Rob Schmitz (who was one of those suspicious about Mike Daisey's claims about Foxconn working conditions) gets inside a factory and gets filming.

Tim Gulpan, who been reporting on Foxconn and China for more than a decade:

In our reporting, as “Inside Foxconn” detailed, we found a group of workers who have complaints, but complaints not starkly different from those of workers in any other company. The biggest gripe, which surprised us somewhat, is that they don’t get enough overtime. They wanted to work more, to get more money.
Less than a year later, I went back again with another colleague.

We went inside the same Longhua campus in Shenzhen, which required Foxconn’s approval, and chatted with workers. We stood outside the gates (possibly the same gates where Daisey claimed he found underage workers), with Foxconn unaware we were there. We wandered farther into the local neighborhood shopping strip, among the bubble-tea stands and food vendors, where the young workers went on dates and caught up with friends. These weren’t Daisey-esque scenes of woe and horror.

Rather than forced labor and sweatshop conditions, workers told of homesickness and the desire to earn more money-two impulses that seemed to drive each other for workers planning to go home once they’d earned enough.

The echoes from the Foxconn report continue:

From Auret van Heerden, President and CEO of the Fair Labor Association, regarding the “five year conversation” with Apple: “The discussions began in April 2007 but stalled in March 2008. We then resumed them in April 2009 and decided to do a small pilot survey so that Apple could get an idea of how our tools might add value to their program. That pilot led to a second activity that I believe contributed to the decision to join the FLA at the end of 2011. I, of course, cannot speak for Apple but I do believe that the decision to join was probably taken some months before (and therefore well before) the New York Times articles.”

That is, Apple wasn't stampeded into this. All the clarifications are interesting. We're still awaiting Dell, Microsoft, HP and Nintendo's statements on Foxconn conditions.

This and more from Josh Topolsky:

Foxconn executive Louis Woo said that he would actually like it if Apple demanded that the company double the pay of factory employees. Your move, Apple.