I wonder, are the reporters here genuinely concerned about improving workers lives, or are they mostly enjoying having some leverage over a mighty, powerful company?
If you're interested in this sort of thing, may I encourage you to watch a 3 part BBC series "Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts".<p>It follows 6 young fashionable Brits as they travel to India to spend 3 weeks living and working (almost) as the Indian people who make the clothes they wear. It was made in 2008, but is showing now in Australia on ABC2
Companies can automatize build process of chips with nanoscale precision, but somehow mice build+assembly can't be automatized or at least semi-automatized? Same goes for other users of chinese manufacturers like Apple/Foxconn. They consciously knew where they were getting their stuff from because it was cheaper and they knew why it was cheaper.<p>I don't know the economy behind it - but I can guess that robotization of, at least, most of the process would calculate itself in nicely over time. Come on, it's 2010 - Robots, where art thou?