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Ask Slashdot: Any Smart Phones Made Under Worker-Friendly Conditions?
New submitter unimacs writes "So Apple has been under fire recently for the conditions at the factories of their Chinese suppliers. I listened to 'This American Life's' recent retraction of the Michael Daisey piece they did a while back. Great radio for those of you who haven't heard it — rarely has dead air been used to such effect. Anyway, while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories. Given that, are there any smart phone manufacturers whose phones are made under better conditions?"
No.
I don't mean to be obtuse, but worker friendly means something entirely different in the US versus China. I would go as far as saying there are a enough differences between Europe and the US that settling on the terms is difficult.
Pay? Hours? Benefits? Shift?
Can we throw in the type of job and modify those parameters?
To be frank the forty hour work week is an aberration. It certainly sounds great, I haven't had one in a dozen years. For some jobs it might make sense. Yet does it have to be across five days a week or can it be done in four or seven?
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Nokia fired 4000 smart phone assemblers in Finland, Hungary and Mexico last month, moving to Asia. Theres a press release from around feb 8th.
This /. article is probably a response, however indirect, to that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Part of the issue is that consumers may want to do the right thing but have no information as to which is the least of all evils. A device/company/plant database that can be checked before buying an electronic device would help solve that particular issue.
The idea is not to tell the consumer which way to go. But instead to simply present all the facts and opinions.
Personally, I would spend a $50 premium over other phones if I knew I were rewarding fair manufacturing practices.
It may be just me, but if one part of an article is retracted due to false statements or intentional innacuracies, with apologies from the publisher on releasing the story into the wild, I'm not going to base an opinion on ANY OTHER PART of the article or any other material sourced by that author. I'll have an opinion, but I'll base it on other sources.
Listen, Apple's no angel, and neither is anyone else. I think we can all agree on that.
But Apple is the company making the biggest noticeable difference in this space. Whether that's out of the goodness of their hearts (unlikely) or the fact that the know they're under greater scrutiny because they're the big fish in this pond (considerably more likely), it does mean that the workers in the Apple foxconn factories are the ones that are likely to see the benefits of Apple's largess first.
Almost universally, however, workers at these factories feel they're better off than they would have been if they'd stayed in rural China. It IS a choice they make to work there; they line up to apply for jobs.
If that remains unconvincing to you--which is fair--write your political representatives and get them to try and convince the Chinese government to pass better worker protection laws and enforce them. Ultimately, it shouldn't be up to Apple, Samsung, Google or the consumers to protect the people of China.
AFAIK they are made in Mexico and/or Canada
As always mixture of foreign and domestic parts.
As a side note: Depending on how low level you want to go (eg: all the individual parts) you will never find a phone that is made under worker friendly conditions unless you mine the raw materials yourself and go from there. Of course this is NOT realistic!
K Man
I find it a crazy FWP that people are so fixated on workers rights in countries where the work they are getting in factories are much better than the alternative. Yet we ignore the plight of minimum wage workers in North America. In major metropolitan areas where housing is unaffordable and public transit is sadly there, why don't we fix things for our own before aiding those who haven't really ask you for your opinion?
Japanese manufacturers like Sharp are probably your best bet as they do have factories in Japan. Of course many of the components will have been made in China, but that is about the best you can hope for. Unfortunately I don't think Sharp do any phones outside of Japan.
Maybe LG or Samsung. I know they use Chinese factories for some manufacture, but they do have some assembly done in South Korea. That is about the best you can hope for.
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If it's not made by machines, the odds are it's made by underpaid and overworked humans in some overseas sweatshop conditions.
North Americans and Europeans aren't willing to pay for the true cost of the labour.
I seem to recall an article estimating what it would cost to manufacture an iPad in North America with the unions, health and safety regulations, and so on respected. They came up with a number in the neighbourhood of $1400.
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My smartphone is made from low-fat granola pieces glued together from wheat reaped by freedom-loving highly-paid yet-still-spiritualistic gay Tibetan monks who are all married to one another and turn all their after-tax profits over to Greenpeace.
Of course it doesn't work, but I feel really good about owning it and it's a great conversation-starter with the cute angry Goth chicks who hang out in my local hipster food co-op in Brooklyn.
Actually Canada right now is the greatest country in the free world. They actually care about people instead of being a bunch of ravenous assholes that lose their mind over paying for healthcare for people.
America right now is being over-run by uneducated scumbag assholes, (For perfect examples, please see the current top 3 GOP presidential candidates) I'd avoid it like the plague unless you are a filthy, filthy, rich person.
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A converse example is the car industry, where automation is unavoidable because the assemblies are too heavy to be easily manipulated by people. The result is that cars get made in the USA, Europe and Japan.
I suspect that whoever cited $1400 to make an iPad in the US was either manufacturing-illiterate or had a financial incentive to misrepresent the facts. I would be surprised if assembly in the US added more than $25 to the cost, and unsurprised to find it was more like $5 when everything was taken into account.
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HTC is headquartered in Taiwan, not mainland China. Does anyone know if they manufacture their phones in Taiwan or in China?
HTC manufactures in various countries, including mainland China. Foxconn is also headquartered in Taiwan, so there's really no correlation between where their CEO sits and where manufacturing happens.
I find it interesting that those most upset about Foxconn factory conditions have never been there, and those that have been there lied about what they saw.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
If you are worried about the social and environmental impact of your smartphone, you aren't going to be satisfied by any of the options on the market. A consolation prize, if you will, would be to purchase a used phone. You can get even the latest phones on the used market, and in so doing you prevent it from ending up in a landfill or "recycler" in the third world. Plus, the social and environmental impact of that phone has already been made. I won't say your conscience gets off scot free, but you could argue (to yourself and others) that those impacts are borne more by the original purchaser than you, the second purchaser. You can't fix the harm that originally went into making the phone, but you can prevent additional harm by not purchasing a new one.
This calculus works for lots of things besides smartphones. The one I particularly like is to consider buying a used honda civic that gets 35+ mpg as a replacement for a gas guzzler, rather than purchasing a new prius.
", while his work has been discredited, Michael Daisey wasn't inaccurate in his claims that working conditions are poor in iPhone and iPad factories."
That statement is nonsense.
Michael Daisey was discredited because working conditions were fine for iPhone or iPad factories; none of the horrible things he had reported on were true upon his visit. I've listened to original piece (when it aired) as well as the full retraction. He had to create lies based what he'd heard of previous (outlawed) practices of various Chinese manufactures as well fabricate people, events, and conversations in order to invoke an emotional response. Then he repeatedly, unapologetically used the theater as a scapegoat as to why he could tell people that he was telling a factual account, but in reality, was more lie than occurrence.
That said, the OP does have a good question about sweatshop free phones. I wish there was a list for all goods and services; seems internet searches pull up a lot of hits for clothing and apparel, but not so much for electronics.
There is no ethical smartphone.
It's trendy to pile on the leader, or perceived leader.
I read an interesting article a few years ago, I think from the Economist, that stated it was often better to be #2 in a segment. #1 takes all the hits, even if #2 does basically the same thing. Examples sited were Walmart vs Target, Home Depot vs Lowes, and a few others. Here is happens to be Apple vs whoever else makes electronic gadgets. Apparently Apple's use of Chinese factories is the worst thing ever, while Google/Microsoft/Dell/Acer/Asus/etc on and on is totally fine, since they aren't Apple.