Apple and China - time for a new PR strategy?

For the past five years, two things have remained constant about Apple - an inexorable rise in sales and profits, and a steely determination to control its message in the media. But, just as the company basks in the admiration of the financial world after last week's amazing results, is customer concern about where and how all those iPads and iPhones are made going to force a change in its PR strategy?

Let me explain how that strategy works. Its fundamental principle is that Apple will only communicate with the outside world on its terms and to its timetable, and that means at exquisitely stage-managed events in California.

But what happens when American customers and politicians start reading about what seem to be the appalling conditions in which your products are made?

There have been a number of exposes over the past 18 months of working conditions at Apple's Chinese factories.

The most startling I've heard came not from a journalist but an actor, Mike Daisey. His monologue telling of how an obsession with all things Apple ended up with him visiting China and finding workers, some apparently as young as 13, putting in 15-hour shifts, was performed recently on the radio programme This American Life.

More seriously for Apple, the New York Times has run a series of articles over the past week examining why America's most successful company can't manufacture its products in the United States, and then taking a closer look at conditions at its suppliers.

But the latest audit shows that at 93 factories, workers put in more than the 60-hour weekly limit prescribed by the American firm, and a third of all the plants inspected did not have sufficient measures to prevent employees suffering occupational injuries.

Now, calls for consumers to start boycotting iPhones or iPads are unlikely to have much of an impact. After all, just about every major electronics brand manufactures in China, and it is far from clear that if you buy a rival phone or tablet it will have been made under better conditions.

It seems clear too that, however miserable the work in the vast factories making every kind of gadget, it is lifting millions of Chinese out of rural poverty.

READ THE FULL BBC NEWS STORY>

Flush with cash, Apple unveils plan to shift 700,000 jobs to United States

CUPERTINO, CALIF. — Giving new meaning to corporate social responsibility, Apple Inc. announced it is “bringing home” more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs currently held by workers in foreign countries.

“As a leading corporate citizen of the United States,” the company said in a press release, “Apple can’t help but feel some sort of responsibility to its fellow Americans. So why not start hiring them?”

Apple plans to spread the employment across ten different U.S. cities, bringing each city an average of 70,000 new jobs, all with full benefits, by the end of 2013.

“We basically just gave our outsourcing team a different task,” Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook told The OB Rag. “Instead of scouring third-world countries to find where workers come cheapest, we surveyed America to find areas where these new jobs would make the most sense.”

Currently, 12.8 million people are unemployed in the United States, a rate of 8.3%. But Apple’s plan will provide jobs to at least 700,000 Americans, slashing the rate to 7.8% and providing a needed surge to the American economy.

Apple said entry-level assembly-line jobs it was bringing to the United States would pay an average of $25 an hour, or about 10 times the rate currently earned by a typical Apple employee in China.

“When the dust settles, this might reduce Apple’s profit margins and put upward pressure on the price of Apple products,” the company’s press release said. “But honestly, Apple can afford it, and so can Apple consumers. So we’re honored to be in a position to help make America stronger.”

Wealthy consumers around the world have embraced products such as the iPhone and the iPad, drawn to their reputation for high quality and — perhaps more importantly — the social value seemingly signified by their possession.

Accordingly, Apple’s profits have soared and its stock market value has surpassed all other publicly traded companies.

With this success have come more questions about Apple’s hiring practices. A recent New York Times expose revealed the company employs only 43,000 people in the United States versus 700,000 people through sub-contractors in foreign countries with lower standards of living.

Success has also swelled Apple’s cash hoard to an incredible $98 billion.

“Frankly speaking, it’s more than we need to run the company,” CEO Tim Cook told shareholders at Apple’s recent annual meeting.

Cook acknowledged that some shareholders might prefer to see Apple pay out much of the cash in a massive one-time dividend. “This isn’t a case where 100 percent of people are going to agree with what we do,” he said.

Indeed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement condemning Apple’s plan. “Just because corporations get the rights of American citizens doesn’t mean they should be burdened by the same responsibilities,” the statement said. “For example, everyone knows people can’t kill people — but sometimes job creators like corporations need to be able to kill people, as the Supreme Court is working on right now.”

Alan Ableman, a 35-year-old former construction worker who has been unable to find work since 2008…couldn’t agree more…“I hope other executives start thinking like Apple executives,” Ableman said. “Because if America’s most valuable companies don’t start hiring Americans, what kind of an America will we all end up with?”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE>

APPLE JOBS ARE NOT COMING BACK TO THE US

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

READ THE ENTIRE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE >

BANK CANCELS THE DEBTS OF POOREST CUSTOMERS

A 375-year-old French bank has decided to forgive the debts of its poorest customers, Good.is reports.

The Crédit Municipal de Paris, a Parisian institution that offers small, low-interest loans against inexpensive valuables, has announced a one-time cancelation of the debts of some 3,500 customers who owed the bank 150 euros (about $190) or less. The announcement marks the bank's 375th anniversary.

A PR stunt? Maybe. But that isn't stopping thousands of customers from celebrating an unexpected windfall.

"It was nice, I have recovered it all," Lina, a young mother, told Europe1. In May, Lina had borrowed 120 euros by pawning her jewelry.

Bank officials say that the European economic crisis has resulted in a 30 percent increase in customers. "People used to get their property back after 11 to 13 months; now it's closer to 24 months," spokesperson Florence Marambat told Good.is.

According to the New York Times, the bank exists in lieu of private pawn shops in France and has served clients like Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.

FULL STORY>

FAIL: APPLE'S REPORT CARD IS BAD NEWS

[FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]

Apple's Report Card

Findings from the firm's annual audit of its suppliers

• 62% weren't compliant with working-hours limits. 
• 32% weren't compliant with hazardous-substance management practices.
• 35%failed to meet Apple's standards to prevent worker injuries.

(Source: Apple's report)

Apple Inc. is increasingly finding itself pinched between the promise and perils of doing business in China.

Under pressure from activists in the U.S. and abroad, the company released a 27-page report detailing working conditions throughout its supply chain, which sprawls throughout Asia, but especially China.

The report is the most comprehensive on the subject in Apple's history, based on 229 audits of factories that do work for the company, the world's second-largest by market capitalization.

Apple said that at its direction, suppliers have stopped discriminatory screenings for medical conditions or pregnancy. Apple also said it found 112 facilities that weren't properly storing, moving or handling hazardous chemicals.

READ THE ENTIRE WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE >

JOHN PERKINS: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

IS JOBS A LIAR? THE FBI THINKS SO.

Bloomberg reports that the FBI has released a decades-old file it kept on Steve Jobs, the deceased Apple co-founder, after a background check for a possible appointment by former President George H. W. Bush conducting interviews with unnamed associates of Jobs to judge his character, drug use and potential prejudices:

'Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs' honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals,' according to the materials. Several people commented 'concerning past drug use on the part of Mr. Jobs,' according to the file including marijuana, hashish and LSD during the period 1970 – 1974. 

The file also noted that Jobs was not a member of the communist party."

FULL STORY HERE>

Apple Market Capitalization Tops $500 Billion

NEW YORK — Apple's market capitalization topped $500 billion Wednesday, climbing to a mountain peak where few companies have ventured – and none have stayed for long.

Apple was already the world's most valuable company. The gap between it and No. 2 Exxon Mobil Corp. has widened rapidly in the past month, as investors have digested Apple's report of blow-out holiday-season sales of iPhones and iPads. And, more recently, Apple has raised investors' hopes that it might institute a dividend.

The company's market capitalization was near $506 billion at the market close. Shares rose $7.03, or 1.3 percent, to close at $542.44 Wednesday.

**

Apple's rise, by contrast, is powered by its mammoth sales and profits, which are growing at rates unheard of for a company its size. 

Yet few companies in the index grow their earnings as fast as Apple does: In its latest quarter, its earnings rose 118 percent from a year ago, to $13.06 billion.

Last week, CEO Tim Cook told shareholders at the annual meeting that the company has more money than it needs, and the board and management are thinking "very deeply" about ways to use the cash.

Former CEO Steve Jobs, apparently haunted by the company's lean years in the 90s, had a policy of accumulating cash. The company now sits on $97.6 billion.

 **

How has Apple managed to amass so much profit and cash? Perhaps by paying pennies on the dollar for slave labor in China at Foxconn's inhuman manufacturing machine? Keeping costs down is what drives profit margins up, as we all know.

So, good for you Apple! Enjoy all those billions of dollars and try to forget that it was created by the literal blood, sweat and tears of workers in China - some as young as 13 years old.

God is not blind to your exploitation of these people. He will judge you and America for her greed. 

We pray for mercy on you and on this selfish, arrogant nation.

Apple Market Cap Now Worth More Than Google And Microsoft Together

Apple, Inc. is on fire. The Cupertino-based company's stock soared past $490 per share on Thursday and is now hovering around $495.

According to Google Finance the company's market cap was valued at $461 billion. This makes Apple slightly bigger than both Microsoft and Google combined. Currently, Microsoft's market cap sits close to $258 billion, and Google's is $199 billion.

Apple passed Microsoft in value back in May of 2010. At the time, the two companies were valued at $222 billion and $219 billion, respectively.

**

Any guess how and why Apple is so ridiculously profitable? Perhaps it's because they suck the life out of 13 year old children in China and manufacture their iPads and iPods for mere pennies while selling them for hundreds of dollars?

Maybe....

FULL STORY >

AMERICANS ARE SICK OF APPLE'S ROTTEN CORE

(AP) In 2010, there was a rash of suicides at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant. Plant managers installed nets to prevent more people from committing suicide by jumping from the roof. A May explosion at the company's Chengdu, China, plant killed three people and injured 15. A New York Times story published Jan. 26 reported on accidents and long hours in Foxconn factories, based on workers' accounts. Foxconn disputed allegations of back-to-back shifts and crowded living conditions.

Foxconn also manufactures products for Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, according to the Associated Press.

AMERICANS ARE FINALLY GETTING SICK OF APPLE'S BLIND EYE: 

*A petition on Change.org, the advocacy site, asking Apple to "Protect Workers Making iPhones in Chinese Factories," has garnered more than 200,000 signatures.

*A similar petition on SumOfUs.org, demanding that Apple oversee the manufacture of an "ethical" iPhone 5," received almost 60,000 signatures.

"This new announcement shows the pressure is working -- more than a quarter million people have joined our call [the combined effort of SumOfUs.org and Change.org] for an ethical iPhone 5 and Apple has clearly heard us," said Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Executive Director of SumOfUs.org, according to a statement emailed to The Huffington Post 

**

THIS AMERICAN BILE

Mike Daisy, the monologist whose one-man show was excerpted for This American Life, wrote on his website that the news "is a welcome change."

"Apple has always been one of the most innovative companies in the world," Daisy wrote on Monday afternoon. "This is the moment when they must begin to show that they can also be the most humane."

FOXCONN: BETTER THAN A POKE IN THE EYE?

BEIJING (Reuters) - Working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants where Apple Inc's iPads and iPhones are made are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country, according to the head of a non-profit agency investigating the plants.

The Fair Labor Association (FLA) is beginning a study of the working conditions of Apple's top eight suppliers in China, following reports of worker suicides, a plant explosion and slave-like conditions at one of those suppliers, Foxconn Technology Group.

Auret van Heerden, president of the FLA offered no immediate conclusions on the working conditions, but he noted that boredom and alienation could have contributed to the stress that led some workers to take their own lives.

In addition to Foxconn, FLA investigators will later visit facilities of Quanta Computer Inc, Pegatron Corp, Wintek Corp and other suppliers, who are notoriously tight-lipped about their operations.

After his first visits to Foxconn, van Heerden said, "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."

He spent the past several days visiting Foxconn plants to prepare for the study.

"I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," he said. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. . It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."

He noted that the organization has been dealing with suicides in Chinese factories since the 1990s.

**

What does the FLA suggest as the reason Foxconn workers are committing suicide? Boredom:  He says, "You have lot of young people, coming from rural areas, away from families for the first time," he said. "They're taken from a rural into an industrial lifestyle, often quite an intense one, and that's quite a shock to these young workers.

"And we find that they often need some kind of emotional support, and they can't get it," he added. Factories initially didn't realize those workers needed emotional support."

**

REALLY? Boredom?

**

Apple must be innocent because they're a member of our group?

"Apple didn't need to join the FLA," he said. "The FLA system is very tough. It involves unannounced visits, complete access, public reporting.

"If Apple wanted to take the easy way out there were a whole host of options available to them," he added. "The fact that they joined the FLA shows they were really serious about raising their game."

REALLY? There ya go. Let's all go back to our lives and ignore all of this nonsense about horrendous working conditions, eye witness accounts of inhuman treatment, and the use of known neurotoxins to clean your iPad screens shall we? It's all a big misunderstanding. These simple peasant people are so overwhelmed by our big, beautiful factory and our swimming pools and movie theaters that they have no choice but to kill themselves because we're giving them wonderful, safe, fulfilling jobs. 

RIIIGGGHT.

** 

Some 30 FLA staff members are visiting two Foxconn factories in Shenzhen in southern China and one in the central city of Chengdu. Each plant has about 100,000 workers, although not all work on Apple products.

Over three weeks, some 35,000 workers will be interviewed about 30 at a time to answer questions anonymously, entering their responses onto Apple iPads.

Questions will include:

* how the workers were hired

* if they were paid a fee

* if they were offered and signed contracts and whether they understood them

* the condition of their dorm rooms and food

* if complaints are acted upon

* their emotional well being

The data will be uploaded immediately and consolidated, and an interim report will be made public in early March.

The eventual FLA report will identify areas the suppliers need to improve and offer suggestions, van Heerden said.

**

STILL WAITING TO READ THE RESULTS OF THIS REPORT....

FROM THE HUFFINGTONPOST ARTICLE HERE>

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones and Venus Wu; Editing by Derek Caney)

Foxconn Is Still a Hard Place to Work

We've come full circle in this tale of Chinese worker exploitation, re-reaching the conclusion that  Foxconn is still a hard place to work after hearing what it's really like from a woman who works on the inside.

Following news that a few hundred workers threatened suicide unless working conditions improved, Foxconn has experienced a month of intense scrutiny from all angles, followed by a guilt-quelling possibility that these factories provide better working conditions than anywhere else in China. But the 18-year-old Foxconn employee, whom CNN is calling only "Miss Chen,"confirms that the gadget factories are not somewhere we'd want to work.

"Foxconn employees have a saying, 'they use women as men and men as machines,'" Chen told CNN's Chi -Chi Zheng. Chen also describes all the horrors we've heard before, including a military culture with long unpredictable hours and fickle, fire-happy management. Though Apple has claimed that it "cares" about each of its workers, Chen doesn't get that impression. "Do they care about us? I don't know. At least I'm not getting any of that care," said Chen.

People don't tend to stay very long at Foxconn, a source told CNN. "The attitude of management is, if you don't like it, you can leave," said CNN's Stan Grant. From the sounds of it, we can imagine why employees wouldn't like it very much. According to Chen, "Everyday is like: I get off from work and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I go to work. It is my daily routine and I almost feel like an animal."

READ FULL STORY WITH VIDEO LINK HERE>