Labor Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily Update for March 14, 2013

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Mar 14th, 2013)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player ...

Foxconn admits hiring underage interns

by Kelly Hodgkins (Oct 16th, 2012)

Foxconn released a statement on Tuesday confirming it violated Chinese labor laws by illegally hiring underage workers at its Yantai plant in Shandong Province. Several workers as young as 14 years old were discovered as part of an internal investigation, says a CNET report. Foxconn's ...

Apple supplier shows 95% overtime compliance in March 2012

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 19th, 2012)

Apple maintains a supplier responsibly report on its website and recently added some new statistics that show overtime working conditions are improving in its factories. Noticed by The Next Web, Apple is now seeing 95 percent compliance with its 60-hour work week requirement. This is up from 89 ...

Apple updates report on supplier working conditions

by Steven Sande (Mar 20th, 2012)

It probably wasn't Mike Daisey's fabricated "theatrical work" that moved Apple to work on improving working conditions for employees at overseas suppliers, but even if it wasn't, the company is doing a great job of making good on their plans to help those employees. Apple is providing monthly ...

Protesters aimed to deliver new letter to Apple during shareholders meeting

by Mike Schramm (Feb 23rd, 2012)

Protestors delivered letters to Apple Stores around the world asking Apple to re-examine its use of Foxconn production factories overseas. Apple decided (relatedly or otherwise) to step up its inspections of those factories, so you probably won't be surprised to hear that protestors planned to do ...

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" available under an open license

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 22nd, 2012)

Mike Daisey is making headlines with The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a stirring monologue about his love of Apple and disappointment with working conditions in Apple's supplier factories. Daisey's monologue details his trip to China and his time with workers from Foxconn's Shenzhen plant. ...

Foxconn raises Chinese worker wages

by Mike Schramm (Feb 17th, 2012)

Foxconn has been back in the news lately for an investigation, commenced by Apple's request, into its worker practices. Perhaps influenced by those actions (though perhaps not), Foxconn has raised some of its pay levels by 16 to 25 percent. Depending on the worker and the results of some testing, ...

Daily Update for February 13, 2012

by Steven Sande (Feb 13th, 2012)

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" is funny, forceful agitprop (Update)

by Michael Rose (Feb 6th, 2012)

Update Mar 17 2012: This American Life, after additional reporting, retracted the episode featuring excerpts from Daisey's show. Some of the assertions Daisey made in his monologue, including a key passage about encountering workers injured by n-hexane exposure, are now acknowledged by Daisey ...

TUAW Fact Check: Apple using underage labor? No.

by Chris Rawson (Mar 1st, 2010)

When a lot of people get their news electronically, skimming over headlines through news aggregators, RSS feeds, and retweets on Twitter, sometimes the majority of information people will get from an article comes from the headline. When a headline leans towards the sensational side, or doesn't ...

Dick Durbin presses Apple on human rights in China

by Mike Schramm (Feb 2nd, 2010)

Technology relations with China and their human rights situation is turning into a hot-button issue lately, especially given Google's recent troubles with that country. Now, my old senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, has decided to raise the level of scrutiny, calling for a list of 30 companies, ...

Microsoft's new retail hiring policy: shop at Apple

by Michael Rose (Sep 22nd, 2009)

If you're an Apple retail employee, you might want to keep an eye out for coy glances across the Genius Bar or little notes emailed to your iPhone -- someone may be trying to offer you a job. Word comes via The Loop, citing anonymous sources, that Microsoft's ramp-up process to launching its new ...

Labor dispute with Apple display supplier intensifies

by Robert Palmer (May 29th, 2009)

After gathering in front of Apple's offices in Taiwan earlier this week, protesters are now demanding a substantive response from Apple by the end of the month regarding alleged workplace labor and safety violations at Wintek, one of Apple's display component suppliers. Labor groups associated with ...

Birth of an iTunes Store

by Erica Sadun (Dec 5th, 2006)

Ever wonder what a newborn baby iTunes store looks like? The answer is that there isn't a lot there, at least not for a few hours at least. Intrepid TUAW spies were able to snatch this exclusive iTunes New Zealand pic and send it to our top secret labs before iTS:NZ went fully live. The iTunes ...

iPod factory admits to violating Chinese labor laws

by David Chartier (Jun 27th, 2006)

Sounds like things might not be so squeaky clean in the "iPod City" after all, as Engadget has dug up some dirt on the Foxconn factory's admission of breaching Chinese labor laws. Specifically, Foxconn has admitted their employees work about 80 extra hours each month - which is a tad above and ...