Yesterday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. After several outrageously profitable years of growth, Apple now has over 98 billion dollars - that's $98,000,000,000 - in cash reserves. Financial magazines and wall street investors are abuzz with questions about what Apple will do with its giant 'war chest'. Many are hopeful that Apple will choose to use it's money to pay a rare dividend to it's shareholders. That is, part of their 98 billion dollars would be given back to the people who own stock in Apple. But, instead of using this giant sum of money to pay out more to the 1%, why hasn't anyone suggested Apple use it's money to pay the workers who make their products? In the past fiscal quarter, that's three months time, Apple sold over 37 million iPhones, and 15 million iPads. And unfortunately, the story of how those 52 million iPhones and iPads are made isn't as pretty as the devices themselves are. Here's an article from the New York Times about what conditions are like for workers who make iPhones and iPads: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html We all love Apple products -- we all love Apple. But it's time for Apple to give back to the people who made Apple great, instead of the 1%. Although Steve Jobs was a genius, he couldn't have made Apple what is is without all of these workers who have sacrificed so much. And it's time for Apple, a company that makes on average almost $500,000 each year off over every person it employs, to give back. So we, the undersigned, are asking Apple to use it's immense cash reserves to pay a dividend to its workers, both here in America, and abroad, including those foreign workers who work indirectly for Apple through its supply chain.

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