Source: http://media.lclark.edu/content/hart-landsberg/2012/07/19/apple-and-the-labor-process/

Give Apple workers a voice in their future By joining the Fair Labor Association, Apple has embarked on its latest program of auditing its suppliers, ostensibly to investigate and remedy the appalling abuses in its supply chain that have been well documented and widely reported. While Apple claims that it is finally taking the issue seriously, its top-down auditing approach can never be a long-term solution to the systematic violations of labour rights that are occurring every day in the manufacture of electronic products. Indeed, Apple promised in 2006 that auditing would protect the rights of workers in its global supply chain, with results that are all too apparent.

April 12, 2010 http://www.chinatechnews.com/2010/04/12/11875-chinese-employees-angry-about-lack-of-benefits-from-philips More than ten people, all of whom were reported to be former employees of Philips, gathered outside Philips' Beijing office last week to demand that the company pay full social insurance contributions.

An investigation of dispatch Labour system in China

By DAVID BARBOZA Published: September 1, 2011 SHANGHAI — A Chinese environmental group has singled out Apple for criticism, accusing the company’s Chinese suppliers of discharging polluted waste and toxic metals into surrounding communities and threatening public health. The group, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, released a 46-page report Wednesday documenting what it said was pollution from the dozens of “suspected” Apple suppliers throughout China.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/aug/27/disney-factory-sweatshop-suicide-claims Human rights campaigners say Chinese factories using children as young as 14 and that workers forced to do overtime A Sturdy Products’ employee works to fulfil orders, for ranges that include Disney ­merchandise. But a monitoring group claims that workers’ rights are often abused Disney's best-selling Cars toys are being made in a factory in China that uses child labour and forces staff to do three times the amount of overtime allowed by law, according to an investigation. One worker reportedly killed herself after being repeatedly shouted at by bosses. Others cited worries over poisonous chemicals. Disney has now launched its own investigation. It is claimed some of the 6,000 employees have to work an extra 120 hours every month to meet demand from western shops for the latest toys.

by Steven Musil Foxconn, the hardware manufacturer made famous by a rash of well-publicized suicides, plans to replace some of its workers with robots. The Taiwanese company, which manufacturers laptops, mobile devices, and other hardware for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony, plans to replace factory workers with more than 1 million robots, according to a state news agency Xinhua report. Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, told employees at a dance Friday that the move is designed to improve efficiency and combat rising labor costs.

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