunch of hypocrites yes each time we use "human rights" to chastise countries in the south. Our politicians are fully aware of this exploitation dynamics and legal arbitrages they engineered.

The stupidest thing is that despite getting our stuff from slaves by the very definition of that word, our stuff ain't cheap at all, especially Apple which are luxury goods, it's just Apple making crazy margins. Apple could produce all their stuff in the West they would still be filthy rich. But it's not as profitable. But hey, 'carbon neutral','diverse and inclusive' or something, it makes yuppies in California feel good about themselves...

My dad was in US manufacturing his entire career. He retired at a pretty high position and was largely responsible for keeping that manufacturing from going overseas. He said by far his biggest difficulty was that he had to pay a living wage, conform to rigorous environmental standards, and worry about pesky things like people losing hands or digits, where none of his competitors had any of those concerns. We’ve passed much needed internal regulation without requiring the same standards from importers. This is one of the reasons the blue collar middle class has vanished here, and it’s a real shame.

Yet many folks would call you racist or xenophobic for speaking out against globalization.

>Or perhaps some of us already knew

Come on now, we've all known this for decades, anyone who didn't is incredibly naive and sheltered in my opinion.

The thing here though is the wage Apple thought they were paying was a good-ish wage, its lack of labor protection that allows the contractor to corruptly reduce it.

Apple itself pay their contractors shit. Apple investigating? give me a break! i used to work at a Dell repair depot. Dell contracted out to make repair for their stuffs. Dell pay the contractor shit and that in turn make their contractor pay their employees shit. i work in the IT dept of repair depot so my salary isn't like the front line workers. believe me when i said company like Apple, Dell, HP...etc. use contractor like Wistron is because they can pay as little as possible and pocket in as much as they can.

Apple doesn't care about the working people.

> NEW DELHI/BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple Inc has placed supplier Wistron Corp on probation, saying on Saturday it would not award the Taiwanese contract manufacturer new business until it addressed the way workers were treated at its southern India plant.

https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-india-idUSKBN28T0DW

"Apple says preliminary findings show a violation of supplier code of conduct. Wistron had payment delays for some workers" [1]

"Wistron says the company is 'removing' vice president who oversees India business. Co also sets up a 24-hr grievance hotline." [2]

Makes we wonder how many other such contractors exist and whether Apple blissfully ignores enforcement, oversight of its PR-friendly supplier CoC.

[1] https://twitter.com/CNBCTV18Live/status/1340234632504205314

[2] https://twitter.com/CNBCTV18Live/status/1340217073763434496

Yes! Also watch the follow-up after: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjM6Wp11a00

> For anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth is

Hahaha, no, this is just an opportunity to bash Apple, no need to actually do something about it.

Anyway.

This looks very interesting, thanks for linking.

Can you tell me on the spot (if you have to look it up, I'll do it myself…), if there is an easy way to run Org-mode and sync my Org-mode files from a Mac?

It's certainly better than nothing, but the number of caveats in their language shows just how hard it is to accomplish. "All the electronics will be made in our USA facility" they say, but I wonder how many components are made in the US? It sounds like it's mostly PCB soldering and assembly that are done in the US.

"Fully made in the USA" is an almost fractal claim that can't be literally true unless all raw materials were mined in the US, but even without demanding that level of depth I think calling this "fully made" in the US is a stretch.

It’s kind of hard to know what is going on from an outsiders perspective. Maybe Apple could have or should have known about this before, maybe they did already know, maybe they did everything they realistically could and were deceived.

One thing is certain, this problem isn’t specific to Apple. The whole electronics manufacturing industry is rotten and the only ones capable of fixing it are the governments of these counties. Wistron should be crushed for this wage theft and serve as a warning for other companies.

The fault lies with decisions taken by Wistron [local] management, but the incentives to ensure similar decisions aren't taken in future depend on decisions taken by Apple.

Apple probably audits their suppliers and contractors better than almost all of their peers but they are also culpable here for creating the ingredients for workers to be treated like shit by their pseudo-contractors. This isn't some widget factory that Apple signed on to make iPhones for the near future, it's a factory that only exists in the first place to make Apple iPhones and Apple fronted all the money to build it, etc. But Apple has set it up in a way that artificially distances themselves from what should be Apple employees (or at worst employees of a joint venture where Apple execs could run the HR and avoid these shady labor violations). I'm sure there are many benefits in doing it this way and they are lauded for those every quarter so they are also going to take the lumps as well.

> Almost everybody here focuses on Apple instead on the Wistron.

Yeah... because how fucking stupid would someone have to be to work at one of the world's largest, most valuable companies and expect anyone in their right mind to believe them when they throw up their hands and say, "Oh my God guys, we had nOoOoOoOo ideeeea this was happening!"

Yeah. Fucking. Right.

The naiveté of the average HR poster staggers me.

That phone looks exceptionally ugly. I'd rather get a Pine Phone.

The phone itself is available on Fairphone directly: https://www.fairphone.com/en/

It's a really interesting to read some of their blog posts and see their journey. It does prove that trying to do things in a better way in electronics is possible and that companies that have much more money than them have absolutly no excuse not to follow the same path.

I was under the impression Fairphones don't work in America?

Are comparisons to slavery missing the point? I understand that companies are always going to go for the lowest bidder, but if the lowest bidder was mistreating it's workers and they know about it then it's socially irresponsible.

Companies like Apple have plausible deniability when it comes to things like this. That's one of the major reasons they outsource rather than building their own factory. Apple is built on vertical integration.

> Apple is not fundamentally responsible for the labour relations of other companies

It's a funny world where everyday individual customers barely making a living are supposed to unite, educate themselves on the supply chains of everything they see on the market, and vote with their wallets to filter out unethically-produced products, but a single $2 trillion tech corporation ("person"?) who's a customer of another company with all the leverage in the world isn't responsible for caring if it's reaching the $2T market cap ethically.

Apple lectures me on all kinds of things, from climate change to political correctness. Just give me a fucking device and stay out of my politics. They have earned the outrage.

For years, companies like Nike and Samsung have justifiably gone under fire for similar issues with their suppliers. I have never witnessed so many who found it more important to cleanse the name of these companies. It really says a lot about consumer cultism.

> Apple is not fundamentally responsible for the labour relations of other companies

As soon as Apple steps into politics and takes any kind of political/environmental/socio-political stance - yes, yes it is responsible. Otherwise it is hypocrisy at best.

If Apple has any reason to believe they are benefiting from underpaid labour then they are responsible.

You don't just get to say "well technically the slaves work for that other company, sure we get the slaves to build our devices that we profit off of, but they're actually hired by someone else".

If they know about it and benefit from it it's their responsibility. If they have any reason to believe it might be true and don't do everything in their power to stop it, it's their responsibility.

Billionaire Apple shareholders simply chose increasing their wealth at the expense of poor people they took advantage of in developing countries. And this has to stop, and we have to stop saying it's acceptable.

Capitalism failed. It failed harder than any other experiment humans ever tried, and it and the wealth equality it creates has to be destroyed.

The outrage is because we know Apple, and many other corporations, have facilities to be able to become aware of this and do things to stop it.

Apple can ask for independent verification of the conditions of the workers in its supply chain. This isn't some crazy new notion, companies do this all the time for quality control purposes. They can therefore do it for human rights purposes too.

They can also stop it, by having a contract that requires specific working conditions for all the suppliers, and if they are violated, the contract is voided and immediately goes to a competitor.

Apple has no responsibility to anybody but its shareholders. They can use literal slaves for work, they don't care. But we, the consumers and shareholders, can care. And we can express our displeasure by getting outraged, and demanding they not do business with a supply chain that abuses its workers.

This even happened back in the 17th century, when people boycotted companies who profited from slavery. People literally purchased items whose design advertised that "no slaves were used in the making of this product". A lot of people thought companies should not be held responsible for using the product of slave labor, but over time, the force of popular opinion was able to get them to change their business models and not use slavery.

Today we do the same things, with products advertising not using rBST or antibiotics or engineered crops, or having fair trade or rainforest alliance certifications. We demand products that are produced ethically, and over time that can force companies to do better.

This isn't always effective. There's still diamonds being sold that were mined basically using slavery, and most coffee farmers can barely scrape by and can starve from one bad season. We do need to get outraged, or they really will never change.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

So $7/month is about ten meals a month then. Sounds like it's not a living wage to me.

try paying rent, buying medicine for your kids, books, etc. good luck

The factory is located near Bangalore. I would challenge you to survive on even double that salary in Bangalore.

Also it is not just low pay. Even that has not been paid on time

Bullshit. Every single company in the US buys stuff from companies from foreign countries who promise to deliver things under contract. This is not an Apple owned company, or an Apple problem, or a U.S. problem, but a problem at a company in India (I believe owned by someone in Taiwan). Do you know who made the shirt you are wearing, the product you just bought from Amazon, who picked the grapes you have in your kitchen and who is reading your prescriptions, or how your company's security software supplier builds their software? No? Then you are no different than Apple, who at least tries to keep up with 1000's of suppliers and their treatment of employees. And sometimes those companies are determined to screw their employees over and cover it up. It happens in farmer's fields, giant suppliers or government agencies. Having fake outrage over someone else's occasional failure but ignoring your own. Are you eating food picked by some exploited farmhand? Wearing a cheap shirt made by a prisoner in some labor camp? Ordering some cheap crap on Amazon stolen from a real business? But sure blame Apple for missing the boat.

Has Apple withdrawn business from this company?

It's like that fantasy about Uber and self driving cars. Exploiting humans will always be cheaper than maintaining robots in places where human life has very little value.

Wistron isn't "some supplier that almost exclusively supplies to Apple". They also manufacture electronics for Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, Motorola. Originally, they were Acer's production arm. Lots of things about how workers in the supply chain are treated is very wrong, but if you accuse others of trolling, you'd better get your facts straight.

Apple has a strict set of supplier responsibility standards [1], but is even more strict in controlling PR and the Apple brand. So even if the conditions that led to this destruction were not within existing guidelines, I would imagine reporting or accounting audit requirements will become more strict as a result of this.

[1] https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

Making this public and being outraged is important to make capitalism work.

because there's a limited supply of jobs

As has been widely reported, this unsourced suggestion that Apple wanted to water down the bill was denied emphatically by everyone involved.

its no secret those electronic contractors make very little.

i read an article a couple years ago that say Foxconn make $3 per iphone. how much do you think that $3 get pass to the workers? while Apple pocketed in almost the entire profit.

its not just Apple. Dell is the same as well. why do you think they keep contracted to Wistron and Foxconn?

The same thing happens in 1st world countries, as well. If they can get away with it, they'll do it.

Apple is certainly not paying by the hour. I would expect this to be a volume-based contract.

That's the question I would have too. I assume apple pays for devices, not necessarily time. Which means that we see the results, what motivated it, but we don't know what apple paid for.

People can be mad at apple for not having enough scrutiny into their supply chain. From similar articles, it seems foxconn doesn't pay very well, but it seems to match the promised levels here. Now I don't know what cost of living is between those parts of China and India, so that's a big caveat.

But it sort of torpedoes the outrage to me if the failure mode isn't actually known. You can lament the salaries, but the fact is we don't know what apple was paying for or what wistron's operations were. We just know there were riots.

> Why is there no public outrage towards Apple?

This may be because of the 250 million strong general strike and the farmer strike that has hit India in the last weeks (https://www.deccanherald.com/national/at-least-25-crore-work...). There has been almost zero reporting in Western media about that one, the only thing that drew a tiny bit of attention were the Apple riots.

Under normal circumstances I guess there would be many reports about what's going on, but media conglomerates don't want to give the population the idea that general strikes and riots work.

We need decoupling of media ownership and society's rich/elites, fast.

It’s pointless. The only thing that can fix this problem is governments. They have the power to crack down on these manufacturing companies and actually put a stop to it.

Tweeting about it won’t do a thing. Buying an alternative brand phone won’t do a thing either because they all come from the same places. This wasn’t an Apple factory, it was just a generic electronics factory that probably produces a large chunk of the stuff you have regardless of brand.

Why a terrorist?

The answer depends on the country in which you plan to hold that sign ;)