For anyone interested in the recent controversy over the production of iPads and other electronic devices by Apple and other major companies, there's an interesting podcast called The People Behind Your iPad.
Apple as well as many other major computer and electronics companies subcontract much of their production to Foxconn, which has made it the world's largest electronics manufacturer. Recently, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) did an audit on Foxconn working conditions and found many problems and violations of both FLA standards and Chinese law. Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz was able to go inside one of Foxconn's plants (which are actually more like self-contained cities) with about 240,000 workers in the city of Shenzhen.
The interviews seem to indicate that the Foxconn workers, although they believe their jobs are highly monotonous and do have complaints, don't believe that Foxconn's treatment is as bad as some Apple/Foxconn critics have suggested. However, I wonder whether Apple and Foxconn should be judged solely on the views of the factory workers who are generally uneducated migrants from poor countryside areas of China where the only work prospects are on peasant farms. While Foxconn factory work provides them with higher income that they could make in their hometowns, it doesn't seem fair to compare income opportunities of poor, rural farming communities with huge and incredibly profitable multinational corporations such as Apple and Foxconn. That's kind of like comparing Steve Jobs or Terry Guo (Foxconn's billionaire founder) to much more average-income people like me - what I'd consider a sizeable fortune would be pocket change to them.
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