ROTTEN APPLE

I'M AN APPLE PRODUCT USER AND THIS IS VERY SAD. PLEASE SIGN IF YOU AGREE.

As the old saying goes, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

But not when the “apple” is Apple Inc., maker of ubiquitous consumer electronics products such as the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Despite its iConic stature, Apple is a giant multinational corporation that rakes in unfathomable profits while the factory workers in C

hina who make its signature products are subjected to inhumane working conditions.

Take action with our partners at SumOfUs to demand that Apple improve working conditions at its overseas factories.

Here are just a few reported examples of working conditions at Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest Chinese suppliers:
Explosions at two different iPad factories involving inadequately ventilated combustible aluminum dust killed four workers and injured 77 others.
University students have been compelled to work 12-hour shifts assembling iPhones in the guise of “internships.”
Workers are packed into company dorms where as many as 20 are forced to share a three-room apartment.
So many workers have jumped to their deaths at its facilities that the company has installed suicide-prevention netting on some buildings.
Apple is currently the most valuable publicly traded corporation on Earth, with an estimated market capitalization of $574 billion — more than the upstanding likes of Exxon Mobil, Walmart and General Electric.

Apple can afford to make its products ethically. What’s more, it is so large that if it leads the way, it could enhance standards throughout the manufacturing sector in China and elsewhere.

According to one former Apple executive quoted in a January 25, 2012, article in The New York Times, “suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Earlier this year, Apple promised to improve working conditions, raise wages and put an end to involuntary labor. But the company has not followed through on those promises.

Sign SumOfUs’ petition urging Apple to produce the iPhone and other products ethically.

There’s no excuse for the world’s largest company — and one that benefits from a largely undeserved progressive reputation — to permit toxic working conditions, require rampant and exploitive overtime, and overlook a veritable epidemic of worker suicides.

SIGN: http://sumofus.org/campaigns/apple-iphone/?sub=taf