An independent audit has shown that Foxconn works workers for too many hours per week, cheats them out of overtime money, allows unsafe working conditions, and packs worker representation boards with management plants.
While giving Apple credit for instigating this audit, I wonder again why Apple, which is sitting on an enormous pile of cash, can’t solve this problem with money. Supposedly, the whole point of having a Chinese supply chain is that it is far more reactive than its US counterpart. If Apple created a well-paid corps of independent inspectors, and said that they’d allow slightly higher margins for suppliers who would let those inspectors roam their plants at will, I’d be surprised if conditions didn’t get better quickly.
And, since this will inevitably come up in the comments, there’s no doubt that working conditions at Foxconn and other suppliers making non-Apple products are probably as bad or worse, and Mike Daisey is a big liar.
b-psycho
Not “can’t”. They just don’t want to. They care enough to act like they care, but not enough to follow through.
MosesZD
I suspected he was jazzing up the truth, not making it up completely. One of those fiction has more impact than reality things.
Sort of like the historical fiction novels that were so popular during the 1970s. Truthy… But not truth…
Schlemizel
Because it would make their immense pile of cash ever so slightly smaller – SATSQ
JPL
What would the stockholders say?
WyldPirate
Because capitalism breeds greedy motherfuckers at the of the top of the income heap (and elsewhere as well) and for many of those greedy motherfuckers, the accumulation of more money is their drug and they don’t care who they have to step on or fuck over to get their “fix”.
Handy
Simple solution – DO NOT but anything Apple.
See, done deal – free market and all of that.
(he says as his better half listens to ITunes)
UGH!
John S.
CocaineMoney is a hell of a drug.mikej
Far more reactive mans things like keeping employees up all night awaiting shipment of new parts.
RSA
@b-psycho:
Exactly. If a corporation can produce a convincing appearance of caring about working conditions, that’s equivalent to actually doing something about working conditions. No, not equivalent–it’s better, because it’s usually cheaper. Corporations are sociopathic in that way.
Schlemizel
Heres the thing that nobody seems to get. They can have their iCrap built for $1.25 an hour & sell it for $500 because both halves of that equation exist. But they are killing off the $500 side by driving wages down toward the $1.25 level. None of the workers at Foxconn make enough to buy an iPad; well, maybe one from the auxiliary assembly line ;) but Apple gets 0 from that. Once the master have successfully broken us so that we will accept that level of income who will they sell this shit to? Each other? Great, so they can make 10,000 iPads for the total market.
Joseph Nobles
OT: SCOTUSblog reviews “the single most classless and misleading thing I’ve ever seen related to the Court” — an RNC ad that exaggerates Verrilli’s performance before the Court.
http://m.scotusblog.com/2012/03/the-rnc-shoots-itself-in-the-mouth/
Brandon
And here I was thinking it was about profit.
Brian
Because its all a big PR stunt… They want us to think they care, but in the end all they want to do is sit on more and more money so they can act like the cool kids on the block.
RepubAnon
Apple rewards its employees for minimizing costs, not for obeying labor laws. Corporate ‘sustainability” and “human rights” declarations are just scraps of paper without enforcement – and enforcement means higher costs, while ignoring them means lower costs (until you’re caught).
MattF
Hey, be nice. Corporations are people, so they have feelings, y’know. Also, perhaps less seriously, Apple should just buy some small country, rename it Stevetopia, and forbid entry to reporters or monologists.
Egg Berry
I think you could also lay a portion of the blame for the situation on the government of China, and all the other developing nations who are so lax in their labor and environmental laws and enforcement that they enable this “World is Flat” race to the bottom.
Butch
The last time this issue came up here I was disappointed by all the “that’s just the way it is” comments.
The Other Bob
I read that FoxxConn produces 40% of the worlds electronics. It might be tough for Apple to find another supplier who has the manufacturing capcity. FoxxConn has some big power.
FYI- I am not making excuses for Apple, who helped create the monster, I am just making a comment about FoxxConn’s market power.
El Cid
Wall Street hates Costco enough just because they pay their workers better with better benefits than their rivals. And that’s just in the U.S.
RossInDetroit
@Brandon:
Same deal. I have an amplifier on my bench for repair. It’s going to sit there for 3 weeks for want of one part (CA3086 transistor array) that’s on its way from Hong Kong. If I was in Hong Kong where the parts are, the cash from this job would already be in my pocket and I’d be on to the next repair.
Short supply chain has powerful multiplier effects.
Gin & Tonic
Cheaper has nothing to do with it?
jibeaux
The Mike Daisey thing is infuriating because people who mean well and want to change things for the better but try to accomplish that by presenting things that are not true as true, are doing something 100% counterproductive. If there’s a horrifying story about a chemical used on the screens causing nerve damage, but it’s several years old and it happened in a part of China 2000 miles away from where you are, FFS just talk about it without acting like it happened while you were there to people you talked to. Say that it happened in the year and the place that it actually happened, or else write a freaking novel.
RossInDetroit
There are advantages besides cheap labor to have your production and supply chain all in one place. See Krugman, re: Industrial Ecologies. Localized masses of related industries greatly improve efficiency.
The Swiss proved this by producing cheap clocks in the Jura region using piecework.
‘Detroit’ does this now by developing tooling using specialist shops all within a half-day’s drive of downtown.
Automakers are losing a lot of flexibility when they move parts production offshore, and in some ways it’s hurting them even as their labor costs go down.
Schlemizel
@Butch:
I read a thread somewhere else & the common theme seemed to be “those people are the lucky ones compared to the rest of their countrymen”. eye-yi-yi! How do you even start to make inroads into stupid that dense? That was, by the way, a common argument FOR slavery. “See he-yar sur, oow-er slaves are much better off than the savages running through the jungles”.
Thats weapons grade moran juice.
peach flavored shampoo
Because if they’re a little less profitable, the execs will make only $9.4 million for their bonus, instead of $10.1 million. That’s an extra tricked-out Bentley they cannot purchase.
jibeaux
@Schlemizel: I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but it is true that the reason these companies can offer such poor working conditions and never suffer a shortage of labor is because slogging waist deep through the rice paddies for a subsistence farming living really is worse. It’s nothing but depressing, of course. I’ve read about factories in Thailand employing seamstresses that sounds like truly grinding work that will eventually take your hands and eyesight…but if the factories pack up and leave because they’ve found lower labor costs somewhere else, the women literally have no way to avoid starvation besides prostitution. It’s kind of a soul-sucker.
Punchy
And if you think those “inspectors” weren’t 1) company plants, or 2) corrupted with kickbacks within minutes of being on the job, or 3) threatened with jail/death for reporting anything substantial, I’ve got some beachfront property in Somalia to sell ya.
NotMax
The report press release does state that Foxconn has 1.2 million employees.
That’s one helluva large unionized labor force.
Oh, and that Foxconn has agreed to take 15 months (until July 2013) to attempt to rectify wrongs cited.
El Cid
@jibeaux: It never ceases to amaze me how so many people can blithely justify to themselves (‘I’m a writer! I was being creative! I was helping the story!’) things that if I were in their same positions, I could never justify my doing them.
El Cid
@jibeaux: China, last I read, still has a population of peasants (small-holding farmers primarily engaging in small-trade production, subsistence, and self-industry, but, still, you know, peasants) numbering somewhere around 700 million people.
JGabriel
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RIP, Adrienne Rich:
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Dervin
If the Chinese workers want to be treated like human beings, they are going to have to fight for it. They are going to have to get shot, they are going to have to risk everything. If they are hoping a bunch of guilty white people are going to save them, they are not only doomed, but not worth saving.
mike in dc
Eventually(over the next 10-30 years) growth in China will drive up wages there, to “second world” levels, at which point foreign employers will relocate to countries with cheaper labor. Of course, world population growth is also supposed to stabilize/flatten later this century, which will have interesting effects on growth rates. I wonder what companies would do in a world where no ultra-cheap sources of labor existed?
The Raven
I am not so sure Apple can change Chinese labor practices. I suspect attempts to do so are likely to lead to broad push-back from the Chinese 1%. Maybe Steve Jobs could have pulled it off, but I have doubts about Apple’s current management. China is just a century away from being the last, largest, and strongest of the old iron-age empires, and their idea of class is more deeply entrenched than anything anywhere else in the world.
Oh, noes! Apple might have to do business somewhere where workers are treated half-way decently.
JGabriel
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mike in dc:
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They would create it. All you need are overbroad laws, selective prosecution, and a surfeit of jails.
Do you think we have so many prisons in this country because our citizens are so much more criminal? Or because prisoners are cheap labor?
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mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: I left out an “Supposedly” at the start of the sentence, I added it in. That’s the argument given when you say “move the supply chain back to the US”.
Doc Sportello
“If Apple created a well-paid corps of independent inspectors ….” They do, and those are the FLA inspectors. The FLA isn’t the answer to everything, but they do provide independent analysis of wages and working conditions.
As for wages, Foxconn claims to have doubled them in the last three years. And Apple and Foxconn have agreed not only to overhaul the policies on overtime, but to “compensate retroactively any worker owed for unpaid overtime.”
More work needs to be done, especially around worker safety, but things are clearly moving in the right direction. The question is how long will this continue (and can they pick up the pace.)
But for the moment, cheers to Apple, and here’s hoping the rest of electronic manufacturers follow in their wake.
David
Somebody over Twitter, I forget who, pointed out that it would actually make good business sense for Apple to push for higher labor standards. They have a high profit margin, and can afford to lose a little. On the other hand, their competitors can’t, particularly if they were trying to get, say, a competitor to the iPad off the ground. I don’t if they’re aiming that way, but the optimist in me hopes that’s why a report they paid for about Foxconn labor conditions gives such a negative portrait.
kindness
Why do these headlines always say Apple? Foxconn also makes HP, Dell and a few other company’s goods.
Yea, I understand. You point out the big players and Apple is a big player. But damnit, pointing out only Apple is wrong.
Doc Sportello
Yeesh — should have included this above.
Assuming that the safety and overtime issues can be met, improving wages shouldn’t be much of a problem. The NYT calculated that it would only cost $65 per iPhone to bring Chinese wage costs in line with those in America. The cost of a 32 GB unlocked iPhone 4S is $750, so we’re talking about less than 9% of the retail cost.
If — and these are guesses — a fair Chinese wage would result in a $40 increase, then Apple could split the costs with its customers and raise the price of the iPhone to $770. That seems like an eminently workable solution.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
From personal profession professional experience what reactive means; “turn on the unit, if it doesn’t burst into flames it is a pass, don’t let it run to long or it might fail. Ship it.” that was the philosophy of the outsource company I dealt with
Chines will happy push trash out the door as fast as possible if you let them. That is why Apple has such a huge staff of well paid inspectors. Not because Apple is so concerned about their employees.
Amir Khalid
@The Raven:
Steve Jobs always wanted to see product design changes implemented on the double, because if Nokia or Samsung beats us to market then some fucker’s head gonna roll. Or you, Mr Contract Manufacturer, give us the lowestest manufacturing cost per unit or we go to the next factory down the road. It’s not just because Foxconn is greedy that Chinese working people sre getting screwed over. Their customers squeeze them all the way on costs, so they squeeze their cost centers too: wages, labor health safety and welfare, suppliers, compliance, whatever’s there to be squeezed. That goes deep in the DNA of the industry.
You want Foxconn to ease up on tbeir workers, quit stealing their labor, making them sick, driving them to suicide? Even if Foxconn’s customers start policing it (or start making a show of policing it), someone’s got to police Foxconn’s customers too. Make Apple, HP, Dell, whoever else, legally responsible if they profit off labor abuses by their contractors. That has to happen in the home countries of those corporations. Is it going to happen in America?
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
Better yet, why not bring iPod, iPhone and iPad production here?
Oh yeah, it’s cheaper the other way.
Words which will be engraved on America’s tombstone.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I see that someone else here has some real-world experience with doing business in Asia.
Best and worst years of my life, dealing with the Chinese.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@mike in dc:
The global wage curve does move up over time. Even as the cost curve of automation goes down over time.
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Imagine what happens when the second line eventually goes beneath the first line sometime in the next few decades, as it inevitably must…
Smedley the uncertain
@Punchy: Somalia has some nice beaches. Sudan, on the other hand…
vernon
The solution to all this is at the top of the post below, by Anne Laurie: “You get the behavior you reward.”
So smartphone makers, to provide an acceptable return to capital, exploit horrible labor conditions. OK. Do we really want to keep rewarding that behavior with our wallets? Do we really need smart phones? Are they really so awesome a part of our lives that they’re worth the immense human suffering involved?
The question, once raised, answers itself. Smart phones are a tawdry luxury. They’re basically just entertainment gizmos that deliver ads to us, tracking our preferences to research us cheaply in hopes of delivering ads more efficiently in the future. The smart phone lifestyle is an Omelas that’s extremely easy to walk away from.
Smedley the uncertain
@Amir Khalid: A lot of Dell equipment sports FoxCon parts.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Amir Khalid:
As a student of our politics, you no doubt know that most Americans don’t give a shit about their fellow Americans. Much less about foreigners of a different hue.
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(But I suspect that your question was rhetorical).
Karmakin
@Schlemizel: The assumption…that’s made by a lot more than corporations, let me tell you, this is a mainstream, common assumption made by a lot of even good people..is that college graduates will always continue to make good wages and as such will always provide a large enough market for consumer goods.
That’s the assumption that all this is based around. I personally disagree with this assumption, for a variety of reasons. I think companies are going to realize that they’re paying a premium for work that doesn’t require that level of education, and as well that level of education will become so common-place that it becomes basically worthless. And in fact they are starting to realize these things.
Like it or not eventually we’ll all be making minimum wage, without major economic reforms.
Corner Stone
@JGabriel:
Neither. Both the state controlled and for profit prison industries are huge cash cows. Prison labor may be cheap to the eventual employer, but it certainly isn’t to the taxpayer or society.
Corner Stone
@RossInDetroit:
Then the question becomes, would you pay more for the part to be manufactured at a JIT location? And would that make the repair job still profitable for you? As a balance of opportunity cost and total cost.
Corner Stone
I’m just tired of this argument. It’s a cop out. The Chinese supply chain didn’t organically sprout out of Chairman Mao’s ass. Apple et al created it, or at best, nurtured it into what it is.
The massive construction zone had demand, and the demand was for cheap labor.
Anyone who has ever worked for a global or international company understands what this is about. Businesses strive to locate and take advantage of lowest cost jurisdiction. It doesn’t matter what their product or service is.
Steve in DC
This audit isn’t going to “fix” anything. This has happened multiple times before with Foxconn. Some councelors will be brought in, nets will go up, a minor raise will be put in place, and hours will be scaled back. People will cheer and then… more overtime, more work and it all goes back to where things were.
Apple could solve it, but they won’t. Apple is the paragon of cut throat, fuck the poor, steal ideas, sue people captalism, they have been for a while. An apple exec even said a while ago (forget the exact quote but close enough) “our customers care more about the new iphone than they do conditions in China”, which is giant “no shit”. Apple is the uber brand of “me, me, me, all me” from the 80’s Ronald Raygun types and people that just want to look hip, and Rush Limbaugh!
Plus, if they paid more to make things their stock price wouldn’t be so epic!
Xecky Gilchrist
@Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity: I’m amazed it took this far into the comment thread for someone to suggest this.
There are, of course, logistical problems with starting up manufacturing on that scale here, but why not get started?
Xecky Gilchrist
@El Cid: Paying your workers ‘too well’ sets a precedent and a bad example.
Yup. This is another case where we see that not even profit is the god for these bastards, or at least not the only one – it’s cruelty. Proof enough – if they can make more money by not bullying, they will still choose to bully.
kindness
@Steve in DC:
Ya know, that isn’t why I own several Apple products. I own them even though they are more expensive, not to make me hipper or stand out in a crowd but because they are superior to their competition. Maybe a tad of allowing that might make your argument more real world.
Mark
Near the end of the 2nd TAL Mike Daisey interview, NYT reporter Charles Duhigg responds to Ira Glass’s question about a factory in China being able to hire 8,700 industrial engineers in 15 days:
“15 days. And that 15-day figure, the guy who told me that also told me that that’s basically because they kind of drug their heels on it a little bit. They probably could have done it faster.”
To me, this sounds like a much bigger whopper than anything Mike Daisey said.
China may have a lot of people, but not that many engineers, and not that many unemployed industrial engineers in one place.
Has TAL contacted “the guy” who told Duhigg that, like they contacted Daisey’s translator? I certainly hope so. Their commitment to the truth is in question here.
Maybe the problem has more to do with Ira Glass’s gullibility than it has to do with Daisey’s lying.
dollared
@Mark: this. That hiring statistic is complete bullshit. I work for a company that has Chinese engineering, and the spin up time for a project is perhaps 25% faster in China? Why? Because we don’t quibble about the cost. In the US, it would be faster than China, but we fight a very long time about who we hire and at what price. Because everyone is told that hiring is bad and that each FTE is a potential disaster.
It’s US management culture that’s the real problem.
Martin
Really late to this one, but Apple can fix this. The real question is why should they? Or should I say, why should they alone? Microsofts workers making XBoxes at the same plant face the same pay and hours? Why shouldn’t they also fix this? They too have no shortage of cash.
I actually know Apples attitude on this – and it’s basically that. If the industry wants to solve the problem, Apple is on board 100%. They’re even happy to lead the effort, both by example and by spearheading initiatives, but they aren’t going to adopt a unique competitive disadvantage against say, Samsung who makes all of their phones and tablets in the same damn factory with the same conditions, just for the sake of appearances. Moving Apple on this helps, but its just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Where is Amazon on this, who produces almost as many Kindles as iPads as Apple makes iPads – and just one building over at Foxconn? And why aren’t consumers making the same demands of them?
The answer is that there’s a double standard being applied. US consumers really like their cheap as dirt Kindles, and demanding Amazon go along with Apple on these issues would meaningfully raise the price of those devices. And consumers may care about thee Chinese workers, but only if the problem is solved with Apples money alone. As soon as you ask them to pay $20 more for a Kindle, their concern for the Chinese workers subsides quite a bit.
Apple would be thrilled to see overall labor costs go up, so long as that rise affects competitors as well. Apple knows that the greater % of retail cost that labor contributes too, the more cost competitive Apple gets.
Martin
@dollared: We basically have no 2-year industrial engineering programs in the US and our 4-year programs only turn out 3000 or so degrees per year. China has zillions of 2- year programs and they’re quite large. We turn out an order of magnitude more anthropology degrees than industrial engineering, if anyone questioned where our national commitment was.
Keenan Desjardins
Hi there DrieCulturen,I agree with you. The Dutch really appreciate that I speak their difficult language! And talk about mistakes….Years ago I also heard about a study done here in the Netherlands, I believe, whose results were quite similar. Kids who grow up in a bilingual household seem to score higher on tests and things. I hesitate to say that they’re “smarter”, but I believe that was the direction the results of the test were going in.
Corner Stone
@dollared:
What I’d like to know is who did they have do the hiring?