Apple: Teen Worker Death Not From Working Conditions

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Apple's doctors say that the 15 year old worker that died in one of its factories was not due to working conditions. The company sent its own doctors from the U.S. to investigate and found that it was a case of the flu. Apple also states that the teen lied to gain employment.

Apple last month sent medical experts to the Pegatron facility in Shanghai to determine whether the worker's death had anything to do with the working conditions at the factory where iPhones and iPad Minis are built. The pneumonia, the medical experts determined, did not relate to work in the factory or the production of Apple products.
Click to expand...
 
Not related at all! Who cares if the teen had to actually be at work when they had pneumonia!
 
Apple is so pure. It (being a corp it is not truly human, though corps often act as if they were) would never employ minors thru subcontractors in another, much poorer nation. Perish the thought.
 
Ha, Apple wouldnt really care if it wasnt for all the media attention and neither would all the other companies who use Foxconn. MS, Dell, and others have been using Foxconn for years with not a peep from the media about it. But honestly some of the people in China are desperate for a job and Foxconn is pretty decent over there by their standards.
 
Nytegard said:
Not related at all! Who cares if the teen had to actually be at work when they had pneumonia!
Click to expand...

Did he die while working? From what I have heard some of these huge Chinese factories have dormitories where some of the workers live. Was he actually working while critically ill, or was he an employee that got sick and died?

If he was working while sick enough to die of pneumonia, that's something the company should have done something about.

If he simply died while he was an employee, that's regrettable, but not the responsibility of the company.

I do question that the company couldn't tell that he was less than 21 years old. That seems like something that should have been caught at the pre-employment physical if not before, and a 21 year old would have likely done more to seek help for illness than a scared kid.
 
///AMG said:
Ha, Apple wouldnt really care if it wasnt for all the media attention and neither would all the other companies who use Foxconn. MS, Dell, and others have been using Foxconn for years with not a peep from the media about it. But honestly some of the people in China are desperate for a job and Foxconn is pretty decent over there by their standards.
Click to expand...

FYI. This was at Pegatron, not Foxconn. Pegatron was formerly part of Asustek before they spun it off.
 
flatrock said:
Many factories in China have a dorm. My aunt is the VP for a 'sweatshop'. I visited around 3 years ago and most recently, a couple months ago.

The workers are mostly from the 'villages' in central/western China. My aunt's factory was in the South Eastern portion of China. So it's quite a trip. The dorms are beneficial for both the factory owner and the worker. The worker doesn't have to go out and find their own housing (which is almost undoubtedly too expensive for them) and the factory owner can pay the worker less as well improving worker efficiency overall. The workers weren't actually dissatisfied with this arrangement.

The general feeling is that this is a temporary job. There were a lot of young workers. In the past, the workers were very young (16-18). They worked long hours everyday, getting 1 day a month off. They also got to visit their family once a year. Their pay mostly goes back home to support their families.

Recently, there has been an influx of older (22+) workers straight from college. Keep in mind that the college rate in China is something ridiculous right now. Most people will go to a college and get a 'degree'. These workers actually want to visit the big cities. My aunt's factory is in Hang Zhou. A lot of them are there 'for fun' while getting a place to live and some spending money. The wages have gone up significantly (something like tripled in the past few years?). Right now, my aunt said it's extremely hard to find workers unless you pay them well and give them other benefits. They're having a hard time keeping the factory fully staffed. There were entire floors that were empty.
Click to expand...
 
Don't these workers all live at the factory compounds? so how'd he get pneumonia to begin with? Are they saying he had it before he was employed? if it was due to the living conditions at the factory... wouldn't that also be from his working conditions? Not like they punch out and go home.
 
It was just the flu guys, nothing to see here.

cough except that he was required to work outside in the cold even after he got sickly cough
 
People die of pneumonia all over the world, from the best healthcare to the worst.

A fifteen year old kid at a factory is a problem, sure, but fixing that situation needs a level of commitment far greater than pointing and yelling at Apple, Dell, or Samsung. It needs to be a commitment on a global scale as well, that's a tall order.
 
Why do we have to fix their problems? Fix your own problems China. The dorms are great system we should move to here in the USA too, it is just like the haciendas not only do you get to employ the workers for lower wages but you can also make money over charging them for snacks since they won't have time to go off the campus.
 
If the phrase "Apple, Inc." hadn't been included in that article, would it have been posted here?

In related news, Apple doctors also say that Data's cat Spot's death wasn't caused by working conditions but instead by a careless co-worker thinking his phaser was on stun..

spot_gets_shot.gif
 
A 15 year old worker dies of Pneumonia at a Chinese Factory and not only did Apple Investigators declare the partner company was not at fault (I know shocking..who could have predicted that?) but they also made the subtle suggestion that it was actually the kids own fault he died because he "lied"...on a job application. As if lying on a job application was some horrible and unusual crime thats punishable by death.

Its so heartwarming to see Apple so concerned about its partners employees, and here I was worried Apple was just trying to whitewash the affair to avoid bad press about the working conditions at its factories. Its not like Apple hasn't got caught before using partners with substandard labor policies.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
People die of pneumonia all over the world, from the best healthcare to the worst.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
I wound up in the hospital for a week on I.V. antibiotics it hit me so hard.
Then again, when your mother is a psychotic bitch that sends her children out to shovel the driveway in the middle of a blizzard when said kid is wheezing and hacking and asking to go to the hospital in the first place, a week in the hospital is more of the doctor's idea while he calls children services.
Guess who had a shitty childhood?
 
mmarsh said:
...but they also made the subtle suggestion that it was actually the kids own fault he died because he "lied"...on a job application. As if lying on a job application was some horrible and unusual crime thats punishable by death.
Click to expand...

The irrational Apple hate is strong with this one.

Where did you get that idea. Even reading between the lines I can't see how you came to that conclusion. The boy was 15, he used a fake ID to pretend he was 21... that is the ONLY thing the article states, nothing about how it's his fault or any shit like that and none of the Apple statements suggest anything of the sort either.
 
mmarsh said:
A 15 year old worker dies of Pneumonia at a Chinese Factory and not only did Apple Investigators declare the partner company was not at fault (I know shocking..who could have predicted that?) but they also made the subtle suggestion that it was actually the kids own fault he died because he "lied"...on a job application. As if lying on a job application was some horrible and unusual crime thats punishable by death.

Its so heartwarming to see Apple so concerned about its partners employees, and here I was worried Apple was just trying to whitewash the affair to avoid bad press about the working conditions at its factories. Its not like Apple hasn't got caught before using partners with substandard labor policies.
Click to expand...

Are you for serious?
 
///AMG said:
Did not realize, thats what I get for not reading the article lol.
Click to expand...

This is what I get for coming into these apple news thread.

Bunch of members here eager to attack apple without even reading the material because they are blinded by their fanboism and will cherry pick anything at them.
 
DTN107 said:
This is what I get for coming into these apple news thread.

Bunch of members here eager to attack apple without even reading the material because they are blinded by their fanboism and will cherry pick anything at them.
Click to expand...

I wasnt attacking them, or defending them. The only bit of fanboyism I have is a slight preference for PS vs Xbox lol thats about the only one. As far as apple products go I have spent more than enough, probably more than 99% of the people on this forum.
 
They didn't know there was a 15 year old working there until he died, shows they are monitoring what is going on with their employees:rolleyes:
 
Outamyhead said:
They didn't know there was a 15 year old working there until he died, shows they are monitoring what is going on with their employees:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

He gave them false ID. I worked a job here in the US where I was a year younger than I should have been. You're only upset because you want to be upset.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
He gave them false ID. I worked a job here in the US where I was a year younger than I should have been. You're only upset because you want to be upset.
Click to expand...

Did you give your employer false ID? Can you honestly say your employer had no clue? What people are getting at is that many companies turn a blind eye or do not properly check, then when something goes wrong they claim they had no clue. But in reality they knew exactly what was going on they just covered themselves legally. This is why its not a valid excuse in places that do care to make those claims. A friend of mine was a higher up in a fortune 500 company and he wanted to run a small grocery store of interest. Guess what he made real sure all the people who were working their were legal. When he sold it the next owner hired anyone. Their was a big difference in how they acted because of the possible consequences and risks. That is why people make a big deal out of it. They know very well many under aged workers are their.
 
rudy said:
Did you give your employer false ID? Can you honestly say your employer had no clue?
Click to expand...

If your only real form of an age check is giving them an ID, all it really takes is for the person to look somewhat like the fake ID and I would no longer place much blame on the company. People are assuming that it was blatantly obvious the guy was 15... maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I have friends who in their early 20's could easily have passed for 15 with a clean shave, and friends who when 15 could have passed for early 20's. People just assume the worst because Apple is in the headline.

If the only age check is ID when they sign up, I don't think it'd be hard to fool them.
 
Tudz said:
People are assuming that it was blatantly obvious the guy was 15... maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
Click to expand...
Asians always look younger than they are, so if anything they should have thought he was 12. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top