Hasta La Gadget!

Laura June has been an Editor at Engadget since October of 2008. The views expressed in this editorial are her own, cobbled together by hand, with love, in the United States of America, for a fair wage.

I’m not an economist, and in fact, I’ve never been very good with money or math. I’m not a manufacturer either — the only things I make with my own hands are quilts and cakes. I know, however, from these experiences, that the best products take time, and are made with care from the best available materials.

It’s obvious, by now — or it should be — that something’s going on at Foxconn (headquarter in Tucheng, Taiwan), the owners of massive factories in China which most famously assembles Apple products (though it’s also responsible for many, many others). There have been several suicide attempts this year — at least eight (up from two last year) of them successful (though it’s been pointed out that the number is pretty much on par with the rest of China) — and over the past few days we’ve seen what can only be called a shocking expose by a worker who went undercover there. It’s clear, from this report and others (such as last month’s National Labor Committee report on the KYE factory in Dongguan City) that most of the people who assemble our gadgets do so under conditions we, in America would never tolerate, and for a wage that is paltry, to say the least. I’m hesitant to pass judgment en masse on how an entire country or a specific factory does business, and I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to do so. So I’m not going to.

Continue reading Editorial: Thoughts on Foxconn

Editorial: Thoughts on Foxconn originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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