Judging Apple Sweatshop Charge
Leander Kahney 06.13.06 | 2:00 AM

Steve Jobs' Think Different campaign celebrated labor leaders like Gandhi, who used strikes as a form of civil protest, and Ceasar Chavez, who organized poor, migrant farm workers. But a British newspaper at the weekend published a rather shocking report about the factories in China that make his company's iPods.

A report in the middlebrow Mail on Sunday entitled "iPod City" features photos and first-hand accounts from inside factories operated by Foxconn, a company contracted by Apple to assemble millions of iPods by hand.

According to the report (paraphrased here by Macworld UK), Foxconn's giant Longhua plant employs 200,000 workers, who work 15-hour days but are paid just $50 a month -- miserable even by China's standards. It claims they work and live in the plant, in dormitories housing 100 people, and outside visitors are forbidden.

Chuck,

This article is almost 2 years old and I thought it had been debunked a few months after it was originally reported.