14 DAY TRIAL // As promised, the members of Change.org and SumOfUs.org took Apple Retail Stores by storm yesterday with 245,000 petition signatures in their hands, targeting unfair labor practices at Apple’s overseas partners.
Members of the two protests groups delivered petitions to several stores across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia yesterday, including locations in Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore.
An Apple Store employee who backs the Apple Retail Workers Union (seeking better treatment from their employers) was also present at one of the stores in the United States.
“I was there to show solidarity,” Cory Moll told Cult of Mac. “[I want to] get my name behind that effort as well as the name of the Apple Retail Workers Union… though the issues we’re facing are a far cry from what the workers in China face,” he said.
On Twitter, he said “I often think I'm nuts for doing what I do. But every email I read and every chat I get to have, makes me feel I'm doing the right thing.”
Cnet has some video coverage of the protesters’ “assault” on Apple’s stores yesterday.
According to Moll, the protest started at 10 am at every Apple Store visited by the two groups. By 10:32, Moll said all was “quiet again,” at the San Francisco store he works in.
Apple has been heavily criticized for not enforcing its notorious attention to detail onto partners like Foxconn who reportedly treat their workers like machines.
Foxconn, for its part, has received tons of bad press over worker suicides, several explosions at its iPad manufacturing plants, and other incidents.
Reports describing the harsh working conditions at Foxconn are getting more and more attention as Apple has posted its most profitable quarter yet, netting tens of billions of dollars in profit.
