Foxconn trade union a sham

Oh dear. The highly publicised trade union at Foxconn, the factory whose output includes Apple iPhones, is not as worker-friendly as the PR makes out.

The official trade union federation, All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), of which Foxconn's is a member. is hardly likely to lead a walk-out. Any effective collective union activity in China has been unofficial and therefore illegal.

Now there's an election looming for union leaders and serious flaws in the process range from the farcical to banana republic.

Josh Eidelson writes in Salon:

When the Chinese factory giant Foxconn – famous for mass suicides and military-style management – announced recently that it would begin allowing workers to elect their own local union leaders, it brought a wave of positive press for its Western customers like Apple. But will it make any difference for Foxconn employees, the workers who make wildly popular products such as iPhones?

“The precedent we have for these democratic union elections is not very encouraging,” said Eli Friedman, a professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell. Even if “they’re run reasonably well, and you get some kind of activist” elected as a local union leader, “the problem is when they actually try to do anything for their members, they – as in many places – will face retaliation from management.” Worse, “oftentimes higher levels of the trade union, or the government, will collaborate with management to either make this person’s life incredibly difficult, or just force them from office.”

Western companies profiting from shameful sweatshop labour kicked up when China made a stab at improving workers' rights.

China’s federal government passed a major pro-labor law in 2007, and has since encouraged minimum wage increases by municipalities. The laws were blasted by U.S. business groups, which warned that they would hurt investment in China. Friedman credits the laws to the desire of some in the Chinese government to dampen worker protests while transitioning to a higher-wage economy with greater domestic consumer demand.

But the laws haven’t calmed China’s strikes. Instead, the five years since the new labor law went into effect have been marked by an upsurge in strikes: tens of thousands of walkouts per year, without legal protection, by workers acting independently of the ACFTU. What gives?

This American Life retracts Mike Daisey's China labour story

If only I'd known this show may contain nuts. Mike Daisey's monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a powerful exposé about labour abuses at the Apple factory in China, turns out to contain falsehoods.

Daisey did what he claims no journalist had done: he went into the Foxconn factory under cover as a businessman and emerged with a shocking eyewitness account of suicide nets, gun-toting security guards and under-age child labour spilling out into the streets. Forbes reports:

To cite just one example: child labor. The abuses of many foreign factories, including Apple’s, have been extensively documented by journalists and NGOs, and employing children is the among the most explosive and damaging. The New York Times has reported that Apple itself had cited Foxconn for hiring 15-year-olds. But the Times reporters evidently found none of them, nor is it clear how extensive a problem it is. Schmitz, who has also reported extensively on this topic, says “these things are rare,” and Apple claims it’s been addressed. Yet Daisy claimed the problem was literally overflowing into the street: “I’m telling you that in my first two hours at my first day at that gate I met workers who were 14 years old…13 years old…12 …Do you really think Apple doesn’t know?”

Ira Glass, presenter of This American Life, the Chicago Public Radio programme that first aired Daisey's show and propelled the performer to stardom and hero status, has fessed-up to failing to fact-check, falling for the writer's claim that he didn't have his Chinese interpreter's mobile number. They are now pulling the original programme and broadcasting one this weekend that investigates where it went wrong.

Daisey is unrepentant. Yes, it is true that you can tell a bigger truth by juggling the facts, especially in fiction where dramatic license is a stock-in-trade. You can use a distorting mirror to pull into view aspects that an audience might have otherwise missed, as long as the audience is in on the game. However, pure invention of facts that you know will be taken at face value, that you have not signalled as being tampered with, makes you more than a "fabulist" as some are politely labelling him: it wrecks the very case you are making. Daisey says:

I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. What I do is not journalism [italics mine]. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­– not a theatrical ­– enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret.

There are real problems in China regarding harsh labour conditions and a polarisation of rich and poor. Outflanked by unofficial strikes and protests, the approved trade unions are having to negotiate towards a better life for their workers, and there is a growing movement for the establishment of independent trade unions, but this sensationalising does not help. It adds to the weight of dehumanisation of the Chinese. Sadly, there is such a feeding-frenzy around demonising China and the Chinese that such exaggerations are assumed to be literal truth. Any carpet-bagging opportunist can thereby pluck what they like from the collective fantasy being constructed and build a career on it.

Daisey is a mesmerising performer who had a long and successful career stretching out in front of him. His reputation is now in tatters and the bigger truth has not been served.

PODCAST This Americal Life investigation here or here

Apple at fault at Foxconn. Fair Labor Association's findings on Apple and Foxconn

News round-up for Sky: escaping lab monkeys, Prince's free 20Ten CD, Apple and Ridley Scott

Photo: ALPHA PRESS via Daily Telegraph

I did another Sky News internet stories round-up last night, which is nerve-wrackingly exciting. While at the Sky studio I saw a couple of women walking ahead of me who were dressed in Charlie Chaplin hats and shorts. Funny, I thought. Women are already copying Shabby, the beautiful lesbian tantrum-queen from this last series of Big Brother who walked out the other night. Then I realised, hey, this WAS Shabby and friend doing the media rounds for the five minutes that she's still hot. She's unique and very, very bright so I expect we haven't seen the last of her. She's also much taller and leaner than she looks on the telly. O crikey! What's it doing to me, then?

My round-up stories in no particular order:

Ridley Scott, a brit who's huge in Hollywood, has a million films in development but still has time for an interesting new one. He's joined forces with YouTube for a mass global film experiment. On July 24th — 24/7 in Americanese — they want you and me to film ourselves doing something ordinary and everyday. It could be brushing your teeth, washing up, putting out the rubbish, just a moment from a normal day. Then upload it to YouTube where clips will be selected from submissions from around the world to typify the global day. Developing countries are included and NGOs are handing out cameras and equipment in preparation for the world event. I wonder if walking miles for a container of water or mopping up oil spills from your front yard will feature.

Napoleon said we were a nation of shopkeepers but that may change. Move over Sainsbury and Tesco. You are about to get a taste of your own medicine as Amazon launches its UK online grocery service. For a fee of £49 per year, you can get one-day delivery of groceries just as you do books, household goods, fashion, beauty and, from last week, musical instruments. This directly challenges Ocado at the very moment it is looking for shareholders to invest. As you can bulk buy, too, I doubt Costco will be pleased. You can buy online via a computer or a smart phone, and Apple has an application so you can shop through your iPhone or iPod.

Talking of Apple, fans are going nuts for the new iPhone 4 despite reports of reception problems that can only be remedied by the application of nail polish or sticky-tape. Owners of iPhones are trading in their older new models for cash sums up to £170, making the Apple 3G the most recycled phone last month. Even the third generation 3S is being offloaded in favour of the 4th gen. Me, I'm sticking to my Nokia 5800 until Apple sort out the reception problem or else make the nail polish application downloadable.

The internet is dead. Long live the internet. Prince has declared the net to be so over "like MTV. MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." Prince may be a bit of a King Canute in his attempt to hold back the tide of technology but this may be explained by his run-in with iTunes who refuse to pay artists upfront. He is again releasing an album — the latest is called 20Ten — for free via a newspaper: in this Saturday's Daily Mirror and its sister paper in Scotland, The Daily Record. I will be getting mine.

Bong! We leave you with an inspiring animal story: The Great Escape but with monkeys. A group of monkeys escaped from their forest enclosure at a laboratory in Kyoto University by catapulting themselves over a 17 foot electrified fence using branches of a tree ten feet away. How smart is that? Unfortunately, once they were out, they didn't know what to do and hung around the gates like bored kids until lured back by food. Just like us: we want to escape the system but will come back for peanuts. Hey, monkey, don'tcha know you have to change the world not describe it? Oh no, that's philosophers, not baboons. Close but no peanut.

News round-up for Sky: escaping lab monkeys, Prince's free 20Ten CD, Apple and Ridley Scott

Photo: ALPHA PRESS via Daily Telegraph

I did another Sky News internet stories round-up last night, which is nerve-wrackingly exciting. While at the Sky studio I saw a couple of women walking ahead of me who were dressed in Charlie Chaplin hats and shorts. Funny, I thought. Women are already copying Shabby, the beautiful lesbian tantrum-queen from this last series of Big Brother who walked out the other night. Then I realised, hey, this WAS Shabby and friend doing the media rounds for the five minutes that she's still hot. She's unique and very, very bright so I expect we haven't seen the last of her. She's also much taller and leaner than she looks on the telly. O crikey! What's it doing to me, then?

My round-up stories in no particular order:

Ridley Scott, a brit who's huge in Hollywood, has a million films in development but still has time for an interesting new one. He's joined forces with YouTube for a mass global film experiment. On July 24th — 24/7 in Americanese — they want you and me to film ourselves doing something ordinary and everyday. It could be brushing your teeth, washing up, putting out the rubbish, just a moment from a normal day. Then upload it to YouTube where clips will be selected from submissions from around the world to typify the global day. Developing countries are included and NGOs are handing out cameras and equipment in preparation for the world event. I wonder if walking miles for a container of water or mopping up oil spills from your front yard will feature.

Napoleon said we were a nation of shopkeepers but that may change. Move over Sainsbury and Tesco. You are about to get a taste of your own medicine as Amazon launches its UK online grocery service. For a fee of £49 per year, you can get one-day delivery of groceries just as you do books, household goods, fashion, beauty and, from last week, musical instruments. This directly challenges Ocado at the very moment it is looking for shareholders to invest. As you can bulk buy, too, I doubt Costco will be pleased. You can buy online via a computer or a smart phone, and Apple has an application so you can shop through your iPhone or iPod.

Talking of Apple, fans are going nuts for the new iPhone 4 despite reports of reception problems that can only be remedied by the application of nail polish or sticky-tape. Owners of iPhones are trading in their older new models for cash sums up to £170, making the Apple 3G the most recycled phone last month. Even the third generation 3S is being offloaded in favour of the 4th gen. Me, I'm sticking to my Nokia 5800 until Apple sort out the reception problem or else make the nail polish application downloadable.

The internet is dead. Long live the internet. Prince has declared the net to be so over "like MTV. MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." Prince may be a bit of a King Canute in his attempt to hold back the tide of technology but this may be explained by his run-in with iTunes who refuse to pay artists upfront. He is again releasing an album — the latest is called 20Ten — for free via a newspaper: in this Saturday's Daily Mirror and its sister paper in Scotland, The Daily Record. I will be getting mine.

Bong! We leave you with an inspiring animal story: The Great Escape but with monkeys. A group of monkeys escaped from their forest enclosure at a laboratory in Kyoto University by catapulting themselves over a 17 foot electrified fence using branches of a tree ten feet away. How smart is that? Unfortunately, once they were out, they didn't know what to do and hung around the gates like bored kids until lured back by food. Just like us: we want to escape the system but will come back for peanuts. Hey, monkey, don'tcha know you have to change the world not describe it? Oh no, that's philosophers, not baboons. Close but no peanut.

Apple tech hell: please standardise the kit, Steve Jobs!

I am currently in the Circle of Hell reserved for Powerpoint greenhorns trying to get presentations up and running for the first time.

With a performance of Anna May Wong Must Die! promised for next Tuesday, and with time running out, I discover that I am encountering every technical glitch it is possible to meet. It is as if some malign Screenwriter in the Sky has been on Robert McKee's Story course and is now chucking every obstacle at me he can think of in the hope that it will build my character/gimme a catharsis/make me a better person/teach me a Big Secret of Life, or somesuch. Actually, all it's doing is turning me homicidal but he knows that coz he's omniscient and omnipotent. Charlie Kaufman has taken over my universe and is having a right laugh.

I thought my problems at the St Ives preview were due purely to lack of cable connection from my Mac iBook to the projector. So I dutifully trot along to the Brent Cross Apple Store and ask for one.

Such a simple request. Who'd have known the horrors about to be unleashed ...

"Ooh no," says the handsome six-foot hunk in the orange T-shirt. "We can't do that. Too antiquated." But he kindly looks it up, writes down what I need for an iBook — a mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor — and tells me to find it on eBay or maybe purchase it from the Apple Store on the net if I'm lucky, coz they stock no such outmoded equipment up Hendon way. (My laptop is only a couple of weeks past its third birthday, btw.)

Next up, I show him the Apple remote that's been mouldering in a drawer and ask him if it's a remote for my iBook or the iPod. He confirms it's for the computer. So why isn't it working with my computer? Do I need a new battery? He flashes it at one of their machines which miraculously switches screen. He assures me it's working but that maybe if I get the battery changed at Timpson's up the other end of the Mall, it'll work on mine.

The man at Timpson's tests the battery. It's on full charge. Not surprising as it's never been used. So why, I whimper back at the Apple Store, won't it work with my flashy new Mac iBook Powerpoint 2008 programme (£80 online)? Maybe, opines The Hunk, it's not compatible with Powerpoint 2008, only with Apple's own Keynote application, part of the iWorks package. Desperate to look as slick as a beach once Exxon has got through with it, I buy iWorks at £85 for the family pack.

I return home and order the mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor (£17.50 including postage) for the iBook. Ain't no way I'm gonna get caught out again by tech gremlins

Next, I decide to kit up Loved One's MacBook which requires, I discover through much Googling, a VGA-to-DVI adaptor in order to work with an external projector. I order one toot sweet. Another £17.50 goes south.

Then, being a sensible sort of a gal, I book an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar. The heroic Marc (blue T-shirt) breaks the bad news that they had the mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor in store all along (£15). And I learn that the stray remote must belong to the MacBook, not my iBook.

So the Hunk in the orange T-shirt hadn't worked out it wasn't working because the iBook doesn't work with remote control?

And it's quite unlikely that I'll find the USB Infra Red Receiver I need to turn my laptop into the cool state of the art wizardry my beloved project deserves. Indeed, Apple sells no such thing. Neither does Amazon UK. For one giddy moment it looks like Amazon US has one for fifty bucks, but it's an illusion — they're out of stock, no doubt due to the technology being wreathed in cobwebs.

And so I leave another £15 lighter and no closer to operating my show from all corners of the stage like a Powerpoint Nijinsky. But Marc does replace the two missing rubber feet off the bottom of my laptop so it will no longer slip all over the glass coffee table, much as I'd envisaged me tripping lightly over the venue, clicking away, making magic happen on the screen above me.

Instead, I will be nailed to the spot, moving through the slides, music and films with as deft a press of the space-bar as I can muster. But it will look fab and I look forward to seeing some of my lovely readers at the Roxy Anna May Wong Must Die! extravaganza on Tuesday for theatre, film, food and Akashi Sake cocktails.

Facebook details here.

Apple tech hell: please standardise the kit, Steve Jobs!

I am currently in the Circle of Hell reserved for Powerpoint greenhorns trying to get presentations up and running for the first time.

With a performance of Anna May Wong Must Die! promised for next Tuesday, and with time running out, I discover that I am encountering every technical glitch it is possible to meet. It is as if some malign Screenwriter in the Sky has been on Robert McKee's Story course and is now chucking every obstacle at me he can think of in the hope that it will build my character/gimme a catharsis/make me a better person/teach me a Big Secret of Life, or somesuch. Actually, all it's doing is turning me homicidal but he knows that coz he's omniscient and omnipotent. Charlie Kaufman has taken over my universe and is having a right laugh.

I thought my problems at the St Ives preview were due purely to lack of cable connection from my Mac iBook to the projector. So I dutifully trot along to the Brent Cross Apple Store and ask for one.

Such a simple request. Who'd have known the horrors about to be unleashed ...

"Ooh no," says the handsome six-foot hunk in the orange T-shirt. "We can't do that. Too antiquated." But he kindly looks it up, writes down what I need for an iBook — a mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor — and tells me to find it on eBay or maybe purchase it from the Apple Store on the net if I'm lucky, coz they stock no such outmoded equipment up Hendon way. (My laptop is only a couple of weeks past its third birthday, btw.)

Next up, I show him the Apple remote that's been mouldering in a drawer and ask him if it's a remote for my iBook or the iPod. He confirms it's for the computer. So why isn't it working with my computer? Do I need a new battery? He flashes it at one of their machines which miraculously switches screen. He assures me it's working but that maybe if I get the battery changed at Timpson's up the other end of the Mall, it'll work on mine.

The man at Timpson's tests the battery. It's on full charge. Not surprising as it's never been used. So why, I whimper back at the Apple Store, won't it work with my flashy new Mac iBook Powerpoint 2008 programme (£80 online)? Maybe, opines The Hunk, it's not compatible with Powerpoint 2008, only with Apple's own Keynote application, part of the iWorks package. Desperate to look as slick as a beach once Exxon has got through with it, I buy iWorks at £85 for the family pack.

I return home and order the mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor (£17.50 including postage) for the iBook. Ain't no way I'm gonna get caught out again by tech gremlins

Next, I decide to kit up Loved One's MacBook which requires, I discover through much Googling, a VGA-to-DVI adaptor in order to work with an external projector. I order one toot sweet. Another £17.50 goes south.

Then, being a sensible sort of a gal, I book an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar. The heroic Marc (blue T-shirt) breaks the bad news that they had the mini-VGA-to-VGA adaptor in store all along (£15). And I learn that the stray remote must belong to the MacBook, not my iBook.

So the Hunk in the orange T-shirt hadn't worked out it wasn't working because the iBook doesn't work with remote control?

And it's quite unlikely that I'll find the USB Infra Red Receiver I need to turn my laptop into the cool state of the art wizardry my beloved project deserves. Indeed, Apple sells no such thing. Neither does Amazon UK. For one giddy moment it looks like Amazon US has one for fifty bucks, but it's an illusion — they're out of stock, no doubt due to the technology being wreathed in cobwebs.

And so I leave another £15 lighter and no closer to operating my show from all corners of the stage like a Powerpoint Nijinsky. But Marc does replace the two missing rubber feet off the bottom of my laptop so it will no longer slip all over the glass coffee table, much as I'd envisaged me tripping lightly over the venue, clicking away, making magic happen on the screen above me.

Instead, I will be nailed to the spot, moving through the slides, music and films with as deft a press of the space-bar as I can muster. But it will look fab and I look forward to seeing some of my lovely readers at the Roxy Anna May Wong Must Die! extravaganza on Tuesday for theatre, film, food and Akashi Sake cocktails.

Facebook details here.