Research Paper

Patrick Flanagan

February 10, 2012

Professor Crowley

Précis for In china, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

The Situation: This article was written on January 25, 2012 by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza who are both writers for The New York Times. Duhigg was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and studied history at Yale and received a Masters degree from Harvard. David Barboza graduated Boston University with a Bachelors degree in history. He then attended Yale’s graduate school and now lives in Shanghai with his wife Lynn. This piece of writing is intended for people that often read The New York Times, but specifically it is targeting consumers who are looking to, or already own an Apple product. The message that these two authors are trying to get across, is that you should think twice and take into consideration what goes on inside the factories where your favorite products are made. The age group of the targeted audience could range anywhere from eighteen years old to about forty-five or so because anyone younger than that range would not understand the significance of this situation and anyone older than that age group will most likely not own any Apple products like the iPad, iPhone, etc. At the beginning of the article, the authors talked about a specific event that occurred last year in which there was an explosion in a factory that was producing Apple products. There were details about a specific victim named Lai Xiaodong who was burnt so badly that you could barely recognize him. This is one of the many situations and events that prompted this controversial article to be written. Workers that produce iPhones, iPads and other devices from Apple are reported to be laboring in harsh conditions, and these statements are coming from the employees themselves. These conditions are deadly as it shows at the beginning of the article and is a very serious issue. In addition to that, these employees are living in harsh environments in which there are up to twenty people to a three room, rodent infested apartment. Throughout the rest of the article it gives key examples of the extreme working environments and the serious issue that needs to be addressed.
The Issue: In this text the author raises the question, do Apple employees really know what is going on inside of these factories? “Apple is filled with really good people who had no idea this was going on.”(6) He mentions that there was a british newspaper who went and visited a Foxconn factory secretly in China and did a report. They found that the workers for being pushed into long hours, being forced to do push-ups as a form of punishment, and were living in these crowded dorms. A former employee of Apple also stated, “we wanted it changed, immediately.”(6) Audits were forced upon that factory after undergoing an inspection, and they ordered improvements. After the incident, Apple started inspecting many different facilities which included their direct suppliers. While conducting the inspections, apply executives have found several consistent violations of Apple’s code of conduct. In the past three years, Apple conducted 312 audits and found that more than half had evidence that proved they had been forcing workers to work more than six days a week. Another question that was brought to the audience’s attention was that, if Apple knows about these laboring violations, are they doing anything to prevent them from happening in the future. From the information provided in the text, it sounds like Apple has made great forward progress in the past few years to make sure that they are inspecting these factories for reports of labor abuse and safety issues. But once they inspectors leave, who says that Foxconn can’t just go back and make their workers start coming in more than six days a week. In the past 3 years there have been at least 18 Foxconn workers that have attempted suicide or fell from buildings in which they

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