[Discuss] foxconn

[adler at stephenadler.com (Stephen Adler)]

On 11/06/2011 09:00 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 06, 2011 at 07:47:18AM -0500, Stephen Adler wrote:
>> I've recently read a news article which talked about Foxconn and
>> their supposed abusive labour practices. Foxconn is the maker of a
>> lot of popular electronics including the iPhone.
>>
>> This got me thinking, when I go off an buy a motherboard or memory
>> SIMM or whatever, am I buying a product which has been manufactured
>> by laborers who work under conditions I wouldn't allow my own family
>> to work under? Is there any awarness campain or whatever which
>> allows one to buy some electronic component which was manufactured
>> in conditions which meet some kind of labor standards? On my part, I
>> would pay more for my electronic components if I new they were being
>> manufactured using a by someone who's working under good conditions,
>> not sweat shop like conditions. Am I being too paranoid about this
>> in the sense that labor conditions in China are just fine and the
>> workers are well paid and not over worked?
>>
>> I think this is on topic for Blu.... Sorry if I'm off topic...
> As far as I can tell, all of the motherboard manufacturers in
> the world are unethical at best... possibly excluding Intel, but
> I don't actually know.
>
> I have heard specifically bad things about Asus, Foxconn,
> Gigabyte, and MSI.
>
> -dsr-
>
As we buy dolphin safe tuna, should we be buying labor friendly high 
tech products? I don't know why I've suddenly gotten this guilt feeling 
thinking that the computer I use was put together under abusive labor 
practices.... For some reason it's really never crossed my mind who are 
the people and under what working conditions they labor who worked on 
assembling the components of my PC. On the software side, my computer is 
based on GNU software, but the hardware side has just been a black box 
to me...