Apple is rotten?
It uses what could be considered 'slave labour'?
Apple gets most of its products made by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn.
At Foxconn's Longhua plant, in mainland China, at least 12 people have 'jumped to their deaths' in the year 2010.
Foxconn makes products for Apple, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony, HP and Dell.
Foxconn factories are associated with very long hours of work, very low pay and very strict discipline.
Boy, 8, chained to a lamp post by his father, who tried to sell him to strangers in China: dailymail.co.uk/Chinese-boy-chained-lamp-post B
A Reuters journalist commented that "many workers told us that throughout their shift...they are not allowed to speak at all, so there is absolutely no conversation at all between workers during their shift".
An 'auditing team' (Foxconn - Wikipedia) discovered that Foxconn workers were punished by being made to stand at attention for extended periods,[12] and workers were subjected to military-style drills.[13]
Foxconn admitted that it made workers do an extra 80 hours overtime per month while the local labour law only permits 36 hours[14]
Foxconn sued the journalists responsible for revealing these practices, for $3.77 million and filed a successful court ruling to have the journalists' assets frozen.[15]
How much do you want an iPad?
Something rotten at Apple's core? Shocking toll of suicides at iPad factory in China.
Foxconn suicides: inside the factory
Child labour.In China (slave labours), "workers told the police they were forced to work 20 hours a day, while one worker was allegedly beaten to death by a thug using a spade, and his body buried in a nearby hill, a Shanxi newspaper reported...
"The shoeless workers were even forced to carry red-hot bricks from the kiln on their backs, leaving numerous scalds on their bodies. Worst of all, the toiling laborers were subject to frequent and brutal beatings by the hired thugs for no apparent reasons.
Some children enjoy work?
"In a related development, the New Express newspaper reports 40 children were rescued from slavery in Shanxi brick kilns, but hundreds more are believed to be held captive.
"The paper reports 400 fathers of missing boys from the central province of Henan had joined forces to find their sons at kilns hidden deep in the mountains of neighboring Shanxi.
"Boys as young as eight had been taken from bus and train stations and sold for 500 yuan each to kilns where they were beaten, starved and forced to work 14 hours hauling bricks.
"At least 1,000 boys are being held in the kilns in Shanxi, the paper says, quoting a reporter from the Henan provincial television station."
Oleg Deripaska, boss of the world's biggest aluminium company, is being treated as a formal suspect in a money-laundering case linked to the Russian mafia. (dailymail.co.uk/Oligarchz).
In the past, Deripaska has entertained the UK's Lord Mandelson and the UK Chancellor George Osborne on his luxury yacht.
