Apple manufacturing plant workers complain of long hours, militant culture

The article I chose to read was about the company Apple doing nothing new compared to other companies as far as going over sea’s to make parts or all of their products to then be sold here in the states.  The article was published by Chi-Chi Zhang from CNN on Monday February 6, 2012.  I picked this article because it does interest me as to why companies have been going to other countries for factory work.  They can save millions of dollars by paying “minimum wage” in other countries compared to the minimum wage here in the states which are about 8 dollars at the moment.                                                                                      

This article was about a specific factory worker, a young 18 year old college student who could use the money the Foxconn Technology Group would pay her.  She has never seen the finished Ipad product and has worked at the factory that makes them.  The Foxconn Technology group is one of many who manufacture products for Apple along with other global brand names, such as Amazon’s Kindle and Microsoft’s Xbox.  The first day she worked there an eldery women said “why did you come to Foxconn, Don’t ever think about it again and leave right now.”  Employees of Foxconn have a saying “they use women as men and men as machines.” After three weeks of applying more than 4,000 stickers a day onto iPad screens by hand and working 60 hours a week in an assembly line, Chen says she's ready to go back to college and study hard so she'll never have to return to Foxconn.

I feel this article has some great points into what the problems are with big businesses who go overseas, but let’s face it companies in the states become big businesses to make more money and buy going overseas they can do that.  I feel like other countries need to establish a minimum wage, it probably will be much less than ours but it may be more than they are making now.  Its definitely wrong beyond belief to force unpaid overtime on workers.  This article really hit home for me because last year I had to take a year off from school for medical reasons and I worked in a factory doing very very insanely monotonous tasks over and over again.  That only energized me and forced me more to get an education and get out into a job over minimum wage and with benefits.