This is the price for being number one I guess – Over the weekend Business Insider, The Telegraph, and CBS News all ran stories attacking Apple. Business Insider and the Telegraph attacked Apple’s culture of secrecy and cult-like work environment:
Instead, a dictatorial CEO rules with an iron fist, Mr Lashinsky said. Employees don’t ask questions and they leave their egos at the door. There is only one person who was allowed to have a public ego and that was Steve Jobs, he said.
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“Jobs’s brutality in dealing with subordinates legitimised a frighteningly harsh, bullying, and demanding culture at Apple. Under Jobs a culture of fear and intimidation found roots throughout the organisation,” Mr Lashinsky wrote.
For a company so revered for its innovation, the neutering of entrepreneurial spirit might seem counterproductive, but Apple’s draconian treatment of its workforce is actually part of its formula for success, Mr Lashinsky explained. It creates a loyal ethos among the staff, protecting the products.
Tim Cook once said: "That’s part of the magic of Apple. And I don’t want to let anybody know our magic because I don’t want anybody copying it."
Meanwhile at CBS conditions at Foxconn are examined again:
Daisey went to Shenzhen. Foxconn wouldn’t let him in, so he stood outside the main gate with his translator, talking to workers at shift change.
"In my first two hours of my first day at that gate, I met workers who are 14 years old," Daisey said. "I met workers who were 13 years old. I met workers who were 12. Do you really think Apple doesn’t know?"
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"The official work day in China is eight hours long. That’s a joke," Daisey said in his performance. "I never met anyone who’d even heard of an eight-hour shift. Everyone I talked to worked 12-hour shifts, standard, and often much longer than that: 14 hours a day, 15 hours a day. Sometimes longer than that. While I am in country, a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34-hour shift."
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On January 13, for the first time Apple released a list of its major suppliers, and with it its annual supplier responsibility report, showing that in 2011 it conducted 80 percent more audits than in 2010.
The company’s supplier code of conduct limits workers to a 60-hour/6-day week. By Apple’s own data, only 38 percent of its suppliers complied.
Again I am presenting this without much comment – You have to make up your own mind on how you feel about the way Apple does business and whether you want to do business with them. I am just pointing out what, at this point, seems like a coordinated attack.
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