The Apple Boycott: People Are Spouting Nonsense about Chinese Manufacturing
The wikipedia article on sweatshops does a good job of covering both sides of this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop
The pro-sweatshop argument is encapsulized in this example:
In an article about a Nike sweatshop in Vietnam, Johan Norberg wrote, "But when I talk to a young Vietnamese woman, Tsi-Chi, at the factory, it is not the wages she is most happy about. Sure, she makes five times more than she did, she earns more than her husband, and she can now afford to build an extension to her house. But the most important thing, she says, is that she doesn't have to work outdoors on a farm any more... Farming means 10 to 14 hours a day in the burning sun or the intensive rain... The most persistent demand Nike hears from the workers is for an expansion of the factories so that their relatives can be offered a job as well."
The contra argument seems dominated by appeals to emotion ala Mike Daisey:
"_____ can't even afford to buy the ipad he makes",
"_____ only makes X dollars an hour/day/week/month/year."
"X workers were injured/killed in this accident"
"workers often have to work overtime"
"workers have to stand"
I think Mike Daisey should spend some time in rural China with the relatives of Foxconn employees who do backbreaking farm work. But who would go to see that show without "Steve Jobs" in the title?
>"If not to buy Apple, what’s the substitute – Samsung? Don’t you know that Samsung’s products are from its OEM factory in Tianjin? Samsung workers’ income and benefits are even worse than those at Foxconn. If not to buy iPad – (do you think) I will buy Android Pad? Have you ever been to the OEM factories for Lenovo and ASUS? Quanta, Compaq … factories of other companies are all worse than those for Apple. Not to buy iPod – (do you think) I will buy Aigo, Meizu? Do you know that Aigo’s Shenzhen factory will not pay their workers until the 19th of the second month? If you were to quit, fine, I’m sorry, your salary will be withdrawn. Foxconn never dares to do such things. First, their profit margin is higher than peers as they manufacture for Apple. Second, at least those foreign devils will regularly audit factories. Domestic brands will never care if workers live or die. I am not speaking for Foxconn. I am just speaking as an insider of this industry, and telling you some disturbing truth."
This doesn't excuse Apple or any of the other companies working with Foxconn, but it suggests that there are many sides of this issue, and many voices yet to be heard on it: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/01/many-chine...
Isn't it an Xbox Boycott? A Dell Boycott? An HP Boycott?
It's annoying when journalists (NY Times in this case) hang their story on the Foxconn client doing the most to keep track of working conditions, just because Apple is a name that gets readers.
More to the point, as the article recounts, it's not clear Foxconn is China's worst problem. It seems it's even safer to work there than in America.
"Read" this infographic: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lym1w8YedI1qbv2gy.png
The problem that Apple is experiencing is the exposure of the tension between its marketing and its image, and reality.
The author of the article says, "That’s what being poor means, having to work extremely hard to make very little. Yes, that is a harsh thing to say but then reality can indeed be harsh."
No one would deny that reality can be harsh. At the same time, you can't deny that Apple - and, of course, the other electronics companies - does not truthfully convey that reality to its customers. Doing so would not be in Apple's best interest. However, if this boycott succeeds, it would demonstrate that having this tension between reality and image is also not in Apple's best interest.
The article also makes the standard corporatist argument that the behaviour of corporations is outside of their control, because they are subject to market forces.
This tact ignores the human factor. Apple is made up of humans. It is not humanly impossible to demand that a supplier adhere to higher standards than are prevalent in the rest of China.
Setting that aside, let's examine the issue purely from the standpoint of the marketplace, but rather than looking at the Chinese labour marketplace, let's look at the American consumer goods marketplace.
Humans respond to a variety of different factors when making purchasing decisions. It is not just about price and quality, but can also be about morality and emotion. In this instance, Apple's customers may be persuaded to boycott Apple because of these subjective factors.
That may seem unfair to some, but isn't that just a risk of globalization? After all, a global company must deal with market forces everywhere it operates: both market forces affecting who makes its products, and market forces affecting who purchases them.
Apple will be forced to balance these market forces, and when it does so, it may result in lower profit margins but better working conditions at its suppliers' factories.
I am sick and tired of hearing how the suicides are no big deal because they are less than the national average.
1) You don't know the non-jumping suicide rate. There could be plenty of workers who take their lives privately in their dormitories.
2) Jumping off a roof of your workplace is a VERY different type of suicide then swallowing a bunch of pills. It's making a statement about who the employer is and what they have driven the employee to do. There would be a national alarm if we had 18 blue-collar workers jump off the roofs of a GM plant.
China is undergoing the biggest urbanization in history. More and more people are moving from the country side to the city to find work, make more money and improve their standard of living. As already mentioned in this thread, the jobs available at the likes of Foxconn are better paid, and probably safer than other alternatives available to a semi / unskilled worker.
Let me put it another way - a child of a worker employed at Foxconn now will have better opportunities in the future (with access to better schooling, more money) than the child of a poor farmer in the country side. I believe a similar sort of change happened in most industrialized countries during periods of rapid industrialization. Perhaps some of the people considering a boycott of Apple's products have a great grandparent who moved to the city and worked long hours for "low pay" about a hundred years ago!
>"That’s what being poor means, having to work extremely hard to make very little."
"Being poor" means not having very much money.
Working extremely hard to make very little, when one does not care for the work and has little practical alternative is being exploited.
This is or is not to say that Apple or Foxconn is exploiting the workers.
The argument attributed to Krugman is essentially the same argument that was advanced in opposition to divestiture in apartheid South Africa in the 1980's - that economic exploitation is better than change.
Well Apple and Foxconn are swiftly constructing a vast manufacturing installation in Brazil right now. Several actually. So now maybe everyone will stop complaining about working conditions. But I doubt it.
Of course...maybe they will just start complaining about the D@#N Brazilians stealing our jobs. Somehow I think complaining is just part of what people in the developed world do.
Call me heartless... a job needs doing. Someone is doing it.
If Apple ran these factories then yes, boycott them. However they don't. They hire Chinese companies to put their products together.
This is a China problem not an Apple problem. China can introduce work standards, maximum working hours, minimum pay etc. Contracts can then be renegotiated or whatever.
As things stand though the factories are supplying jobs to those who need jobs. If the jobs weren't required the people wouldn't be doing them.
Is the situation good? No. However, this is an issue for the Chinese Government. You introduce law's, factories follow laws, working conditions improve.
It would be bad business for Apple to narrow its margins in such a competitive market to provide better working conditions than the majority of other shithole factories in China.
The issue is not about economics, it's about morality. His economic arguments are sound, this is indeed how capitalism works. Apple (and many others) have made a decision to introduce a level of indirection - the Foxconn people are legally not Apple employees, but for all practical intents and purposes, they are.
Just like pollution, gross worker exploitation has been largely eliminated in the first world* and has just been relocated to the third world.
The question is whether Apple and the consumers who support them should morally continue on their path.
* "largely eliminated" does not mean that there is not significant abuse, just that as a percentage of the employed population, it's historically very small
LOL
As if Apple is the root of all problems. As if Foxconn only manufacture products from Apple. As if people are FORCED to work in those conditions. As if they DONT have a choice of not working there.
And i am sorry peeps, what happen if Apple suddenly decide to double pay Foxconn? What happens if EVERYONE double pay them? Would those people get double their salary?
And it is great that Foxconn are now considering using Advance robotics instead, more people Jobless, more people suffer.
Oh, and i forgot, American has once been through this stage as well, and looking from the web it is obvious they dont teach history there.
We should just have tariffs on imports that don't meet our labor and environmental standards.
There's an Apple boycott? First I have heard of it.
I don't get it. How is it NOT a valid point of concern that Apple has 70% margins on some products that are produced by extreme low income workers under bad conditions?
This is a load of crap. I think this attitude of justifying someone's wrong doing by pointing out that everyone else is doing it, is just hypocrisy. On the other hand I cant agree with people lashing out on apple because of this practice, although i do disagree with the practice in the first place. I will tell you why this seemingly contradictory stand isn't contradictory at all.
The practice of exploiting someone else's weaknesses for one's own advantage is widely spread and even sanctioned by some societies in general (implicitly and sometimes less so), the bottom of the problem is not tech companies abusing poor workforce, it is the general lack of consensus as to what is fair and what is not. Singling out a single actor from the flock is also unfair (such as is the case today with Apple - and just because they are so successful-). Not is it only unfair, it is counter productive because it will hurt apple and in no way do any good to the chinese workers.
Now, we want to fix the problem? Then we need to first figure out what the fuss is all about, and i say that is easy!
This entire argument, it looks to me, boils down to fairness. The question of What is Fair, and what is not (or evil if you will). It is not a new argument, for ages people have tried to settle on a general agreement on what it is to be leading the good life. Religions were built around this and constitutions were designed for that as well; the social contract that defines who we are as Americans, Chinese, Arabs, French, Christians, Muslims etc.... It has however been very difficult to bring all these people to agree together to one single approach to life, and so over eons people have "siloed" each with their own "moral code".
And i say companies (including apple) have all abided by these contracts and are not abusing any of their compatriots. So in essence they are not in violation of anything. Why? simply because the "abused" -by western standards- people you are concerned about are not being abused in America, but in China, and what's more? Their treatment is not considered to be abuse in China, it is legal THERE.
This is horrifying, because it is cool to indirectly abuse someone overseas as long as you treat your compatriots fairly? I say not, but in order to make it un-cool we need to agree to a new universal bill of ethics where things are more defined and definitive like What is a minimum fair working condition universally.
What now?
I think it is time for tech companies that have made billions (including apple) to take a step back and ponder their moto "we do stuff that changes the world", add to it " ... to be a better place for all" and apply it on all the aspects of their business. This new bill of ethics once finalsed can be "ratified" by these monster companies and others will follow. The reason i am specifically speaking of tech companies it because i know tech and the hacker spirit and i can assert that there is a general good will and faith to make the world a better place, and since the world has given us, and still is, great things and lots of appreciation, the industry and community is mature enough ,now, to start giving back and leading by example.
At best, forcing developing countries to adhere to our labor standards would create a privileged labor aristocracy, leaving the poor majority no better off.
I'm tired of this apologist bullshit. It's been showing up in HN articles for weeks now.
Yes, I understand the concept that the standard and cost of living are lower in China. I understand that it may be better to have children working than starving on the streets. I understand that rural farm life in China is terrible.
That is absolutely no excuse for keeping people in near-slave conditions. That is no excuse for allowing people to be maimed (by machinery and by non-stop repetitive, back-to-back 12 - 16 hour shifts) with no compensation. That is no excuse for allowing people to be blacklisted if they make any complaint about working conditions.
Apple is now sitting on $100 billion and still telling us that their products could never be manufactured in the US. Hilariously, one reason they cite is that you can't find a fab plant right next to a glass plant. Guess what? Build them both in the US, pay reasonable US wages, and provide reasonable US working conditions.
If Apple's success requires that 8,000 people be put instantly onto production lines for insanely long shifts, day after day until their bodies fall apart, then their products should not exist.
From the article:
> Boycotting Apple for better Foxconn wages and conditions is like having sex for virginity. Entirely counter-productive and exactly the wrong thing to be doing.
Oh thank God we as a consumer society are trying to sweep this issue under the rug. It's starting to ruin the enjoyment of my Apple products.
Those so called hard working conditions where poor Chinese people work 16 hour days 7 days a week in unsafe conditions until they're literally crippled... they should be grateful they even have a job.
What are these workers expecting? Compassion? Sorry. They were born in the wrong country. God bless America!
The sooner we can rationalize this issue away, the better. I don't need the guilt trip, and I sure as hell don't need the inconvenience.
i wouldn't expect less from an economist. just hear his paradoxes:
1st he quotes: "First of all, even if we could assure the workers in Third World export industries of higher wages and better working conditions, this would do nothing for the peasants, day laborers, scavengers, and so on who make up the bulk of these countries’ populations. "
tl;dr: even if you raise those workers pay, it will do nothing for the other workers in the country
2nd he concludes: "Wages paid to manufacturing workers in China are not determined by the productivity of those specific workers. They are not determined by US wages, by the profits that Apple makes nor even by the good intentions of the creative types that purchase Apple products. They are determined by the wages paid by other jobs in China and that is itself determined by the average level of productivity across the Chinese economy."
tl;dl: the workers are paid poorly because everyone in the coutry is badly paid.
see what he did there?
he just used the cause of the problem as a consequence and dismissed it!
boycott apple (and others!) so that those specific workers wage will rise to please public opinion, and with that, the wage of everyone else will also rise!
