This is the VOA Special English Technology Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish
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 described poor working conditions at the factories. The Foxconn
Technology Group owns the manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, Chengdu and
Zhengzhou. 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 involve pay, living conditions and even reports
of violence against workers. 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
those reports. Mark Shields organized a campaign calling for better working
conditions. "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. "Just imagine how dire the working conditions would
have had to be for those workers to sacrifice their lives."Professor Cornell
says even Apple's own reports noted issues at some of its factories. These
included involuntary labor and underage labor. "These are important issues. The
involuntary [laborers] 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. In related developments, Foxconn
said it was raising the pay of its workers in China for the third time since
twenty-ten. And Apple asked the Fair Labor Association to investigate conditions
at the Foxconn factories. Apple recently joined that association. The nonprofit
group was established in nineteen ninety-nine to investigate working conditions
around the world. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. Get more news
and learn English at voaspecialenglish.com.
(Adapted from a radio program
broadcast 20Feb2012)
원문출처 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K323dwMkctY&feature=youtube_gdata
English
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