I wanted to break this out into a separate piece rather than adding updates.
Marketplace’s story on the Apple/Daisey controversy is now up. Long quote follows:
Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: That’s correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasn’t what you saw?
MD: I wouldn’t express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.
Ira Glass: Did you meet workers like that? Or did you just read about the issue?
MD: I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was a constant conversation among those workers.
IG: So you didn’t meet an actual worker who’d been poisoned by hexane.
MD: That’s correct.
“I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been…”
“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.”
This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Apple, Clippings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I do not think that Apple is off the hook for outsourced worker suicides.
1. “When it comes to the suicide rate at Foxconn, there were about 12 suicides at the Shenzhen plant in 2010. It was actually hard to get the exact number. Some people have pointed out that 12 suicides for 400,000 workers is actually much lower than China’s suicide rate as a whole, as China has an unusually high suicide rate of 22 suicides per year per 100,000 people. That would work out to 88 suicides for 400,000 workers.”
And, yes, Daisey goes on to argue that the significance isn’t the number, it is the cluster. I think that’s arguable.
2. If you’re not letting Apple off the hook, Earl, are you also not letting Amazon off the hook? According to Wikipedia, Foxconn makes the Kindle. Playstation 3? Foxconn. Wii? Foxconn. XBox 360? Foxconn. I’m curious why all the conversation seems to be around Apple, and not the other companies that contract with Foxconn.
Does anybody have a link to Amazon’s supplier audits handy?