Protests against iPhone factory conditions planned at Apple Stores

Stories about troubling factory conditions at Foxconn are all too familiar, unfortunately, but hearing that protestors are planning to do something about it is new. GigaOM reports that this Thursday, representatives from Change.org and Sumofus.org are planning to bring petitions to Apple Stores in major cities around the US, asking the company from Cupertino to put together "a worker protection strategy" for the factories overseas that it contracts to make all of its products.

The organizations will arrive at stores in Washington, DC, New York City, San Francisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore, and will also bring signs and leaflets along to educate Apple customers and employees about what's happening overseas. The petitions will have the names of 250,000 people on them, and one of the representatives from Sumofus.org says that the group is "asking Apple to clean up its supply chains in time to make the iPhone 5 its first ethically produced product."

Obviously no one wants factories with terrible conditions for its workers, and Apple in the past has at least given lip service to wanting to make sure that conditions are as good as possible at the companies that it contracts work from. But maybe a protest like this will bring even more light to the issue, and pressure Apple even further to make sure that any of its production lines are at least benign when it comes to worker safety and labor rights.