The Guardian (UK) reported that Chinese workers making iPads and iPhones are being treated "inhumanely, like machines".
According to a guardian.co.uk article, interviewed workers revealed:
■ Excessive overtime is routine, despite a legal limit of 36 hours a month. One payslip, seen by the Observer, indicated that the worker had performed 98 hours of overtime in a month.
■ Workers attempting to meet the huge demand for the first iPad were sometimes pressured to take only one day off in 13.
■ In some factories badly performing workers are required to be publicly humiliated in front of colleagues.
■ Crowded workers' dormitories can sleep up to 24 and are subject to strict rules. One worker told the NGO investigators that he was forced to sign a "confession letter" after illicitly using a hairdryer. In the letter he wrote: "It is my fault. I will never blow my hair inside my room. I have done something wrong. I will never do it again."
■ In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer, workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to "treasure their lives".
Workers make $6.49 Yuan per hour, which is exactly $1.00 per hour, for a supposed 48 hour week.
Meanwhile, Apple's latest 10Q shows earning of $12 billion for the last two quarters. Steve Jobs' 5.5 million shares of Apple are now worth $1.84 billion.
Marx & Engels called it the expropriation of the surplus value of the proletariat. I call it shameful.