Hacker News Reader

You're right about apple's PR response but they do have a well documented history of enabling worker abuse that suggests that this policy is either ineffective at best or total bs at worst

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/31/environmental-watchdog-repo...

View on HN

The linked article alleges pollution not worker abuse. I'm not saying that (a) hazardous waste is ok or (b) that all of Apple's subcontractors behave perfectly, but this seems like a case of shifting ground to score points.

In general, Apple gets a lot of flak from environmental groups simply because it's the target that will make news. This means that Apple has to be especially careful. Would anyone care or be surprised if Dell were polluting an estuary?

I accidentally linked to the wrong article. Although that same report talked about there did actually pertain to workers' rights, it's not highlighted in that article.

Here are a couple others that come up in a quick search:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/technology/23apple.html?pa...

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/01/chinese-environmen...

and this (which is a little bit older)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide....

Whether or not Dell is guilty of the same thing is a different issue altogether and no less surprising or upsetting

Reply on news.ycombinator.com