Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories
  • Apple remains tight-lipped as its Chinese suppliers reportedly pollute and break environmental laws. Activists hope that putting pressure on the big brand will impact other Chinese polluters.

  • Apple has remained relatively quiet on accusations of unsafe working conditions and environmental concerns in China. But they have hired an outside company to look into the problems.

  • Apple is hammered by China's media for alleged air and water pollution. Will this negative coverage change the behavior of Chinese suppliers who actually run the factories?

  • A leading environmental group in China has released a report accusing Apple product manufacturers of polluting waterways.

  • Chinese factory owner Foxconn assembles iPads and iPhones and has now announced that in the next few years it will replace a portion of its workforce — with robots.

  • After an audit of Apple's suppliers in China, the tech giant has found instances of underage labor, unsafe working conditions and improper handling of toxic chemicals.

  • Your smartphone, laptop, and other high-tech consumer electronics items were probably made in China by a company called Foxconn. It has almost a million employees spread over multiple facilities. But a recent undercover survey paints a picture of a pretty bleak life for Foxconn workers. We talk about the lives of the people who build the gizmos we've come to rely on.

  • A Bloomberg BusinessWeek story profiles the man who started the Chinese manufacturing company Foxconn, which was thrust into the spotlight after a string of suicides at one of its plants. Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Josh Tyrangiel visited the facility and talks about what he found.

  • Pay is slowly improving for workers at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant. The market responded with a near-6% drop in Foxconn shares.

  • The electronics company tries to take measures to prevent more worker suicides. The companies working with Foxconn — including Apple, HP and Dell — have pledged to investigate further into the matter.