FLA president: iPad plants are no sweatshops, boredom and monotony contributing to suicides

With the Fair Labor Association (FLA) audit of Apple suppliers at Foxconn City underway for several days now, first details are trickling in. The non-profit agency's head Auret van Heerden told Reuters than working conditions at Foxconn's iPad plant are "far better" than those at other sweatshops elsewhere in the country. It's a personal impression rather than the official stance because thirty FLA staff have three weeks to interview about 35,000 workers at two Foxconn plants in China.

Workers will answer questions anonymously, entering their responses onto iPads. Van Heerden was surprised, he confessed, with how "tranquil" the floor at Foxconn plant is compared with a garment factory.

I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory. So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. . It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps.

He then went on to speculate that workers are jumping out of windows to take their life because of boredom and alienation stemming from repetitive assembly tasks:

You have lot of young people, coming from rural areas, away from families for the first time. They're taken from a rural into an industrial lifestyle, often quite an intense one, and that's quite a shock to these young workers. And we find that they often need some kind of emotional support, and they can't get it. Factories initially didn't realize those workers needed emotional support.

A month ago Apple became the first technology company admitted to the FLA, following longstanding Foxconn issues which became a mainstream topic of big media. Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed worker safety during yesterday's speech at the Goldman Sachs conference. Repeating Apple cares about every worker, Cook said he "spent a lot of time in factories personally" in order to understand working conditions "at a very granular level". Cook, a supply chain wizard, talked aggressively that "every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment, free of discrimination, where they can earn competitive wages, and voice their concerns freely".

Related articles

• Chinese customs: iPad too powerful and popular to be banned (9to5mac.com)
• Group plans disruptive protest tomorrow at Apple's Grand Central Store over Foxconn conditions (9to5mac.com)
• Foxconn issues go mainstream thanks to This American Life and The Daily Show (9to5mac.com)
• Proview tries to block iPads from coming in or going out of China (9to5mac.com)

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Original Page: http://9to5mac.com/?p=138420

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