Apple Nets $12 Billion in 6 Months, Workers Make $1/hr

The Guardian (UK) reported that Chinese workers making iPads and iPhones are being treated “inhumanely, like machines”.

According to a guardian.co.uk article, interviewed workers revealed:

â–  Excessive overtime is routine, despite a legal limit of 36 hours a month. One payslip, seen by the Observer, indicated that the worker had performed 98 hours of overtime in a month.

â–  Workers attempting to meet the huge demand for the first iPad were sometimes pressured to take only one day off in 13.

â–  In some factories badly performing workers are required to be publicly humiliated in front of colleagues.

â–  Crowded workers’ dormitories can sleep up to 24 and are subject to strict rules. One worker told the NGO investigators that he was forced to sign a “confession letter” after illicitly using a hairdryer. In the letter he wrote: “It is my fault. I will never blow my hair inside my room. I have done something wrong. I will never do it again.”

â–  In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer, workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to “treasure their lives”.

Workers make $6.49 Yuan per hour, which is exactly $1.00 per hour, for a supposed 48 hour week.

Meanwhile, Apple’s latest 10Q shows earning of $12 billion for the last two quarters. Steve Jobs’ 5.5 million shares of Apple are now worth $1.84 billion.

Marx & Engels called it the expropriation of the surplus value of the proletariat. I call it shameful.