Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio

Ok folks, let’s do a little role playing: imagine you’re some big manufacturing company in Taiwan. Just for argument’s sake, call yourself Foxconn Technology Group. Now imagine that your company produces one of the world’s most popular gadgets (call it the iPod) for a company in California (call them Apple Computer), and then two Chinese journalists also investigate and then your company later sues them for $3.77 million. Then, a British journalist investigates your factory and confirms that your workers are working in erm, questionable conditions — and even Apple starts looking into the matter. Upon further reflection of the absurdity of your lawsuit your company rescinds the lawsuit and reduces the damages to one yuan (12 cents). So, here’s the question: what is the next logical step in this crazy sequence of events? After studying every successful business guide that we could get our hands on and consulting with everyone from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, we’ve discovered that the only possible, rational and meaningful subsequent business move would be to start selling Joan Mirò-inspired NVIDIA graphics cards. Yes, we knew they were coming as of a few months ago — but no, we don’t think that makes it a good idea now.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

So, we’re not sure how much bargaining power unions have in a Communist country, but much to our surprise, the Chinese provincial government of Shenzhen has actually demanded that Hon Hai Precision Industry allow its “iPod City” workers to unionize. Unlike American unions, which are generally organized by trade, the Chinese versions are company-specific, and must be affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (or ACFTU) — a body that has repeatedly been accused of colluding with management and security personnel in breaking up employee-led protests. You might think that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions — which had criticized Apple’s investigation and subsequent report concerning working conditions at the Foxconn plant — would be pleased with this development, but actually it argues that the ACFTU, as a non-independent body, “cannot be regarded as an authentic voice of Chinese workers.” So in the end, are the Foxconn laborers really any better off now than they were before that Daily Mail article initiated this whole series of events? In reality, probably a little, but not much — yes there may be some cutbacks in their hours and the dormitories may be a little cleaner, but until China as a whole is able to upgrade everyone’s standard of living, the lives of workers in iPod City and countless plants like it will unfortunately remain mostly unchanged.

[Via Reuters]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Despite recent comments by a Foxconn spokesperson that Apple had already investigated and found no problems with the Chinese factory that has come to be known as "iPod City," BusinessWeek is reporting that the probe is still in fact underway, with an Apple representative reiterating that the company takes "allegations of noncompliance very seriously." According to spokesperson Steve Dowling, Apple is in the midst of a "thorough audit" of the Hon Hai-owned plant, which had recently admitted to breaking labor laws concerning overtime, but which continues to deny other allegations contained in the original Daily Mail exposé. Specifically, Dowling says that the auditors are looking into "employee working and living conditions," conducting interviews with workers and their managers (separately, we hope), and generally making sure that the factory lives up to a supplier code of conduct that supposedly "sets the bar higher than accepted industry standards." This is all very good news indeed, but now Apple faces yet another hurdle in the form of a jaded public highly skeptical of corporate-speak, meaning that whether the investigation turns up violations or not, the company may still have a hard time convincing folks to accept the auditors' final verdict.

[Via AppleInsider, image courtesy of Mail on Sunday]

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