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Some Critics Suggest Apple Boycott Over Chinese Working Conditions
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that Apple's image is taking a dive after revelations in the NY Times about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers and the dreaded word 'boycott' has started to appear in media coverage of Apple's activities. 'Should consumers boycott Apple?' asked a column in the Los Angeles Times as it recounted details of the bad PR fallout amid detailed allegations that workers at Foxconn suffered in conditions that resembled a modern version of bonded labor, working obscenely long shifts in unhealthy conditions with few of the labor rights that workers in the west would take for granted." Read on, below.
Pickens continues: "But Apple has come out fighting, which is no surprise given the remarkable success that the company has seen in recent years with its reputation for 'cool' among hip urban professionals and a generally positive corporate image. In a lengthy email sent to Apple staff, chief executive Tim Cook met the allegations head-on. 'We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern,' Cook said. He went on to slam critics of the company. 'Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us ... accusations like these are contrary to our values.' So will we see some kind of movement to boycott Apple products, akin to the campaign several years ago to pressure Nike to improve working conditions in its factories asks Sam Gustin in Time Magazine? "You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards," an anonymous current Apple executive told the Times. "And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.""
If the sheer number of Apple devices at any given Occupy protest are any indication, it would seem the professional protestors who usually lead this kind of thing are going to bend over backwards to give Apple a free pass on just about anything. Christ, there were Occupy protestors CRYING the day Steve Jobs died--even as they rallied against our corporate overlords (with no sense of the irony at all). So unless you can sell them on the idea that Tim Cook has somehow corrupted their beloved Apple in the last few months, I would say your chances are pretty much nil.
And this isn't meant as flamebait. Seriously, go to an Occupy protest sometime and just look at the sheer number of Mac's, iPhones, and iPads you'll see. It's fucking creepy. They've been for shit at organizing on any other point, but they've apparently almost all agreed on at least *one* thing.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
To those who have been watching Apple for years, this is just a long list of transgressions that make it obvious to avoid Apple.
- Walled gardens, vendor lock in
- Taking down applications from the App Store and including versions in iOS
- Spurious litigation and anti-competitive lawsuits in Germany and Australia
- CarrierIQ, GPS tracking privacy gaffes
- Planned failure just after warranty period (ever since the original pod)
When you think of products that are so anti consumer (not necessarily anti-usability), Apple comes to mind. As for many here, it's just business as usual as I will never buy an Apple product (especially after the first pod) anyway.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Wow. Poor working conditions in a Chinese factory? I'd never have guessed.
The question is, how does this compare to other factories in China? Better or worse? Because if the working conditions at Apple's Chinese partners are on par with or better than the conditions at other Chinese factories, then we had better boycott *all* Chinese-produced products and not just those shiny Apple toys.
Yay! Linux is free... but it still runs on hardware produced in a Chinese factory.
What a ridiculous article to single out Apple when all the manufacturers take advantage of cheap labor. This has been going on for hundreds of years and is really nothing new.
Unless everyone is willing to spend a significant more on almost product (tech or non-tech based) this won't change.
These articles regarding Apple's labour practices have been fairly regular for years, now. It's not that many people did not know about it; it's that many people choose not to care about it.
Exactly. Because even though we know Apple's workers conditions are shit, we have no idea how other phone manufacturers fare. Like with all other tech in the mainstream press, if it's not Apple, it just isn't a story.
All of these articles about Apple's supply chain seem to ignore one fact: Apple's aren't the only products made in these factories.
Want to boycott horrific working conditions? Stop buying everything. Even Made in America products have parts or raw materials from overseas sweatshops. Electricity in the United States is typically powered by coal, which routinely ignores safety regulations.
The problem isn't Apple. The problem is lax governmental regulation that allows this to happen. Want to stop Apple from using sweatshops? Want to stop Google and Facebook from tracking your every move? Make it illegal, and enforce the damned law.
I am really confused about this. My Android handset was made in China under Foxconn like condition if not at Foxconn itself. If we are going to boycott Apple on this, shouldn't we boycott every Android handset\tablet, along with a shit ton of other electronics that we all know and use daily?
Seriously, I don't understand why boycott just apple on this. Shouldn't we boycott ALL chinese manufactured electronics? A broader movement maybe?
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"All these other plants are horrible as well so we should just accept the perhaps slightly less horribleness of Apple's plant conditions."
Nope. If true (and it very well could be), that means the problem is bigger, which means we need to fight harder to solve it, not just roll over.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"And this isn't meant as flamebait. "
And yet it is.
Apple isn't getting a free pass, a lot of people are just not very well informed about the matter. Now that Apple's manufacturing practices are becoming better known, there is a growing back lash. Will it last? Maybe, maybe not. The truth is that the electronic devices like smart phones, computers and tablets are a part of everyday life in the US for a very large part of the population. Convincing people that they need to pay more for these devices isn't an easy cause to champion.
I am not even sure what the point of your comment was outside of a thinly veiled stab at a political movement that you obviously disagree with. Should everyone give a free pass to Apple just because you produced an anecdote that occupy protesters use too many apple devices?
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I used to think that people wanted American products without American price tags. Apple has convinced me that the problem is a lot more difficult to define. People will pay outrageous prices for certain things, but everything else has to be dirt cheap.
Just searching for "apple margin iphone" shows that they are taking maybe 35%, down from 60% earlier. I find it hard to believe that hiring US workers would bring it down considerably. The design and development cost wouldn't change, just the profit margin.
Of course, the stock is ridiculously high due to these margins, so some Americans are benefitting. The ones who already have money to invest, that is.
Alot of what was mentioned in the NY Times is new information. Describing worker dormitories, describing what Apple expected from the company to make a last minute product line changes; quoting Apple executives praising the working conditions.
Combined with this news and Apple's 4Q financial reports, show's Apple in a very bad light. A very profitable company that doesn't care about the conditions of workers.
The problem is the companies are attracted to the WalMart prices for labor... or more precisely, "manufacturing services." The companies pay for results and get them. It doesn't matter that they murder kittens in those facilities does it?
The boycott, if any, should be against China... more specifically, Chinese manufacturing. This is precisely how they can cost so little. If they were to raise their standards, they would be more expensive and suddenly less attractive. And the only real way around this is to call for government support and sanctions.
The US government is well aware of the conditions in China. They still have favored nation status where trading is concerned. Everyone wants their WalMart prices badly enough to look away when faced with violations of human rights and simply bad and unhealthy working conditions.
These cost savings enjoyed by Apple doesn't seem to translate well into lower prices though...
What's idiotic about this is that every tech company gets its products made by the same factories. Why are they proposing boycotting apple, not boycotting all tech companies?
Oh, that's right, because boycotting all tech companies would be impossible to make happen, and apple are an easy scapegoat.
Apple's margins are 40-50% in some of their devices, and by accepting the profit margins common thoughout the industry, or marginally increasing their own prices, they could all be built in the US. Instead of being a good citizen (corporations are people too!) and helping get our economy back on its feet by increasing domestic manufacturing, Apple is simply pocketing the difference. That's why they have one hundred billion dollars in the bank.
Additionally, Apple is very brand conscious. If people start boycotting and picketing Apple Stores, the protest could actually work. The other manufacturers like Lenovo and Dell and Microsoft have some retail presence, but nothing like Apple.
Actually, we have a very good idea, in the exact same factories covered in the articles, are Dell production lines, and Nokia production lines... We know exactly what the conditions are like, because they all use the exact same giant factories. Which just makes a call to boycot apple alone retarded.
Some recent article about Steve Jobs quoted an Apple executive saying paying US wages in mainland China (instead of $17/day) would only increase the price of an iPad by $70.
And if you were going to pay US wages you could always, I don't know, build the damn thing in America?
I'm not exactly a Buy American nazi, but if the flagship products of greenwashing high-end manufacturers can't be built here, then what can?
Just to play Devil's Advocate here, while you may be willing to pay $70 more does that mean everyone else will? A standard of living is effectively defined as being how much money you make versus how much of that money you have to spend to acquire goods. To pay more for electronics is tantamount to a decrease in the standard of living for westerners, and no one is going to be in favor of giving up their standard of living.
Heath and safety is expensive.
In china, someone dies, you have a funeral.
In the USA, someone dies, you have a court case, a huge investigation going on for months, and the media turns and bites you.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
A Chinese commenter to the NYT site said that if people had known the lives of these people prior to Foxconn, they would come to the opposite condition and call Apple philanthropists.
How long before people American's can't afford the product at "Made in China" prices? If nobody has a job. the boycott will come to Apple. Like it or not.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
It may be true that all products from China are produced under similar conditions so the people building samsungs and acers have it just as bad as those building iStuff. However, some of Apple's success is attributed to the massive quantities they purchase and how they hold great power over manufacturers to drive their cost down. I'd say this also makes apple the most effective target for a boycott. Their control as the single buyer of vast numbers of parts puts them in the unique position to be able to improve working conditions. Instead of saying "we'll buy 50,000,000 LCD screens if you reduce the cost by 3% or sell to us exclusively" they could say "we'll buy 50,000,000 screens if you stop making workers live in pens and let them have friends/unionize". Of course, the only reason they would do such a crazy thing would be because of a massive boycott. It would seem that if you care about how your stuff is made, your best bet is to go after the biggest fish.
Ah so you state that people are not totally consitent in their behavior. While they have accepted that corporations are not working in the public interest (at least their motivation is not the public interest, but their own pockets), they are still bound by their desires and wishes and they live out their projections. This is definitely true. but it is true for all of us. Some people even do not accept simple facts, like we have an energy consuption and a resource consumption problem. And we have to change our way or it will become problematic to have such thing as our present society.
The real thing is, we have to change (not the others, if we wait for them, they will wait for us). Meaning I have to change how I live. And you should change how you live. And doing these changes are hard. And yes we should thin twice buying anything from Apple again as long they have that production agenda and they have their locked plattforms. However, it might be complicated, because Samsung, HTC and others manufacture their devices i nthe same or similar shops.
The best thing to do, do not buy a new phone unless the old is broken. And if possible, replace the battery if you can instead of throwing the thing away.
The good thing about that occupy movement (as far as I can see it from over here), they might be open to arguments. Therefor, they might understand the arguments againts Apple.
You know what will fix this and bring jobs back to the USA? Accountability.
Accountability for what your outsourced partner is doing, accountability for the third party you hire, and accountability for their working conditions on the same level with the USAs internal standards.
Boycott? pppffttt... how about real punishment.
I note that few of the Apple fanbois have chosen to defend Apple here. Rather they just bleat that 'everyone does it', as though that's ever been much of a justification for appalling behaviour.
And Apple's not alone on this. Dell, HP, Sony, Microsoft ( Xbox360 ) all use Foxconn as well. I'm not being an Apple apologist... I believe that Apple knew full well what it was getting in to and the new plant in Brazil is an effort to distance themselves from Foxconn, but that's not enough. Apple should be taking a stand and stopping this treatment of workers. It's not their fault... that's Foxconn's faul and China's fault, but Apple should use its prowess to make change.
( And FYI All that info about worker dormatories etc isn't new.. The Register has done multiple pieces on the horrible working conditions for years... since 2006 even. )
Western countries, and particularly the UK during the first heady rush of the Industrial Age, had working practices that would horrify the most suicidal Foxconn worker while they moved from a rural to an industrial economy. The USA actually practiced slavery during this period of their development. This is nothing new and while it is horrible, it's an essential part of the development of an economy.
The only thing a developing country can do to lure investment from the more developed economies is sell cheap labour. Luckily, there is a progression from cheap labour to educated workforce that means it's usually only a single generation that has to work in conditions like this. Korea is the best most recent example, where the younger generation are firmly building a knowledge economy on the back of the education that their parent's factory work paid for. [citation coming if I can be bothered digging it out]
You can see a pattern of modern manufacturers chasing cheap labour moving around the globe, building factories and industrial knowledge and infrastructure, then moving on as the local workforce becomes more knowledgeable and expensive. It does leave behind a country that is industrialised and capable of building a manufacturing base that doesn't rely on cheap labour and has better working conditions.
If we insisted that all labour in developing countries was paid the same wage as the average US or European worker, and had similar working conditions, healthcare, life expectancy, educational prospects, and so on, then no developing country could afford to develop. We would be stuck with a developed world that had all the money and an undeveloped world that could never compete or take part in the global economy, wedged forever in a poverty trap that they couldn't get out of.
So yes, bizarrely, it's a good thing that Chinese workers are working under horrific working conditions, just like our great-great-grandparents were, so that they can bring up kids like us who won't have to.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Tim Cook met the allegations head-on:
'Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us ... accusations like these are contrary to our values.'
There you have it, "we care because we say we care, and therefore those workers are obviously cared for." Wow, Tim, way to keep the reality distortion field alive!
Boycotting apple is a good idea, yes everyone is using the same factories but it is unrealistic to boycott everyone at the same time. So why not pick the bully in the group and lay him out? Apple is used by people who claim to care, so force apple to care. Then once they are forced into it, move the next company down the line. I bet it would not take long and no one would be using the appealing worker conditions.
just my thoughts on the situation - Vlad
Why is Apple being singled out, anyway? Is the implication that Apple is worse than EVERY OTHER electronics-manufacturing company? I can't remember the last time I bought something electronic NOT made in China (my old Fujitsu laptop was made in Japan... can't think of anything else)
Now that Apple is popular and trendy, any mention of Apple in a news story is sure to attract attention, clicks, viewership, listeners, etc. News media doesn't care about working conditions in China any more than the average American, otherwise they'd be complaining about/to every tech company in the country. They just want the ratings that come with putting "Apple" in a story.
On the other hand, if any company were to take an active stance on the working conditions of its production labor, I really think it'll be Apple. A couple years back when environmentalists picked up the "let's pick on Apple to gain attention" tactic, Apple responded with efforts to make their products greener and promote recycling. Obviously international labor laws aren't as easy to fix but Apple cares enough about its customers' opinions and its image to try.
Thanks for posting this so I didn't have to.
Apple doesn't outsource engineers or tech support overseas, so they aren't above spending money on American employees. There aren't any companies in America that can produce 10,000 devices a day like Foxconn. This is the main reason Apple (and like you said, EVERY OTHER TECH COMPANY ON THE PLANET) uses them.
"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
I don't think we consumers can get out our responsibility quite that easily.
You can throw in MIcrosoft as well http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-10-workers-at-xbox-360-plant-threaten-mass-suicide
plus pretty much every other gadget and consumer electronics company...
I don't have any Apple products. You can't call me a blind fan. I felt nothing the day Jobs died.
But how is it just Apple that's being singled out here? WE PRACTICALLY GET EVERYTHING FROM CHINA and somehow ONLY APPLE is the offender?
I'll go ahead and give it to you... down with corporate interests!! Booo corporations! HAVE ANY OF YOU ASS HATS HEARD OF WALMART?!!! Shit, name a corporation of note that isn't deep into China's questionable manufacturing practices. Boycotting Apple is stupid you need to start thinking a lot bigger than that. Next time you go to the store try and restrict your purchases to products not made in China. Also buy a globe and a few text books to figure out if you can buy from most other Asian countries without contributing to the poor working conditions.
Fuck'n Americans are stupid. You can't even respond to this post without using something that doesn't have a "Made in China" stamp on it. Get a fucking clue already.
Like most protest movements, anti-Apple activism is likely unproductive and too focused.
HP, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle... do you really think all the other tech companies are innocent in such matters? Given that the problem extends beyond the tech sector -- are you willing to boycott your refrigerator, or your car, or your shirt? Picking on Apple is targeting an easy mark, one that probably has more to do with disliking Apple's image than it does with any real desire to help people.
I don't own or buy Apple products for a lot of reasons. Their use of asian semi-slave factories will not be solved by a boycott, simply because most people don't give a rat's rump. Consumers want their cheap toys, and the "don't give a shitters" outnumber indignant Slashdotters by hundreds of thousands to one.
If you feel that boycotting Apple is some sort of stand against naughtiness, knock yourself out. Delude yourself that buying an Android phone or a Samsung computer makes you holier the Jobs' army..
However, if you want to make a difference, get involved in the political process, as people did with SOPA/PIPA. Make a stink on the broader issue of companies selling product created by near-slave labor in dangerous facilities.Anything less is playing at activism, as if it were a shiney toy, puffing your ego because "I'm doign something" that costs you little and helps the problem even less.
All about me
Take a good look at this.. this is how was here in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And that is what all the political class wants to go back too.
Ok, you are Apple. It's 2005, and you are building a new phone, and you think demand for it will be huge. You know you need it made for market in 2007, i.e. in two years. What do you do?
a) Start building a new factory in USA paying for everything UP FRONT. You'll be lucky if you get planning permissions & foundations for the factory done in 2 years, never mind complete tooling and the people to run it. Besides shipping times for components that are already being made in china are 35 days. So if you find out that chip X needs to be changed to chip Y because of some issue, you'll have to wait for 35 days to get a shipment of chip Y. Shipping components by plane costs 10x more and is unfeasible.
b) Contract it out to Foxconn. They have the factory and the people to run it RIGHT NOW. It's tried. It's tested. It works. If your phone is successful, they'll get more factory space and people on manufacturing it in a matter of days or weeks, not months. Components are shipped by train or truck over a matter of hours or days. You don't have to pay them much until manufacturing starts.
What would you do if you were Steve Jobs?
I'm all for getting as much of manufacturing as possible done by robots. I haven't worked in a car factory, but I imagine robots are LESS flexible than people, so if you want to do a new model 6 months later, you'd find it very hard to reconfigure the factory to produce it. I believe having a robotic factory FLEXIBLE is possible, but right now its probably hard and expensive. And even then for electronic devices, unless all of your suppliers are in USA, it is not going to happen.
--Coder
They're singled out because they're the most visible. That's the price you pay for being at the head of the pack. If they don't like it - maybe they should do something about the factory conditions.
"Everybody else is doing it" wasn't a valid defense when you were 7, and it's not a valid defense when you're running a giant corporation.
No, that won't work. The regulatory regime in this country is simply too overbearing. Compliance is too expensive. Get Apple to switch away from Foxconn, and they will just move to another Chinese manufacturer, likely one that treats its workers better. Raise a ruckus over Chinese manufacturers, and they will move to some other country other than America. It will be hard to complain when they move to Germany, where the regulatory regime is industry friendly even with high taxes and high wages.
You know what will fix this and bring jobs back to the USA?
Nothing. Steve Jobs was right. Those jobs aren't coming back, and not just because of wages. Tim Cook sold Jobs on moving the manufacturing to China for a number of reasons, many which make sense (one huge reason is that America has largely abandoned the kind of job training that makes both good electronics assembly workers and the foremen that oversee them). There's a pretty good podcast here laying out most of the justifications. It sucks, but it'll likely never change. The change in education, labor laws, and factory investments would be so huge... in the trillions of dollars, on a truly industry-wide and nation-wide scale... that it'll almost certainly never happen.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"otherwise they'd be complaining about/to every tech company in the country. They just want the ratings that come with putting "Apple" in a story."
Of course there is another, more likely possibility, though I suspect you missed it because your post really sounded just like a thinly veiled "I love Apple and they can do no wrong!" post.
The more likely possibility is that reporters quite often do actually take an interest in human rights issues, and that they're focussing on Apple indeed partly because it's the most prominent target right now, but by hitting the most prominent, and most profitable target you're hitting the firm that has the most clout available to make the required changes, and the most to lose if it doesn't. You open the door for other firms to advertise their more ethical businesses if they take a stand and Apple doesn't, you basically leave Apple an ultimatum - change, or risk being outflanked by any competitors that do.
This doesn't mean it'll work, if all firms decide to hold their ground and none are willing to change then it's of little benefit, but this tactic by reporters has worked well before. Your latter paragraph is evidence enough of that - Greenpeace was very vocal in pointing out Apple's poor track record on pollutants, and despite Steve Jobs initially telling them to f off, he was eventually left with little choice but to start changing things, as other firms started getting positive headlines because they were more green, whilst Apple was seeing continued negative press on the issue. Since then Apple has changed, but also the industry as a whole has upped it's game on the issue, so if it has the potential to work, unless you're one of those people who throws a fit if the press dares mention that Apple could improve in some area, then what's the problem?
" America has largely abandoned the kind of job training that makes both good electronics assembly workers and the foremen that oversee them"
A lot of us said as much when the fools in Washington first uttered the words, "service economy". Services, such as fast food restaurants, are somewhat important to the economy. But, you don't BUILD a freaking economy around something that amounts to nothing more than a support industry.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The regulatory regime in this country is simply too overbearing.
It will be hard to complain when they move to Germany,...
The EU is extremely overregulated. The USA doesn't even come CLOSE.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
So when (or if) that happens you do something about it. Bring production back home. And of course you milk it for all the PR you can.
The public are fickle, have short memories and are easily distracted by shiny things.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Translation: American workers won't work long hours for low pay under dodgy conditions doing monkey work on assembly lines.
Seriously, it doesn't take any special or complex training to be an electronics assembly worker on anything less important than, say, the Space Shuttle's guidance system. It's mindless rote work like any other assembly line job. What they're really dodging are labor laws and unions.
Those jobs are only coming back to the U.S.A. if you are prepared to pay $3000 for an iPad or an iPhone.
If the jobs were here than they would have to compete for labor, meaning higher wages, meaning more disposable income for people to buy those iPads.
The middle class is the key to a strong economy. When our middle-class was at it's strongest, 1945-1980, the buying power of a dollar was much higher than it is today. By allowing companies to offshore all the middle-class jobs, they're effectively crippling the very market of consumers they're trying to sell shit to. This is why these tech companies are looking to the growing middle-classes in Eastern countries to make up the difference, because even making shit in China is not cheap enough for them to turn the profits they expect here, and we let them bring the shit in for nothing...
We need to either put more protectionist measures in place, such as tariffs, like the EU and Canada does, or we need to be pushing for a global economy where these companies aren't able to take advantage of the weaker currency in production and then turn around and sell the product in the stronger economy and make a fortune. Think about it: these mega-corporations can shop around all over the world to find the cheapest place to produce a material good, but can consumers in the U.S. shop in that cheaper market to buy it? Nope, there's region-locks and all sorts of red tape preventing the consumers from take advantage of this. You can't even physically go to another country and buy a bunch of shit and bring it home without all sorts of hassles when you're coming back into the U.S.; there are strict limits.
The system is totally skewed, and until we reach economic parity with the countries producing these goods, it's only going to get worse. If a company can region-lock it's product, why can't we region-lock the labor required to produce it?
I once heard EXACTLY the same argument for why manufacturing jobs would never leave the U.S., but guess what?