The hard truth about iPods

Just further evidence why rampant consumerism is bad.

From Macworld:

Low-paid workers toil long hours at Hon Hai’s Longhua, China, plant to produce Apple’s popular iPod nano music player, the newspaper said. It put the monthly salary of these workers at £27 (US$50). Workers at a different company that produces the iPod shuffle were paid £54 per month. These workers paid for their own room and board, which amounted to around half of their salary, it said.

The manufacturing relationship between Apple and Hon Hai is typical in the electronics industry.

In most cases, electronics manufacturing isn’t handled by the company that sells the final product, but by a contract manufacturer. Vendors squeeze the contract manufacturers hard to boost their own profit margins, often playing one off against another to get the lowest price. In turn, contract manufacturers look to reduce their costs as much as possible, and that means keeping wages low.