NEW YORK: Consumer advocate Ralph Nader sent a letter to Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook urging the company to reduce its spending on share buybacks and use the money to raise wages, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The five-time presidential candidate wrote in a letter published by the paper that poverty wages and harmful conditions are “a consequence of tolerating outrageous stock buybacks.”

“‘Designed by Apple in California’ has a nicer ring to it than ‘assembled by workers paid about a dollar per hour, working 11-hour shifts, and sleeping eight to a room in the Jabil Circuit corporate dormitories in Wuxi, China’,” wrote Nader in the letter dated Oct 23.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2014