I Refuse to Buy or Cover Another Apple Product
Apple had a terrible revelation come out at the end of 2020, but thanks to other pressing news like the slow rolling chaos of the pandemic and the recent failed US insurrection, I’m worried that it went unnoticed by too many.
Right at the end of December, the online premium business publication The Information released a report showing that Apple knowingly relied on child labor for three years from one of their MacBook suppliers (roughly 2013–2016) without doing anything meaningful about it. Business Insider shared some additional details mixed in with their own reporting and were unable to obtain any comment from Apple executives.
This is far from the first time Apple has been in the spotlight for supporting illegal or unethical labor practices. A month prior, in November of 2020, they cut ties with their second largest iPhone supplier due to rule violations in that company’s “student worker program,” which turned out to be a nice name for an exploitative trick. Essentially, young students were building iPhones under the guise of internships that would tie into their degrees, but it turned out many of them weren’t studying anything remotely related.
They’ve also faced recent criticism from the Washington Post for relying on…
