Slashdot Mirror
Labor Activist: Apple May Be Terrible, But All Others Are Worse
CheerfulMacFanboy writes "Labor Activist Li Qiang wants you to know that the iPhone 4 in his pocket is not an endorsement of Apple's policies, just an acknowledgment that the company is doing a better job of monitoring factory conditions than its peers. The founder of leading advocacy group China Labor Watch (CLW) told us that, though the Cupertino company does more-thorough inspections than competitors, it is responsible for poor working conditions at its suppliers' factories and needs to invest some of its record-breaking profits in improving them. 'Although I know that the iPhone 4 is made at sweat shop factories in China, I still think that this is the only choice, because Apple is actually one of the best. Actually before I made a decision, I compared Apple with other cell phone companies, such as Nokia,' he said through a translator. 'And the conditions in those factories are worse than the ones of Apple.'"
Interesting how the original headline reads "Apple Best at Auditing Factories, Still Not Doing Enough" while Slashdot's reads "Apple May Be Terrible, But All Others Are Worse". From best to terrible in the flash of a Slashdot submission.
I don't get why Apple is always the one intimately associated with Foxconn when, as the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, Foxconn builds products for Dell, HP, Sony, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, and so on. That Apple is the most proactive about labor policies isn't a surprise given the company's left-wing political leanings. You can always say someone should be doing more, but one can't help but wonder at what point it becomes the responsibility of the native government to make its citizen's lives better rather than the companies in another country sending the build orders. If Apple and other companies did what Li Qiang suggests, they'd essentially be babysitting the entire world's industrial labor, and that's just an impossible slippery slope. However, the storyline of a glossy, profitable American company using "slave labor" is just too juicy a narrative for the mainstream media to pass up.
We've become so used to the idea that ALL consumer electronics are made in sweatshops that we're down to comparing whose sweatshop is the *least* nightmarish? That's more than a little sad, no?
Wouldn't it be nice to have just one consumer electronics manufacturer that made all their stuff in the first-world and paid their workers decent wages? It might be nice to have at least one TV, DVD player and cellphone option that I didn't have to feel guilty about. I'm getting a little sick of thinking of how many third-world people had to be exploited just so I could get a 52" LCD for $1,500 instead of $1,700. I mean saving the $200 is nice, admittedly, but not at the expense of dumping mercury into some Chinese town's river water, or working some 12-year-old for 16 hour days.
Couldn't countries at least require that imported goods be manufactured at their own minimum wage?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Apple was also quoted as saying they hate chinks and niggers less than their competitors.
Is the point that Apple has an obligation to treat their workers better because they are so much more successful than their competition?
The fact that Apple has the influence and profit margins that would enable them to provide good conditions for their workers and STILL post insanely great profits falls on deaf ears around here, but kudos for making that case.
Instead of just saying one company does better than the other, I think Mr. Li Qiang would be much more helpful to his cause if he actually published his findings and methodology.
Or are we suppose to simply believe him on his word?
So don't throw out your Samsung phone to support the "better" conditions at Apple's manufacturers. Samsung is not even considered in his comparison because they don't manufacture phones in China.
You can assemble PCBs for less than the amortization costs of a pick-n-place machine? Great! We'll have to take your word on the fact that the workers are getting a living wage.
A major problem is that the faceless structure of a company allows those who run it to make amoral decisions. Nearly all decisions are driven by profit and legality, not even the latter sometimes. Ethics and morals seem a bygone relic, impediments to "success."
[citation needed]
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but there's a hell-of-a-lot of people using Apple products nowadays. My hunting, fishing, drinking, non-recycling and high school educated family members may take offense to your statement.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
The conditions at Foxconn may be bad. But by staying with the company, the workers are telling us that the alternative for them is even worse... People, think for a moment, the employees at Foxconn work there because they, having considered their options, decided that thats the best they can find. When they can find a better job they'll leave their current one.
Note that I'm not saying that they enjoy their work; they may hate it. But bad working conditions do not equate to slavery or abuse. Think about how many millions of people would give anything to have a job at Foxconn, because what they have now is so much worse.
...is a federalist, multi-party republican democracy in China. China is the reigning champion for now of fast and cheap. If companies want to be competitive, at least part of their supply chain is going to be in China. There would be no "supply chain" to speak of if everyone grew their own food, flax, and made their own pottery, but we live in a modern age. Companies cannot look over the shoulders of the vendors that they depend upon. US companies are no better positioned to do that than the US government is for obvious reasons. The way that the Chinese get labor and environmental protections that Americans enjoy is through a government that is accountable to activists and voters, not a corrupt one-party oligarchy in Beijing. But that won't happen until the Chinese make it happen.
Lets face it, you hate your fellow man as much as the next.
What do I care I use droid.
I've heard they've removed the suicide nets from around the Foxconn dorms and added trampolines. So now the jumpers are actually flung back up to the roof.
Extend this to food, clothes, oil, natural resources and everything else and you may find yourself in a position where you can't spare a penny to buy any smartphone or TV at all.
THIS would be honest. Nobody does that though, because then it would really, really start to hurt.
I would have guessed that Korean brands like Samsung and LG still do a lot of manufacturing in Korea, under better conditions than what China usually has.
Suicide is just a style statement - the poor man's turtle neck sweater.
I don't hear these same folks clamoring that Google should do the same thing. Google produces phones as well do they not? Samsung? HTC? Sony? *chirp*...*chirp*.
Easy to demand that someone use their own money to better worker conditions for a competing company. This is NOT something a US manufacturer can fix. The Chinese need to fix it themselves and right now they don't want to.
Your perception of Apple users says much, much more about you than it does about Apple users.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Hitler may have been bad but Stalin was worse!!!!!
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Apple is the 3rd largest phone manufacturer, not smart phone manufacturer, just phone manufacturer. Any sort of stereotype against them is just the same old stereotype spewed out by angry wintel nerds who hate anything remotely different to them.
Any video/image of Chinese factories I've seen are typically as modern as any in the world (otherwise your iPhone will be made in India if you want third world sweatshop).
And you just know that 99% of the detractors here are total hypocrites for decrying the Chinese while posting from Macbooks, iPod playing in the background, and talking on the iPhone (or Android, doesn't matter, they're all made in China).
If you're so incensed, I suggest you stop buying Chinese goods.
Here's the best line from Li Qiang's statement:
So, the takeaway is that Apple runs the best sweatshops in China. The question I have, is this: Apple is now the richest and most valuable corporation in the world. If anyone is going to stand up and refuse to accept having their workers live and work in sweatshop conditions, and lead their industry to clean up its act, it ought to be them.
There are two possibilities here: Either Apple is putting cash in Li Qiang's pocket to say these things, or his comments were translated by Siri.
Apple was supposed to "Think Different", remember? How about all those full-page Apple ads with Ghandi, Cesar Chavez, Richard Feynman? You think those guys would feel comfortable with workers living 16 to a 12'x12' company-owned dormitory with surveillance cameras? How do you think Ghandi would feel about the working conditions at Foxconn? What do you think would happen if the next Cesar Chavez were to start talking to workers who build iPhones?
Here was the text of one of Apple's famous ads:
There isn't fuck-all that's "inspirational" about the human cost of Apple's treatment of its workers (and yes, that's APPLE's treatment of workers. They're the ones whose products are being made.) It does not "push the human race forward" to make inhuman treatment of workers the industry standard. Every technology company on Earth wants to be like Apple. Apple sets the gold standard, right? So how many CEOs of competing companies are thinking right now, "If we're going to be as successful as Apple, we're going to have to treat our workers even worse!"?
As an Apple shareholder for more than 25 years, I believe that for one week, every shareholder, every board member, every officer, should have to trade places with someone who builds iPhones. I was finally completely divested last year, but I'd gladly be part of that field trip if it raised awareness of what Apple is currently doing. How they're making their money.
Fuck Apple. And yes, fuck every other company who profits from these labor practices. But since Apple is at the front of the line, fuck them first.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...comes great responsibility.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
FUD in its finest. 1) We are talking about US market, where Apple had about 25% of the market (vs about 15% worldwide) before 4S launch and Google was 50%+ 2) There is NO way you can go from 25% to 45% during one quarter in a mature market. Roughly every second android SOLD during that quarter IN US might have been iPhone, yes. 3) In Q4 Apple sold about 37 million smartphones, when Samsung sold about 35 million. Samsung alone is about 24% of the smartphone market Worldwide.
How very sanctimonious. If you really feel that bad about Apple (and you didn't divest because you felt Apple had no upside left) then you should really give up all the gains you made because you profited from it. Yes, you should donate it to charity. Until you do that, you are just a man (or woman) with a high horse, trying to preach what you do not practice. You profited from it.
Like it or not, Apple is doing more for the poor people of China than is, well, pretty much anyone else. Those people have jobs and do not have to wait for charity. They do not have to work the rice paddies. Stop applying your first world standards to people in decidedly third world situations. It does not help. Their wages are already rising higher than yours, and mine, and inflation. Long may it be so.
First, Apple is playing by the same rules as every other US manufacture. The main reason they are being singled out is for name recognition, because no one would gives a rip about Dell's suppliers any more. Isn't this really demanding the current benefactor clean up the mess the policy mess put in motion forty years ago? When I was working on a business bachelors in the mid 1990's, one of my classes studied the practices and effect of globalization. Discussion soon came around to the effects of "Free Trade" on labor. It was noted that US legislative changes begun in the 1970's and International trade agreement's, had incentivized seeking the lowest labor costs for manufactured goods. It was noted that those changes both penalized US labor wages, while underpaying foreign labor. This effectively was pitting US "working class" people against foreign "struggling class" people. So corporations now had workers in the US complaining about their reduced cut of profit, while foreign labor was more that willing to accept an even smaller percent of the same profit for similar work. When we ask our instructor how this could be justified, he presented two logical arguments that drove current policy. First, the changes in the US were intended to grow the top-line of US corporations and retain dominance in world markets. Second, attempting to dictate pay and conditions in a sovereign foreign nation would be frowned upon in International economic/politics for numerous reasons. He also informed us that the original theory of globalization did consist of two parts, "Free Markets" and "Free Labor." Free Markets being the practice of minimal trade barriers, and Free Labor being right of labor to organize and collectively bargain on an International level. It should be no surprise that both domestic and foreign governments would have a problem with expanding the power of collective bargaining. (Whole political movements in the US have been based on annihilating collective bargaining.) That plus the weighty influence of corporate myopia could see no down side to stripping out workers rights from trade provisions. Ironically, the Press has once again taken notice of effects of these practices on foreign labor. Once again the Press can not draw a connection between US labor policy and foreign labor policy. Once again the Press feels a need to excuse the policy makers and vilify the producers who work within the bounds of those rules. BTW, Until the late 1990's, Apple retained a sizable percentage of domestic assembly work in the US. As their business recovered from it's "Near Death" experience, they shifted their assembly work to the same factories that one of the industries largest players of the time were using. Specifically DELL. I don't Apple's move so much as comment on their disregard for foreign labor. I see this as climbing out of the hole you found yourself in after the real powers industry had "leveled the playing field" on top of you
not true, its just rooted in a different time. AFAIK, apple marketing creating that impression and their tactics have not changed in almost 15 years.
people in China to build Apple products? Where are the pick-and-place robots and other automated assembly bots? Why are people required to build these things at all?
My phone was made in Taiwan. Maybe it was made with sweatshop labour, I haven't checked, but I know that Taiwan is a high income nation and generally uses advanced manufacturing.
"Best in China" doesn't mean much, turns out things ARE made elsewhere, yes including the US (if you don't know what's made in the US that is your failing, not the US's).
I get it now. Its ok conditions suck and the employees are treated awful because hey! There are worse conditions. SO sure by all means go ahead and treat your employees like shit, just as long as your not the worst.
Thats like saying "Sure we here at apple demean our employees and stick ice picks in there balls but its ok cause over at samsung they shove red hot pokers in their employees ass's" and everyone else says "Hey youre right, that isnt so bad after all. So please, continue treating your people like shit".
I am not applying any standards to people in "decidedly third world situations".
I am applying first world standards to Apple, Inc.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes he deserves to die and i hope he burns in hell.
people in China to build Apple products? Where are the pick-and-place robots and other automated assembly bots? Why are people required to build these things at all?
Because Chinese laborers are cheaper, more scalable, and more flexible than robots.
Robots need to be programmed; humans learn quickly. Robot manipulators have to be physically reconfigured; human fingers are extremely flexible. Robots have to be custom ordered in advance; humans in China can be hired on an hour's notice. Robots require investment up front; humans in China can be hired for a day and let go.
Robots only make sense where labor is expensive.
Short answer: it's cheaper to hire 100 Chinese factory workers than it is to buy one machine that can replace 100 factory workers.
Long answer: This is why China is actually not stealing all that many American jobs. American manufacturing is still very competitive with China and in terms of output continues to grow year after year. We do it with automation and a small number of highly-paid skilled workers, and focus on the more complex stage of manufacturing. They do it with hordes of cheap labor that tackle the lower-precision stages of the manufacturing.
Background: I work for an industrial automation company. China is challenging market, precisely because of the above. Labor is cheap enough that the cost-benefit is not really there for big-ticket automation technology when you can just throw more workers at the problem.
Any video/image of Chinese factories I've seen are typically as modern as any in the world (otherwise your iPhone will be made in India if you want third world sweatshop).
1) So what if it's "modern" try working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, then sleeping on a 14" board, and getting up to do all again.
2) The Chinese are known to be extremely closed, and extremely propagandist. You cannot just walk into Foxconn and start taking photos of whatever you want. You only see what they want you to see.
Machines cost more to manufacture and program than humans cost to acquire and train. When you need to make manufacturing adjustments to a product, you tell the human "now the screw goes over here and the cover slides on from this new direction." A machine needs new programming, the program needs testing, or you might even need a new part for the machine to handle the newly designed part on the product.
Sometimes it IS less expensive to have humans do the job.
Most Apple users would be be offended to know that your family members are also iphone users.
The question I have, is this: Apple is now the richest and most valuable corporation in the world. If anyone is going to stand up and refuse to accept having their workers live and work in sweatshop conditions, and lead their industry to clean up its act, it ought to be them.
Suppose they do that, at a cost of $100 per device manufactured. Their competitors, of course, will not - heck, they'll jump at the opportunity to use all that freed up dirt cheap labor to drive prices even further down. Do you really expect Apple to shoot itself in the foot?
The only way this can be done is by US government mandating it (via tariffs etc) on all manufacturers at the same time. So that the price of the devices goes up for N% for everybody. It would be even better if Canada, EU etc also joined. But don't expect the corporations themselves to do it out of the kindness of their heart; that's not how capitalism works.
a) They make the biggest profit margin from their devices (indicating they could afford to spend more on addressing the conditions of employees)
They do. They do studies of suppliers other companies do not do. They pay extra bonuses to FoxConn workers, that other companies do not pay.
b) They're the most visible (people know who apple is and their "image" appears to be important to them)
Apple doesn't care about "image". They have one simple goal: build great products. If they do that right people will like them as a side effect. That is not the goal. Apple is a pretty harsh working environment and people work there not for accolades but to have millions of people using products they work on.
c) They're one of more capable of push-back on the factories to fix issues (due to their size)
Which they have, unlike other companies. At least they are even trying!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These chinese workers are really just cheap somewhat disposable biological robots-- we call them human resources; as if they were just another resource like copper. Euphemisms should not be allowed to become accepted norms. MBAs do not even have to deal with their actions anymore because they've outsourced that unpleasantness to the HR dept who work in a real life Milgram experiment.
Slaves are not entirely the lowest level; a slave like a robot involves upkeep costs and some concern for the investment in the "machine." An exploited worker is borrowed, the upkeep is an externalized cost put onto the worker if they break down or wear you can just get another one. A slave has constant motivation to rebel which has to be suppressed; while desperate workers will repress themselves. A system can provide a stronger fence than an actual fence; like an invisible fence.
One has to ponder about the day when there are not enough jobs because machines can do so many of them cheaper and we have more people and less demand for human jobs. If you raise the working environments for humans to humane levels can they compete with our robotics?? It seems to me that we are already at a turning point and mankind is desperately trying to compete with the robot to the point where beating the machines is lowering humans down to unacceptable levels. Also ponder about the low demand which means we must foster consumer addictions, planned obsolescence, fashion and unhealthy needy people in order to fuel enough growth to sustain a system that is too productive (ironically we think increased productivity helps viability; in the larger picture it does not.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Being a "labour activist" he could consider another, often missing, option: buy a *used* phone. This would surely reduce his negative impact. Can he seriously not live without an iPhone ?
I think it is called "leading by example".
(Or maybe Apple just payed him to make the statement ?)
Snob!
If Apple doesn't want to be held to a higher standard, they should not sell people the impression that they are a higher standard. At least that is what their so-called progressive fanbase would like to believe, who will conveniently ignore the slave labor force that makes their products.
Communism. No matter the employee treatment.
Gaming the capitalist system for a buck at the expense of Americans was a death penalty case in my book.
I will give you this for 10 bucks less if you fire your wife and kids. OK, is what has really happened here.
However you read the headline, here on slashdot, or in its original context, the story is still the same. Apple wants to cry about being unfairly put in the spotlight when it's far from being the only company making products in Chinese sweat shops. If you want to make yourself out to be the most publicly recognized with a high-and-mighty attitude, good or bad, the spotlight is going to fall on you. Take a look at how McDonald's has been treated over the years, amongst fast food burger chains their grub has the lowest calorie count by far (Wendy's triple Baconator anyone ?), but McDonald's is the public face of an inherently unhealthy industry. McDonald's can throw some apple slices in their happy meal and Apple can mandate suicide nets at their Foxconn plants, but it's not like either are really changing the game.
If our gadgets were made a little less like the instantly outdated disposable trash they are, we could all plan to keep them a little longer, meaning we could pay more for them and then they wouldn't have to be made under sweat shop conditions. If you want things quick and cheap, like a burger off the dollar menu, don't start whining about how inhumanely it's made or how unhealthy it is.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
If they did that, I might actually go out and buy an iPad at the higher price, instead of not buying any Apple products because they support sweatshops even though they are the biggest, richest corporation on Earth.
As I've said before, here's my rule of thumb:
"I will pay twice as much for a product made by union workers. I'll pay 70% more for a product made in the US. I'll pay 40% more for a product certifiably made without sweat shop conditions.
And for a locally-made product of union workers, I'll pay an additional 125%."
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is commendable, but how many other people would do that? It's much more likely that your attitude would be a drop in the bucket - they'd still lose much more from potential customers switching to cheaper competitors than they'd gain from people like you.
Basically, this is the same as voluntarily paying taxes at a higher amount than what's set by the law, as a matter of principle. It's not going to achieve any real effect, and very few people can be convinced to do that. You can convince significantly more people if you instead propose an arrangement where everybody is going to pay more - that is perceived as more fair, quite rightly in my opinion, and everyone voting for such a scheme would know that it'd have a meaningful economic effect. Hence why I pay what's due, but I campaign for higher and more progressive taxes in the meantime. This situation is not really different - it's the tragedy of the commons, and it can only be solved by commons acting as a whole, and forcing that decision on the minority which would not otherwise comply, via rule of law.
Nokia's Chinese factories may be worse than Apple's, but at least - up until this week, anyway - it still has (had) factories elsewhere in the world, including places with much better labor laws. Quite a lot of N9s were manufactured in Finland.
Don't care. I'm the only one I have to live with.
Yes of course. You get to the heart of the matter. That's why I try make a case, to convince others. Life gives us a few opportunities to make clear choices. The more times we choose to do right instead of wrong, the better off we are.
I don't like that the technology I use is made by wage slaves (Or worse. There's starting to be evidence that some of the workers at Foxconn and plants like them are slaves in fact, not only wage slaves) and yet I use technology still. I bought an OCZ SSD drive that I just put into my machine and I wonder, "What's it like for the person who made this? " and "Why can't I buy one of these that's made in the US?". The answer to both is complicated.
I'm uncomfortable that the world is increasingly covered with a piss-puddle of greed. The thing is, I don't believe most people are greedy. I believe most people have sufficient fellow-feeling that they'll sacrifice some of what's on their plate to feed someone whose plate is not so full. I see it all the time. But yet, the economic system is purely greed-driven. How does that happen? My guess is that it has something to do with our economic system, and the legal fiction, the virtual persons, called "corporations". Corporations are greed-machines by design. Aggregates of capital whose only incentive is profit. Very unlike people. Still, the corporation is the model by which we are supposed to live as individuals, if you believe conventional wisdom. Corporations are good, they say. In fact, there is a belief that somehow running a corporation successfully is a perfect qualification for a political leader. It couldn't be further from the truth. We hear, "He's not qualified to be (senator/governor/president) because he's never run a business." or, "He's successfully run a business so he's the ideal president." What crap. Being a CEO is serving a corporation, which has nothing in common with a human being. Being a (senator/governor/president) is serving the citizens, who have nothing in common with corporations.
Anyway, I'm way off on a tangent. Sorry about that. You are absolutely correct, what we have is a "tragedy of the commons". And I think it has occurred because we have tried to remake the commons in the image of the corporation instead of in the image of a community. In two short paragraphs, you have expressed it better than I could, friend.
You are welcome on my lawn.