Apple lovers overlook workers
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Devastating report
One day earlier, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) and the Center for Research on Multinational Companies(SOMO), a Dutch organization co-released a report based on Cheng and others' interviews of 120 workers at Foxconn factories in
Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing, concluding that global demand for iPhones and iPads are generating substandard working conditions for electronics workers in China.
"We made the play and other action art to inform customers that Apple product makers are still being worked to tears, exposed to harmful diseases, receiving pay rates below those necessary to survive and a military management style that routinely humiliates workers," Cheng, the project officer, told the Global Times.
The Hong Kong performance was only part of a global plan: International Action Day. Non-governmental organizations on the same day in
China's Taiwan Province, Mexico and Europe had organized similar demonstrations against Apple and the whole IT sector, claiming consumers don't accept unfair working conditions and environmental destruction.
"Apple does have control over the actions of its suppliers. It should improve purchasing practices by introducing fair unit prices,"
reads an announcement on the website of Make IT Fair, a European labor rights project focusing on the electronics industry and responsible for the global protest.
Global headlines
"I'd like to see ethical and sustainable iPhones and other products in your store. Apple should pay its suppliers a fair price to make sure all workers along the supply chain get a fair bite of the apple," read a sticker on the Make IT Fair website for people to print.
The report have drawn media attention in European countries. Details about the SACOM report, Chinese iPad factories treat work force inhumanely, made the front page of the London-based Sunday paper The Observer.
By contrast, not one report has appeared on the Chinese mainland about Saturday's global protest against Apple's alleged exploitative working conditions, observers say.
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