Slashdot Mirror
Judging The Apple 'Sweatshop' Charge
jurgen writes "MacWorld summarizes an article published in the U.K., stating that Apple's iPods are made in China by women who work 15 hours/day, make $50/month, and have to pay half of that right back to the company for housing and food. The article also claims the workers live in dormitories where they are housed 100 per room, and are not allowed visitors." A Wired article looks at the same story, exploring the reliability of the Mail on Sunday's claims. From that article: "The situation is too murky for a rush to judgment on Apple's ethics here, and it may well meet minimum global standards. But for a company that has staked its image on progressive politics, Apple has set itself up as a potential lightning rod on global labor standards. Sweatshops came back to bite Nike after its customers rose up in arms; and Apple can expect a similar grilling from its upscale Volvo-driving fans in the months ahead."
I agree that Apple should have the opportunity to investigate and cancel their contracts if necessary before we crucify them. However, it should have investigated this company more thoroughly for human rights issues before it awarded the contract in the first place. For failing to do this, Apple indeed deserves some heat if these allegations are true.
Now that the allegations are out, Apple reputation as a "progressive" company relies on what they do next. If they ignore the allegations until they get too big, like Nike did, then their reputation will take a big hit. If they act immediately to investigate and take appropriate action, I think all will be forgiven and forgotten fairly quickly.
You asked:
From the Wired article:My impulse is to decry the fact these workers have to endure such work environments. However, after having visited China a few years ago I'm not surprised.
:-). I had the opportunity to stroll through a small electronics factory, and I was rather apalled at what I saw. In general it seemed like all industrial waste was dumped into the ground next to small farm lands. In a small room about the size of a walk-in closet I saw women scrubbing printed circuit boards with Methyl Ethyl Ketone. They wore no repirators or gloves. The MEK smell permeated throughout the factory. I know MEK sold in the US have those warning labels saying MEK can be the cause for serious health problems.
I visited southern China in one of the larger cities (not Nanjing or Shanghai though
Going through town I saw people driving BMWs and people living on the streets. There seems to be such a disparity between people who can afford some level of comfort and those who don't have anything. If you are living on the street it seemed like even having $10 (Chinese) for a whole month was enough to get by, according to some locals.
My point? Sadly enough it MAY be that these women may have a work environment than a lot of their peers. I can have my opinions after enjoying the benefits and expectations here in the US, and it's easy for me to apply those opinions to people living in other countries. I wish everyone was as rich and everyone had workplace safety rules. Unfortunately that's not how the world is.
Would I boycott Apple over this issue? Well, if I did that, then extension, I believe I'll have to boycott everying made in China, or perhaps everthing made overseas. I'll just have to judge myself a hypocrite because I enjoy the benefits of cheaper goods (or, to put it another way, I don't want to pay for expensive goods). Apple isn't alone in this. Take a look at all the products you see in any store. In particular, look all those little electronic accessories you see in Fry's or Best Buy.
Ah yes, the excuse of greedheads everywhere. Yes, we had factories with child labor. Do you know why we don't anymore? Was it because of the glories of the free market? No, it was because legislators, under pressure by those commie do gooders, made it illegal. So factory owners were forced to hire adults, and because they couldn't get adults at the same low wages they hired children, they had to raise wages. The result -- the kids could go to school, and everyone had more to eat.
China has the ultimate labor surplus. So long as workers can't organize (as is usually the case in Communist countries) and people in industrial countries keep making excuses the life of the average Chinese factory worker will be hell. And by keeping his wages low, you ensure even more outsourcing and a continuing transfer of wealth from working people everywhere to a small global elite.
I asked my Chinese co-worker who lived in Beijing all of her life, and she said that $50US/month (400 yuan) is very little money. She said that welfare (social assistance for the politically correct) in china pays roughly around 400 yuan/month. She said it's also possible that the workers come from rural areas, where farming pays very little. The women may earn more money in this situation than by working on their farm.
However, she said absolutely she thought the numbers would indicate that this was a sweatshop, and the term she was more inclined to use was "slave labour".
I have spent a lot of time near the area where the ipods are manufactured. It is a huge city that is almost entirely industrial park as far as the eye can see. It is a repeating pattern of factory, dorm, factory, dorm, on and on. The workers seem to make about a dollar a day and from the plant owners I talked to there is a labor shortage and they have to bid against other factories to get the better workers, the result of that bidding is about a dollar a day right now. That is why companies are starting to leave China and farm out work to other countries with cheaper labor. On they whole though, although the people live in dorms, they seemed to have a reasonable amount of buying power. At the plants I saw, it was not required that they lived in the dorms, but it was the cheapest way for them to live. All the consumer goods in China cost absolutely nothing so I would assume the people could buy a reasonable amount on a dollar a day. It sounds like the ipod plants are normal market-competative employers for the area.
I'm not going to defend working practices in China. They pale in contrast to Western standards. My issue is why this is news at all. Apple is not the first or last company to have products made overseas in sweatshops. If you really want to target a company, go after Walmart. They may not make any products overseas but they are one of the reasons many companies have moved manufacturing overseas. In order to do business with Walmart, a company has to continuously drive down cost as much as possible. For some companies they only way to save costs is to move manufacturing to China. Watch the Frontline episode Is Walmart Good for America? and make up your own mind.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Hear, hear!
I spent Aug 1973 to Aug 1974 in Thailand while in the USAF. A taxi driver there only earned $1000 per year. Shocking?
No. Said taxi driver only had to spend thirty bucks per month for rent, nothing for water or electricity or natural gas (because there wasn't any; water came from the sky and was stored in a rooftop cictern).
While in Thailand (no longer 3rd world, I hear) I could feed myself and three girlfriends in a nice restaraunt for a DOLLAR. This included 4 Pepsis!
You could rent a fishing boat for 18 hours, including driver, for ten bucks.
You could have lived like a king there for $5k/yr.
Interesting thing on that note, I was in Laos a week ago and the maximum a government worker can legally be paid is $50 a month. That is a salary CAP at $50 a month.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Yes. Did you?
FTFA:
The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month. So they're getting paid 1/5 of the median household income for the area, before their employer takes half of it for living expenses. Not to mention they're working 15 hour days, probably 6 days/week - or 4500 hours/year. In absolute terms, they're getting paid about $0.13 an hour.
The median annual household income for the US is about $50k. 20% of that is 10k, or $800/month. ($10k/year)/(4500 hours) = $2.22.
So, in relative terms, the people who made your ipod are getting paid the equivalent of $2.22 an hour, before the employer takes half for room and board.
In concluseion: you're wrong. Apple sucks.
hang brain.
China's "patriotic education" wasn't much of an education to begin with. Moreover, it wasn't a constantly provided benefit either. The education system was shut down during the mass insanity of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards, Deng Xiaoping changed the system in the 1980s to allow for achievement and merit to serve as factors determining admissions, and universal education was set as the goal of the education policy, but was never actually achieved. Educational management was then devolved to the regions, and government control grew laxer as regional variations grew. These were the deliberate policies of the CPC, not the sinister consquences of unbridled global capitalist vampires. Wikipedia's article. Healthcare is essentially similar: Wikipedia's article.
The "migration" of rural workers to cities is not the workers choice but the result of an official CPC policy of urbanization with the goal of achieving an urbanization rate analogous to that of developed countries. Once again, it's not global capitalism, but the official development policy of China itself that causes these changes.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
We're talking about a country in which schoolchildren are forced to make fireworks during school hours. I think it's unclear that the adults coming out of this sort of system are acting as rational agents any more than people who grew up in Jonestown were acting as rational agents. You're making some very Western assumptions about choice and free will.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
You might want to pick up a few books by Jane Jacobs from the 60's on. She describes in great detail why those types of incentives do not have long term benefits, and can infact harm the pre-existing economy. Her primary context was for trade between cities (economic regions) but since countries are made up of cities, it is true here as well.
Rod Taylor
Every time "voodoo" economics is brought up, nobody ever explains just how the upper 5% of the population will ever manage to "trickle down" anywhere near as effectively as middle class could do it.
BY INVESTMENT
Rich people don't put their money in pillow cases. (Well, maybe some do.) Rich people put their money into ventures which will allow their wealth to not only grow at a pace which matches or exceeds inflation, but also allows them to live off the profits & interest without dipping in to the principal. Any rich person would be foolish to live any other way.
This investment is what makes a healthy economy even possible.
In order to have a middle class, you need businesses to start up. In order for that to happen, you need an investor class to front the money.
Without rich people in your country, you have nobody to borrow from and nobody to bring in as investors. In other words, no way to raise the money to start a business. Off to the sweatshop with you, your vocational skills are useless to the world.
So no rich people means no middle class, which means poverty all around. That's the underlying concept behind supply-side economics. No voodoo required.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
From the CIO article below, median wage across China is around $120 USD/m.
= 2
http://www.cio.com/archive/101505/china.html?page
Financial Times reported Shenzen minimum wages around $100 USD/m according to this link:
http://www.danielgross.net/
So your # seems a little high. But the $50 USD/m quoted in the parent article seems too low. It would be illegal.
The Longhua plant is in Shenzhen, where the median annual household income is about 24000 RMB, or about $3000 US, or $250/month.
Care to link your source? Or shall I do it for you? A median income of $80US / mo is a lot less than your stated $250.
In a somewhat related vein, I work with a lot of Indians who have moved to the US within the past 10 years to earn money to either send home now or save to retire back to India later. Many of them have told me that $12-$15K a year is a king's ransom in India, they could retire very easily on little money. When I asked why a business could not open a factory or office there and pay these "low" wages and provide good benefits, the response is always that the local governments and/or businesses would find a way to shut them down to prevent unrest from other workers who would want the same benefits. Every argument I put forward to counter this was shot down, explained with "it's a systemic problem".
While sympathetic to what is going on in China's manufacturing plants now, I know it's not a new or easily solvable problem. I don't see US citizens demanding products made solely in the US under US bylaws and protections, and am further unmoved by peoples' outcry (what was that you said? "Apple sucks"?) when they go half-cocked on a summary of an unread report of US labor law violations in a foreign country.
All -
Based on what I know about labor costs in China at present, these charges don't hold up.
For background, factory workers (usually young women), are not so surprisingly in short supply and high demand in the manufacturing areas of the PRC these day.
Given this situation, they are demanding better wages and working conditions. The wages and working conditions are no where near what I have seen in the last 10 years of working with China and bear no resemblance to what is the market now.
1. Wages
Wages for factory workers are actually above those of recent college graduates (there is a glut of college graduates). A good college grad can expect to make 1500 to 2000 RMB (about USD 180 to 250) starting out. A factory work will make 1800 to 2400 RMB.
2. Room & Board Chargs
As part of the job package in China, a factory work receives housing and food. They aren't charged for these.
3. Housing Conditions
By and large they are college like and are above the average for Chinese housing for young adults who are living at home.
Based on my first hand knowledge of China, I have to heavily discount the claims in this article and question the rest of it.
Yours,
Jordan
They live in dorms next to the factory, so travel to and from work takes 5 minutes. They likely don't work 15 hour days *every* day, just during crunch periods. (At least, that was my experience when I was working at/with such a factory.) The people doing this are young single women, probably 16-20ish, so they don't have kids yet. It's transitional employment, kind of like working at McDonalds here only far, far more lucrative by the standards of the town the workers come from - they are probably earning more than their parents, sending money home to support the family. (Plus gaining valuable job experience that will enable them to get a higher-paying job later.)
I play Nerd-Folk!
As someone who work with vendors in China. Factory have trouble getting as much labor as they need. It's pushing wages to about $220, free room & board. With overtime pay for night and sundays. With the factories so close to each other, places don't offer the average amount can't survive.