Apple is making life terrible in its factories – labor rights warriors Pressure from Apple to lower costs is driving worsening conditions for workers at the company's manufacturing partners. This is according to watchdog group China Labor Watch, which says [PDF] that under CEO Tim Cook, the Cupertino giant has asked the companies that assemble its products to cut their own costs, and those …
The OP is absolutely spot on, it's not Apple, it's their customers
A few years ago, a right-on journal "New Internationalist" tag line "People, Ideas and Action for Global Justice" ran an issue complaining about four first world issues affecting the developing world:
exploitative Intellectual Property practice, environmental pollution, workers rights and the other one (copyright Monty Python) - tax?
natch all four of these can be laid at the door of Apple
On the back page they were proud to announce that the journal was now available as an Apple app
A letter to the editor calling them out (published, in all fairness) elicited the response "customer demand"
A further letter asking if they had evaluated whether the total effect of what they were doing (tag line v promoting poor first world practice) was positive or negative went unanswered
"The OP is absolutely spot on, it's not Apple, it's their customers"
Oh, don't be daft, it's not Apple customers, it's all of us, or at least anyone capable of reading this comment. Companies like Pegatron are huge, they don't just abuse labour to make Apple kit, and they're not they only company doing it.
From the article: "Specifically, the group reports that Pegatron has been passing on financial pressures from Apple by committing multiple violations of Chinese labor laws on fair pay and workplace safety."
That's the issue. While companies are allowed to flout local labour laws this will continue to happen, and there's not that much we can do about it. Sure we could all stop buying products made in the far east, which would probably cause the western economies to collapse, along with the far easter economies too. This would just make the situation worse, not better.
Over time the rights of workers across the globe will slowly equalise, and at that point it won't be cheaper to manufacture goods and ship them half way across the world, but until that day comes there's unfortunatly very little that can be done other than continuing to highlight the issue.
But don't pretend that we're not all guilty of perpetuating it.
you are partly right but the trick always was to remove from "our/your" eyes the consequences of your behavior.
You see the shinny product, you don't see the suffering, it is so far anyway, and one can rationalize "it was like this here before" (that's a lie but whatever).
But how can we think that the same way earth resources are infinite, cost can go infinitely down and so on and so on.
And it is not like just giving 10% more to suppliers would destroy Apple profits but it would make a world of difference to the workers (supposing some would be passed to them but lol)
And the last fallacy about "customer demands" is that we would have a choice :
Can you buy a smartphone not made in china ?
Is google better than apple ?
Sony than Microsoft ?
Competition is a fallacy in the modern "capitalist" economy. There is no diversity of practices, sames rules leads to the same consequences, the destruction of rules lead to the same jungle everywhere.
Civilization IS rules.
Actually, the problem is not the consumer, but wall street and the shareholders... If Apple took the company private... There would be no pressure to retain the profit margins they have at this point.
The profits could be halved... But then they could also get rid of stock buybacks ($billions) and shareholder dividends ($billions).
The consumers you speak of could choose another manufacturer... Their stock would balloon... Drawing interest from investors and pressure to continuously perform...
Time for Apple to take the company private IMO. Their stock is one of the most manipulated and under valued of all time... Enough games regarding that... Time for Apple to focus on products and services instead of the pigs of Wallstreet
Were that it was only Apple... Apple gets hit in the news, but really - From clothes to small appliances, to all sorts of electronics. "Sweatshops" have been around since -- Forever... And are all around us today in every country to one degree or another. They just rarely are in the news.
Not so very long ago, historically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
.... Face this type of pressure... Apple is by far not the first nor will be the last corporation to be in this position....
The best thing Apple could do for these workers is to take the company private... Thereby, the company would not be pressured to keep their margins high. Outside of Apple and Samsung, no other smartphone OEM is making a decent profit.
Say Apple slices (pun intended) their margins in half as a private company. Their would be no shareholders to answer to... However, whether these factories follow through with improved living conditions may be another story
Eventually markets like the US and the UK will outsource so much work, they'll fall into a depression, and US/UK workers will then be the new cheap labor.
I for one look forward to assembling Huawei phones for pennies an hour, living in company dorms that charge so much rent I'm not actually earning any money, all while some blowhard CEO in a turtleneck touts the wonders of the next cPhone (china-Phone), cPad, cPencil, cEnema, etc...
Wait, did I say "look forward to?" I meant I'll be jumping out the nearest window. Hopefully they didn't put up any nets to keep me from falling to my death.
I'm not so sure it was the jumping as it was the undocumented "assistance" they got going out windows and off roof-tops.
Anyway, with the billions of dollars that iShit has stashed away in their offshore accounts, i'm not too worried about their shortfall of profits from the mega-billions to only billions.
While it is only a small minority some globalists, myself included, primary reason for reducing trade barriers is specifically to improve standards of living in other countries. Cheap tat is nice but eliminating absolute poverty is priceless.
IT Poser "... eliminating absolute poverty is priceless."
Yep. The best 'foreign aid' is trade. And, as you state, it's generally working.
Governments do need to manage the transitions better. Evidence suggests that their incompetence is complete.
5 thumbs up for this, it is incredible people take this kind of non sense.
Reducing trade barriers only served to increase inequality. We are now at the mercy of a few 100 billionaires who move factories around with the push on the send email button, moving whole generations of people into unemployment and poverty, sucking the life out of trade balances and ruining the whole financial system in the process because generous lending was used for decades to hide what is going on.
Priceless are societies where people have matters in their own hand, where media and politicians are not bought up by the 1% owning 90%. So yeah, go vote for Hilary if you want to end up as slave for the 1%.
When has Apple ever shown measurable dedication toward improving the well-being of their suppliers? Every year there is a new story about worker exploitation. Apple engages in some hand-wringing, issues a boilerplate response, then they release a new iPhone or Mac and everyone forgets what happened.
What kind of a message are we sending Apple when we berate them for making poor labor choices, then buy their products anyway? Why should they care when they're still taking our money?
If you're still buying Apple products then you're a part of the problem.
Where's the hand wringing over other companies? They're ALL doing this. Heck, Samsung was sued because unsafe conditions resulted in dozens of workers DYING in one of their chip fabs, and that was owned by Samsung using Samsung employees. Where do you think Dell, IBM, Microsoft, et al are making their products?
The problem is many companies are using 3rd world sweat shops for their manufacturing. Some of these places are in countries that allow worse conditions than China; not excusing China or the manufacturers. So it is easy to claim the high moral ground while in reality being part of the problem. If one is to avoid 3rd world manufacturing one is going to find very few sources for consumer goods.
And consider how horrible the conditions were in US factories a century ago, or UK factories before that. It is easy for us to get all high and mighty expecting other countries to have the same worker protection laws and enforcement we take for granted, because we've already "made it" economically.
Western companies have been pushing China forward in that regard - granted, a lot of that is a reaction to bad publicity but a lot of companies want to "do good" even when they aren't being watched. The problem is, they also want to get a good deal since that's why everyone is in China in the first place, so there's a conflict. As the regulations increase and worker salaries increase, production will move to cheaper countries with lax laws that will follow the same path of worker exploitation which lessens over time. A lot of real cheap labor (making clothing etc.) has already left China because their workers make too much money now.
We've already done this once for the consumer electronics market...remember when cheap crap was made in Japan, and then eventually it became quality stuff is made in Japan so the cheap crap went to China. China's still fighting the "cheap crap" reputation but they're probably a decade away from casting that aside and having a reputation for quality stuff. And as a result the companies making cheap crap will start using factories in Vietnam or Philippines or something (some already have, Samsung has factories making their low end phones in Vietnam)
"And consider how horrible the conditions were in US factories a century ago, or UK factories before that. It is easy for us to get all high and mighty expecting other countries to have the same worker protection laws and enforcement we take for granted, because we've already "made it" economically."
The point is that these companies are moving production to these countries explicitly *BECAUSE* they don't have any worker or enviromental protection laws. Not having to protect or renumerate their employees to any reasonable standard is why they are cheap. Because they are cheap is why they mercilessly laid off their western employees who made the company what it is, and hired cheaper foreign labour.
If you are going to have a minimum wage and working conditions in your own country then you need to ensure that the same conditions are in place on foreign staff or your simply committing a nasty form of national suicide as your own economic base gets eaten out from underneath you.
While multinational companies are somewhat less dangerous today than they were in the days when the East India Company literially owned most of a sub continent outright I submit that multinationals are still at best a menace.
These reports seems to appear just about the time the Fruity Company is about to release a new iDevice on the unsuspecting world (rumours apart)
Not saying this is Apple's fault or not but don't Pegatron make stuff for other US companies as well?
Besides, wasn't there a report (Here i think) about Pegatron replacing all its workers with Robots.
When that project is complete what will these people have to complain about?
somehow I doubt that this report will stop an Apple devotee/disciple from buying the next itteration of the iPhone.
Not really, because ALL of those companies that you listed use Pegatron to make products for them. ALL OF THEM! Funny how that's not mentioned at all. Apple does not own Pegatron, they use them to make products like all these other companies do, yet the blame goes to Apple? Another biased report.
I remember, long long time ago, when I bought my first PowerBook. It was made in Ireland. What a gem. Turned out to be kind of expensive despite being the low end model on sale. It has those hot-swap bays so you could pop out the CD-ROM drive or battery. Today, those bays are gone. Too much blood would seep out, I guess.
Alas, where is the alternative? And would anyone be able to afford it?
Dear Mr. Register, your article makes no sense at all, and unfortunately the author is clueless.
The fact is that Apple DOES NOT own or run ANY factories.
Apple has its products assembled by contracting to the same "factories" that also assemble products for many other companies, including: Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, and MANY, MANY other companies.
Those foreign factories are owned and operated by other companies. The client companies that have their products assembled there are only clients.
> I wondered how someone's thinking could be so 'limited'...
Nonetheless, if labour laws are being broken, it is by Pegatron, not Apple.
Apple products are the end result, but why does the report of the employment violations not go straight to the local (or national) government, rather than trying to guilt-trip us into self-righteously applying pressure on Apple to apply pressure on Pegatron? Seems rather flaky to me.
"Yeah, I can't think where else they could cut corners to reduce prices....."
How about the components they use? I have an original iPad Mini and I can say it is absolutely the shittiest WiFi support of any device I own, and this is counting cheap android phones, pocketbook e-readers, crappy Chinese webcams, and that Vonets thing hooked to my Pi. All of them can outperform the iPad.
The range of the iPad is about half of everything else, and when the signal drops out I need to actually get up as the bloody thing simply won't see the AP again until it is practically line of sight.
I didn't buy the iPad (won it in a competition), but I know how much they cost and I really didn't expect Apple hardware to get its ass kicked so utterly by everything else.
You may have been making an allusion to the infamous rounded corners, but having used one I'm wondering what goes in them.
But, then, I guess cheap labour and cheap pieces in an expensive device equals happy shareholders...
About 80 people own 51% of planet earth. Put another way, we're all half as well off as we could be if they didn't exist. Of course its good that we're worse off, because the alternative would be that we were commie bastards and we don't want that. I'm looking forward to automation when they can own 99% of planet earth. They will surely deserve every penny, and I hope that even my modest wealth will trickle up to them to show how hard working I am.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
