After all the publicity about how Apple and its contractors were going to improve working conditions and wages in the Chinese plants where Apple's popular products like iPads and iPhones are made, it doesn't look like much is changing. At least
not if it costs Apple and Foxconn any money:
The FLA could not, for example, get the companies to agree to comply with Chinese law limiting maximum overtime hours until the summer of 2013, and the companies continue to subject Foxconn workers to 60 hours of overtime per month—nearly twice the amount of overtime permitted by law. The companies also pledged only to study whether the workers were right in their complaints that wages are too low to meet basic needs. And most telling, there is no indication the companies have kept their public promise to pay back wages to the hundreds of thousands of employees Foxconn systematically cheated by working them “off the clock.”
So basically, Apple got its good headlines by claiming it would clean up its act, and now it's trying to keep on screwing workers without anyone noticing. I guess money-saving decisions like this are why Apple CEO Tim Cook is the
highest-paid CEO in the country?
A fair day's wage
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