The Case Of Foxconn And Apple

Sweatshops have been around for centuries, beginning around the late 1880’s. Sweatshops are classified by three main components, long work hours, very low pay and unsafe and unhealthy working environments. Sweatshops are usually found in manufacturing industries and the most highlighted production is clothing corporations, who take full advantage of the low production costs of their products. Many may think sweatshops are a thing of the past but they are still affecting many lives across the nations. There are many ways sweatshops affect lives, but a recent article titled “New study finds ‘more sweatshops than Starbucks’ in Chicago” explains that there are many low wage industry jobs that are violating labor laws in the United States alone. The article also reports how employees who are working in such conditions won’t speak up in fear of the retaliation employers will implement. Analyzing Sweatshops through the lens of the Sociological perspectives will help us better understand the illegal conditions of workplaces that still exist today.

In the article “Harnessing Our Power as Consumers: Cost of Boycotting Sweatshop Goods Offset by the Benefits,” Ed Finn asserts that contrary to popular belief, consumers can significantly affect the abusive labor policies of global corporations by their purchase decisions. According to Finn, our continued affinity and patronage of cheap foreign products, disregarding the exploitative labor that churns these products, only serves to further impoverish the Canadian populace in the long term. As an average consumer himself, Finn alludes to the fact purchasing locally manufactured products would involve some additional costs. Finn exemplifies this by the effort expended in seeking a locally manufactured cap and paying “four or five times more than

In this paper, I chose to apply the works of Marx to the Nike Sweatshop situation that has been going on for decades. The Nike corporation has been criticized for a long time, ever since there has been evidence linking them to sweatshops that exist in factories all around the world where they have outsourced jobs to for cheaper labor. Individuals who want a job with one of the clothing factories are forced to sign a contract that binds them to work for a certain length of time and forces them to live in the arrangements provided by the factory. In some cases, the workers don’t even know the conditions of their employment as the contracts are written in a different language. The name “sweatshop” has come from the extremely high temperatures that have been reported from inside of the factories that workers are forced to endure every day.

In this article he tries to prove his point of view of the sweatshop by proving and stating how the women suffer being there just so in the end we can have a brand accessory like Nike or Gap. Also he talks to his audience because he mentions that we can write letters to companies when workers’ rights are violated and to show support of their efforts to organize, “we can put pressure on our government to adopt policies and regulations that make companies accountable when they fail to address flagrant and persistent violations of workers’ rights.” As of today there are some major brands that have the ‘company code of conduct compliance staff’ in order to answer complaints and investigates the situation and report back and tell what they were going to do to fix the problem. But with all those advances made there’s still any changes in the workplace because he states that a “a little less child labor, fewer forced pregnancy tests or health and safety violations in the larger factories used by major brands” but they still give them poverty wages, long hours of forced overtime and massive firings of workers that tried

This paper describes the legal, cultural, and ethical challenges that confronted the global business presented in the Nike sweatshop debate case study. The paper determines the various roles that the Vietnamese government played in this global business operation. This paper summarizes the strategic and operational challenges facing global managers illustrated in the Nike sweatshop case.

One of the biggest and most popular brands in America, Nike, who targets athletes of all ages to be better athletes engages in unethical behavior by exploiting people from other countries by providing bad working conditions and low wages. Nike produces athletic equipment as well as apparel that is not only appealing to athletes, but also to the general public. However, the people that work for Nike and make these products are people being physically abused by supervisors and have to deal with horrible working conditions. According to an article written by Zaid Jilani, he said that thousands of women in Indonesia are being exploited by companies such as Nike where the wages being paid to these women are not enough to survive. Nike is well aware of what they are doing to these people in Indonesia, but still continue with it because the profits they receive at the end of the day is more valuable to them than the poor working conditions they offer to these Indonesian women. This shows that Nike uses the the Utilitarian approach because the company weighs out the pros and cons of the situation and still decides to produce products in Indonesia where it’s perfectly legal to pay low wages and have bad working conditions even though it is

Issue 1: I do believe that corporations have a responsibility to society as a whole, not only to maximize their own profits and benefit the economy but also to respect the community that they reside in. They achieve this by not only providing employment, but also upholding an image. It is up to

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd which trades as Foxconn Technology group or as the media calls it Foxconn has been in media limelight recently due to labor problems that have surfaced from the organization. Foxconn is a major equipment manufacturer supplier to electronics giants like Blackberry, Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo Wii. The internet has several articles and controversies regarding the deplorable worker conditions and cases of suicides by the workers.

In the twenty-first century, it is not a secret that many American companies are actually setting up factories in foreign countries, with the majority located in Asia. Notable examples of this include athletic shoe companies such as Nike, Adidas, and Reebok Additionally, most people know the reason these companies make their products overseas: “cheap labor.” However, what exactly does the term “cheap labor” entail? Moreover, how are international politics and the global economy affected by this outsourcing? While it may seem like a simple question with a simple answer, the cause of such a relationship and its effects on international commerce are deeply complex and morally questionable.

Apple Inc. is a globally recognised pioneer in the tech industry. It is a corporation that designs, develops and sells electronic products such as tablets, computers and phones. Founded by Ronald Wayne, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, it is a multinational corporation with headquarters in Cupertino, California. Tim Cook has been CEO since Jobs’ passing in 2011.

The modus operandi of the major apparel corporation has been a controversial issue for the longest time. After a while, it has become evident that whenever Nike moves its operation between countries, it has been to a place with an abundance of lower wage workers (Herbert, 1996). Doing business with independent contractors which are notorious for unethical practices is legal but not

The Pou Chen factory is located in a place where the minimum wage is far below the national average. It has 10,000 workers who make Converse sneakers. Most of the workers are women, and they earn only 50 cents an hour. The amount that they earn is not even enough to cover their food and very poor housing. In this factory, the women are both physically and verbally abused. Nike’s own investigations have proved these complaints to be true. The company made a statement saying that immediate actions would be taken to deal with the situation. It is interesting to note that, “an internal Nike report, released to the Associated Press after it inquired about the abuse, showed that nearly two-thirds of 168 factories making Converse products worldwide failed to meet Nike’s own standards for contract manufacturers. Twelve are in the most serious category, ranging from illegally long work hours to

This essay’s thesis is that there is currently a lack legal apparatuses that can be used to hold transnational corporations liable for human rights violations; specifically violation of labour rights. This paper seeks to discuss various legal instruments that are applicable to transnational corporations and human rights violations. It will also provide theoretical framework for understanding the nature of human rights and legal framework of labour laws. This essay will address the following questions: What is the legal status of transnational corporations? How can current legal apparatuses be used to hold transnational corporations accountable for human rights violations? This essay will also consider the case of human right violations by Nike Corporation in order to show that external pressures can produce development and accountability.

Substandard working conditions in the less developed world are usually described as terrible places where employees are subjected to both mental and physical abuse, near impossible quotas, long hours, extremely low wages, and unsafe working conditions compared to western standards. All of this within an uninhabitable environment that corporations knowingly force the world’s impoverished people to submit to. Through pure ignorance, complete disregard, or lack of moral direction, many corporations have taken the concept of

This paper presents a case study of Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is a technology based corporation with emphasis on computer software and hardware (MAC and Apps), tablets (IPad), smart phones (IPhone), and mp3 plays, (ITouch). Apple Inc. has grown tremendously over the years and ever since 2001 has expanded its brand and retail stores to over 375 stores/outlets globally. The business has seventy two thousand eight hundred employees in thirty eight countries. Apple Inc. has truly become one of the most efficacious corporations within its field behind or competing with Microsoft and Google Inc.