A labor group has begun investigating working conditions at the Chinese factories where many Apple products are made. Apple officials ordered the investigation after The New York Times newspaper described poor working conditions at the factories.
The Foxconn Technology Group owns the manufacturing centers in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Zhengzhou.
富士康科技集团拥有这些位于深圳、成都和郑州的制造中心。
Angela Cornell is a professor at the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. She says many issues were raised last year after a number of suicides at the Foxconn factories.
One issue is the number of hours that employees are required to work. Other concerns are pay, living conditions and even reports of violence against workers.
问题之一是员工工作时间的长短。另一个问题是薪酬、生活条件,甚至是针对工人的暴力行为报告。
The New York Times reported that employees sometimes worked seven days a week. The newspaper said some stood so long that they had trouble walking. Widespread criticism of Apple followed publication of the report. Mark Shields organized a campaign calling for better working conditions.
MARK SHIELDS: "Workers lives are really hard and really severe, and there's terrible stories about people losing the use of their hands because of horrible repetitive motion injuries, and suicide rates that are so high that they have got to hang nets off the sides of the buildings to prevent workers from killing themselves."
Professor Cornell says the conditions at the Foxconn factories had to have been really bad.
康奈尔教授表示,富士康工厂的条件一定非常糟糕。
ANGELA CORNELL: "Just imagine how dire the working conditions would have had to be for those workers to sacrifice their lives."
康奈尔:试想一下工作条件要有多糟糕,这些工人才会放弃自己的生命。”
Professor Cornell says even Apple's own reports noted issues at some of its factories. These included involuntary labor and underage labor.
康奈尔教授说,即使是苹果公司自己的报告也注意到了一些工厂的问题。其中包括非自愿劳动和未成年人劳动。
ANGELA CORNELL: "These are important issues. The involuntary laborer(s) are indentured migrant workers. And that is a crucially important issue. I mean that's basically slave labor."
More than two hundred thousand people have joined Mark Shields' campaign for better working conditions. The American admits he loves his Apple products. But, he says, he wants them to be made without human suffering.
The company announced last week it had asked the Fair Labor Association to investigate the conditions at its Foxconn factories. The FLA was established in nineteen ninety-nine to investigate working conditions around the world. Apple joined the not-for-profit group earlier this year.
Last Friday, the Times reported that the president of the FLA has begun praising the factories. But the group's second-in-command suggested delaying judgment until a report on the investigation is finished.