Dying for an iPhone
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Jenny Chan about the people in China who make iPhones, iPads and Kindles, driving the huge profits of two of the world's most powerful companies - Foxconn, the world's largest provider of electronics manufacturing services, and Apple with its $2 trillion in market value.
Jenny Chan, along with Mark Selden and Pun Ngai, did extensive field research for almost a decade to produce their book Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of China's Workers . What they show is that workers in China earn a fraction of what unionized workers in the United States earn. They have no job protection, are forced to work punishing hours of overtime, as much as 130 hours of overtime a month, live under constant surveillance, are severely discip...