iPhones and the Poison Apple 11AUG12

I was never a steve jobs fan. I am sorry he suffered and died from a terrible disease, and I know he died too soon. But I think the business empire he created and ran is not good, and is a reflection of the callousness, greed, materialism and lust for power that are major problems in our country and around the world today. apple and the i products are not good for the world, but they could be with a change starting right at the top. apple needs to be a responsible employer and be fully committed to ending child labor and slave labor conditions at their suppliers factories. apple needs to accept responsibility for guaranteeing their suppliers pay a fair and living wage and that workers are not abused and that they have a safe working environment. So I am asking that you join the campaign by SumOfUs and Demand Progress calling on apple to step up and address the issues of worker abuse, slave labor, child labor, inadequate wages and worker's human rights in all the Third Would countries they outsource their production to. Click the link to participate and please pass this on...(And by the by, I don't own anything made by apple because of their current corporate irresponsibility)

Please read on: We're partnering with our friends at SumOfUs.org in an effort to hold Apple -- the world's most profitable corporation -- accountable for extraordinary abuses.  If you've already signed this petition, please forward this email to your friends or click here to share on Facebook

Every day, tens of millions of people will swipe the screens of their iPhones to unlock them.

On the other side of the world, a young girl is also swiping those screens.

Six days a week, twelve-plus hours a day, she repetitively swipes tens of thousands of them. She spends those hours inhaling chemicals that are never disclosed to her. For her labor, she makes less than $17 a day[13], is forced to work unpaid overtime, and, when her supervisors want to punish her, she is humiliated and forced to clean toilets.

Sound like a horror story? According to recent reports, scenarios like this are a waking nightmare for many workers in Apple’s Chinese supply chain.[1]

Tell Apple: You’re the most profitable company in the world.[2] It’s time to treat your workers ethically.

Right now we’re partnering with corporate accountability group SumOfUs.org because we have a huge opportunity as citizen-consumers: 

Apple is under enormous, sustained pressure to reform its supply chain in the run-up to its new iPhone. 

It even hired the Fair Labor Association (FLA), to inspect its factories, and publicly vowed to reform.[3] But an independent investigation by Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior found that, for many workers things are actually getting worse.[1]

That’s right, after vowing to fix its problems, Apple is turning a blind eye as many workers now report lower wages and forced overtime, along with continued, humiliating punishments by management.

In extreme cases, people have literally been dying while making Apple products. 

Reporters have documented cases of deadly, preventable, explosions at iPad factories, and repeated instances of employees dying of exhaustion after long shifts.[4,5,6]

Tell Apple that it’s time to start treating workers like human beings, with safe, legal hours and a living wage.

Can Apple truly reform? Absolutely. Apple is the richest company in the world, posting a record-breaking gross profit margin for the last quarter of 45.7%[7]. 

It’s sitting on $110 billion in cash.[8] And while Apple makes hundreds of dollars of profit on each iPhone or iPad it sells, only $8 and $10 (respectively) goes to the workers that make it.[9,10,11] Simply put, Apple could double or even triple the amount it pays to laborers without a serious impact on its bottom line. 

But instead Apple has been paying out its shareholders, and set aside a record-shattering $378 million for its CEO Tim Cook last year. 

That’s over $1,000,000 a day, or nearly 60,000 times the salary of the people who make the products that make Tim Cook rich. [12,13]

Why are we targeting Apple specifically? This is a bigger problem than Apple, but no company is in a better position to improve things than Apple: Its record profits and eye-popping cash-on-hand have come off the backs of workers pushed to the brink -- and sometimes beyond -- by its tight deadlines and impossible demands.

In addition, Apple, as the largest customer of Foxconn, is in a unique position to improve the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of human beings. And if Apple actually did mandate changes at Foxconn, it would ripple across the sector to raise wages and improve working conditions for everyone making our electronics in China.

According to an anonymous Apple executive quoted in a major exposé in the New York Times, all Apple has to do is demand change, and it’ll happen:

“Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”[4] As a company that prides itself on being an industry leader in the tech world, Apple needs to take the lead in ethical treatment of its workers.

Tell Apple to improve conditions in the factories that make its products in time for the next iPhone to be made ethically.

Thanks.

-Demand Progress

[1]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/631?t=6&akid=1450.

1801662.2I42s1ers

[2]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/633?t=9&akid=1450.
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[3]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/634?t=11&akid=1450.
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[4]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/635?t=13&akid=1450.
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[5]http://act.demandprogress.

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[6]http://act.demandprogress.

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[7]http://act.demandprogress.

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[8]http://act.demandprogress.

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[9]http://act.demandprogress.

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[10]http://act.demandprogress.

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[11]http://www.isuppli.com/

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[12]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/632?t=27&akid=1450.
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[13]http://act.demandprogress.

org/go/642?t=29&akid=1450.
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Atrocities in Syria, Human Rights in China, and a Holiday in Detention from HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST 4MAI12

HRF's e mail newsletter with commentary on Chen Guangcheng and condemnation of the American govt's hypocrisy on Egypt, Bahrain and Syria (especially of continuing dealing with rosoboronexport), an update on the Apple / Foxconn in the prc and immigration. Click the links for the full articles and more information.

HRF'S E-NEWSLETTER

May 4th, 2012

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Breaking News» Letter from the President and CEO» Leading Bahrain Activist Visits the United States» A Groundbreaking Agreement with Apple's China Supplier» "Holiday on ICE?" House Committee's Sarcasm on the Wrong Track» U.S. to Fund Egyptian Military Despite Ongoing Abuses» HRF In The News» BREAKING NEWS: Chen Guangcheng's daring defiance of a brutal regime is giving courage to those in China and beyond who struggle for human rights. We commend the American diplomats who helped Mr. Chen get to the American embassy, sheltered him there, and negotiated on his behalf with Chinese authorities. It is a credit to the United States that Mr. Chen looked to American diplomats for help and protection. We now owe him our best efforts to ensure his safety. Letter from the President and CEO When mass atrocities are committed, the world community tends to focus attention on the perpetrators.  But genocide and other crimes against humanity are complex, organized crimes.  They require infrastructure, planning, and resources.  A few years ago, we developed an innovative strategy to focus on "enablers"—the countries, companies, and individuals that provide money and weapons that make mass atrocities possible. Our idea is to disrupt the supply chain for slaughter. The crisis in Syria has highlighted the importance of this approach. The Assad regime is getting weapons from Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms dealer. Unfortunately, instead of cracking down on Rosoboronexport, the United States government is doing business with it. Thanks to our efforts, a bipartisan group of group of 17 senators led by John Cornyn (R-TX), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pressing the Department of Defense to cancel its contract with Rosoboronexport. We think the U.S. government should go even further. We're urging the Obama administration to level sanctions on Rosoboronexport and the other companies providing material support to Syria. The crisis in Syria is complex, and targeting enablers alone will not stop the violence. But going after companies like Rosoboronexport will increase pressure on the Assad regime and signal to the world that the United States is serious about protecting Syrian civilians. Sincerely, Elisa Massimino President and CEO Human Rights First Leading Bahrain Activist Visits the United States Dr. Nada Dhaif is an accidental activist. When democracy protests broke out in her home country of Bahrain last year, she was more of an interested observer than a revolutionary. But as part of its brutal crackdown on the democratic uprising, the Bahraini monarchy is persecuting medics—including Dr. Dhaif—who treated injured protestors. It arrested, tortured, and convicted in sham military trials a group of 20 doctors and nurses. In April, we brought Dr. Dhaif, the only one of the medics allowed to travel, to the United States to tell her story directly to policymakers in the U.S. government. Brian Dooley, who leads our work with human rights activists abroad, has reported on the human rights situation in Bahrain and, in particular, the regime's persecution of the medics. When he met Dr. Dhaif, he knew how important it would be to ensure that American officials hear directly from this articulate champion of democracy. During her visit to Washington, Dr. Dhaif urged members of Congress and the Obama administration to speak out against the monarchy's abuses and to quash a proposed $53 million U.S arms sale to Bahrain. She also appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show, where she criticized the double standard in the U.S. response to the Arab Spring. "They're going really soft with the [Bahraini] government, unlike the way they're responding to Syria and Libya," she said. "Bahrain is the forgotten part in the Arab Spring."  Nada Dhaif is now back in Bahrain, where she is appealing her 15 year prison sentence. A Groundbreaking Agreement with Apple's China Supplier The Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization Human Rights First helped to create, recently issued an important report on conditions at Foxconn, a group of Chinese factories that make products for Apple and other companies. The report and the related agreement with Foxconn could change the lives of its 1.2 million employees; implementation is the key. "Talk is cheap," said Meg Roggensack, as quoted in Time Magazine. "The steps needed to protect workers in Apple's supply chain may not be." Under the agreement, Foxconn employees will work no more than 49 hours a week, and their take pay will remain the same; that is, they'll work many fewer hours for the same amount. They'll also work in improved conditions—conditions that will be monitored by FLA's team of independent inspectors. Apple has announced that it fully supports the FLA's recommendations. But other major companies, including Hewlett, Dell, Amazon, and Microsoft—also contract with Foxconn.  They should follow Apple's lead. "Holiday on ICE?" House Committee's Sarcasm on the Wrong Track At the end of March, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing dubbed "Holiday on ICE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's New Immigration Detention Standards" designed to put the brakes on plans by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to implement much-needed reforms to the immigration detention system. Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) aimed to depict as cushy the conditions in immigration detention centers. In other words, he sought to obscure the truth. As we explained in our testimony, asylum seekers and other non-criminal immigrants—the vast majority held in jails and jail-like facilities—often face harsh, even brutal, treatment in detention. Our 2011 report, Jails and Jumpsuits, documented the costs—in dollars and in human dignity—of this unjust system, and urged the Department of Homeland Security to switch from a penal model to one appropriate for civil detainees. In an op-ed for the D.C. newspaper The Hill, Human Rights First's Annie Sovcik took Chairman Smith to task for playing politics with this important issue. "The House Judiciary Committee should spend less time trying to sensationalize and belittle what is a difficult problem, and get down to the real business of figuring out how to implement the changes that can make immigration detention facilities safer and more humane," she wrote. U.S. to Fund Egyptian Military Despite Ongoing Abuses The Obama administration's decision to waive human rights conditions and release some $1.5 billion to Egypt is damaging both to the democratic transition there and to the United States. "This decision will undermine the United States' credibility as an advocate for human rights and democracy in the Middle East and around the world for years to come," says Neil Hicks of Human Rights First. In December, Congress made funding contingent on progress in the democratic transition, as certified by the State Department.  But the Obama administration, citing national security, decided to bypass the restrictions. Egypt's transitional military government has largely resisted democratic reform and continues to crack down on activists. The unconditional financial aid from the United States recalls the many years of American support for the brutal Mubarak regime. Instead, the Obama administration should have released a portion of the funds, in recognition of limited but genuine progress in Egypt, and pegged further funding to specific benchmarks: passage of a new constitution that protects the rights of all Egyptians, handover of power to elected civilian rulers, and reform of other repressive laws.  We are continuing to work with our colleagues in Egypt to support their efforts to advance human rights and democracy, despite this unhelpful signal from the U.S. government.  HRF in the News If US loses the faith of people like me, it loses the Mideast Nada Dhaif, Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2012 Free the torture report Editorial, LA Times, April 27, 2012 Labor Audit on Foxconn Is Thorough, Experts Say Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, March 31, 2012 Obama unveils Syria, Iran technology sanctions AFP, April 24, 2012 Click here to unsubscribe Human Rights First, 333 Seventh Avenue, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10001-5004 www.humanrightsfirst.org Join us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter