Letters to the Editor
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Shocking (right)
A first-world, multinational corporation using a foreign contractor to subcontract out to underpaid third world manufacturers? Who knew this could happen!
To the Apple store, to voice my complaints to teenage workers! And to buy an iPod nano!!!
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A thug is an Apple
I think it's time to swing the baseball bat of moral condemnation. The target shouldn't be Apple's 'cool' but Apple's corporate thugs, a.k.a. top execs.
If it acts like a thug, it's a thug. Locking young women up for 15 hours a day, 7 days / week, and paying them 27 pounds per month is not employment it's ABUSE.
This is one of the reasons I am disgusted by the slogan 'free trade'. Freedom is a word that should be reserved to apply to the human condition, not whether or not a market is regulated to protect humans and the environment from abuse.
Call it 'unregulated trade', Andrew. And call a thug a thug, especially when the thugs in question are corporatists who trade off of their respectibility and success so that they have license to abuse their employees.
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Freedom
Free trade truly is free. There is no more fundamental human right than the freedom to contract. If you don't have that, you're not truly a human. We deny the insane and children the opportunity to contract, because we think they're too ignorant or irrational to know what's actually good for them. Who the holy hell are you to say that these women in the factory are too stupid to be able to decide for themselves? How mind-bogglingly arrogant of you.
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Comparing Apples and ...
Not all electronics companies are the same when it comes to social and environmental responsibility.
BusinessWeek just highlighted the work that some electronics companies are doing to require suppliers to integrate good environmental, occupational health and safety, and human rights and labor policies into their businesses. (Article: "Stalking High-Tech Sweatshops" from the June 19, 2006 issue.) Also, AMR Research has done a lot of analysis on the best practices of companies trying to improve the social and environmental responsibility in the supply chain.
There are big differences in how companies are implementing these programs, so people should really consider these factors in their purchasing decisions, that way we can drive the right behaviors in the industry. If consumers reward unethical behavior by buying products that are $0.01 cheaper because they're made in sweatshops, then nothing will change. Ethical companies will try to do the right thing simply because it's the right thing, but if they can do well (financially) by doing good, it's better for everyone.
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Be careful of sweeping judgements
I have no experience with Foxconn. I have, however, been to the factory that assembles (or so they claim) *all* of the world's Apple computers (and many other brands besides). This visit was a profoundly thought-provoking event for me, but not in way that generated real moral clarity for me on globalization issues.
The work force in this "factory" (actually, a huge multi-building factory complex) consisted predominantly of young Chinese women, mostly, we were told, from rural and western China. They were hired only after a rigorous process that included testing of pyschological makeup (looking for "teamwork mentality") and motor skills. We were told that about 4 out of every 100 applicants tested was hired. Women, we were told, were the majority of the workers selected because they tended to exhibit better fine motor skills and lower need for individual expression.
It was a stunning site to walk into one floor of this factory complex, the size perhaps of one or two football fields, and see dozens of assembly lines, each staffed by hundreds of uniformed young women seated perhaps two feet apart. The floor literally smelled like people. Each worker had an assigned task, lasting no more than a few seconds as the assembly line moved. There was no talking or personal interaction between the workers on the job at all - I assume that it was forbidden. There were two breaks, and an hour lunch, each day. Each worker was carefully monitored for mistakes, and too many mistakes within a given time frame were grounds for immediate termination. The jobs they were doing looked, as almost all assembly line jobs look to me, deadly boring.
We were told that overtime was voluntary, with a limit of 12 hours daily, and that most workers worked maximum hours. I no longer have my notes on compensation, but I recall doing some mental math that individual workers were making $1500 to $3500 annually, depending on position, overtime, and bonus. Average family income in rural China is around $600, and we were told that half or more of the worker's compensation was typically sent home to families. Most workers lived on campus in clean, subsidized, well kept facilities that looked like college dorms, albeit somewhat more cramped. Food and medical care were free. There were soccer fields, exercise rooms, literacy classes, a library, and company stores offering various goods. The atmosphere overall was college campus-like, with overtones of paternalism (for instance, lots of signs encouraging literacy as the path to the future, etc). The CEO spoke extensively of the need for his workers to see this as a "starter" job, the purpose of which was to launch them to the next phase of their careers.
We were invited to attend the company's Chinese New Year celebration. Held in the massive company cafeteria, it was an amazing experience. The celebration consisted of six hours (at least) of speeches, comedy, karate exhibitions, karoke (very popular), dance, and other miscellaneous entertainments, almost all by the workers themselves. Everyone seemed to being enjoying themselves immensely.
As I said earlier, I left with no absolute conclusions. I would hate to have to do an assembly line job of the kind I witnessed. On the other hand, if the alternative was working seven days a week on the family farm for no compensation, with no hope for the future, I might see such a job as the best alternative short of winning the lottery. Also, the efficiency and overall automation of the factory amazed me - it was the most modern factory I'd ever seen. The Chinese are clearly building competence in manufacturing that goes well above and beyond cheap labor.
I can't say how representative this factory complex is of Chinese facilities in general. I can say that reflexive judgments of outsourcing as "exploitation" or "opportunity creation" don't do justice to the full range of motivations present in both management and line-level employees. If there is any lesson I took away in the end, it was to avoid applying my filters, my biases, to someone else's experience.