“Apple publicly names its overseas suppliers. A New York Times article blasts working conditions there. CEO Tim Cook angrily rebukes the charges in an internal memo. Consumers call for a boycott of Apple products,” Tom Kaneshige writes for CIO. “Sound familiar?”
“The issues run deeper than merely denouncing China’s working conditions, which seem deplorable through the lens of American standards. And it’s wrong to wag a disapproving finger at American companies taking advantage of cheap overseas labor,” Kaneshige writes. “For starters, we’re to blame for most of it. American companies are also responsible but in a good way. Lastly, the New York Times article portrayed Apple’s Chinese supplier, Foxconn, in a harsh light, but I’d argue the opposite is true: Foxconn is an example of how far China has come.”
“Oscar Wilde once observed that people ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ The price of a product, it seems, is the only thing that truly matters to Americans…We are a society fixated on price more than features, which is why American companies are forced to outsource manufacturing overseas to places like China were labor is cheap. And yet we cry foul over the horrible labor conditions there and hold American companies here accountable,” Kaneshige writes. “This sanctimonious stench wafts from time to time, allowing us to hold our noses in the air and feel good about ourselves. Then it evaporates just as quickly.”
Kaneshige writes, “The only real way to improve labor conditions is the accumulation of capital. In other words, the reason 14-year-olds work in Indonesia lawfully is because they need to help put food on the table. That is, Indonesia’s economic condition requires its people to work at a young age. As a country becomes more prosperous, working conditions and salaries will ultimately improve. This is true even in communist China, albeit change happens more slowly because of the political climate. Think I’m crazy? Just compare working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants a decade ago with Foxconn in the New York Times article this month.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
Related articles:
Rush Limbaugh: The New York Times has turned on Apple; they wouldn’t do this if Steve Jobs was alive – February 1, 2012
Most of your Apple iPhone and iPad was Made in the U.S.A. – February 1, 2012
Trump to Tim Cook: Make Apple products in the United States – February 1, 2012
Most of your Apple iPhone and iPad was Made in the U.S.A. – February 1, 2012
BSR: New York Times’ Apple-Foxconn article contains untruths, inaccuracies, and misleading info – January 29, 2012
Apple and the American economy – January 24, 2012
Apple, Steve Jobs, Obama, America and a squeezed middle class – January 21, 2012
How Rick Santorum would lure Apple to move assembly from China to Charleston – January 21, 2012
Apple’s real market value: How many U.S. jobs it creates – November 21, 2011
iOS developer salaries skyrocket – November 9, 2011
How many U.S. jobs has Apple’s iPod created? – July 8, 2011
Do-gooders in one country telling another country how they should treat employees & run their factories is not a viable position.
That is an extreme position. I contend that the opposite is true – silently standing by and profiting from the ill treatment of employees of foreign companies is the position that is not viable.
People have the right to express their dissatisfaction with ill-treatment of employees in another country. We can also apply some economic and political pressure in an effort to initiate positive change. But the people in that country have to assume the fundamental responsibility for their own situation. When you fight for something worthwhile, it becomes much more valuable to you.
Why in heaven’s name wasn’t there a hue and cry against all the suppliers for Walmart, Target, Pennys, etc etc, who make the millions of trinkets, doodads, and other junk for the American masses? Why weren’t there boycotts against the makers of Barbie dolls, plastic flowers, Coleman camping gear, ping pong balls and all the other junk that makes up American garages and are made under the dreariest conditions in Chinese sweat shops? Where was the NY Times articles for all of this crap that’s been made for decades now in Chinese factories?
Why not? Because writing an expose about how Barbie dolls are manufactured in China doesn’t sell near as many copies of the NY Times, nor does get near as much media attention. Writing about suicides in Barbie factories would have been greeted with a ho hum and a yawn by the American media. No one would have carried a hoot about the women jumping from the windows of their high rise company-owned workers’ housing if it had been a doll factory.
The reality has little to do with Apple as a company, but more with selling American newspapers…
there have been pieces written about it. You maybe aren’t a big enough fan of Walmart to have noticed.
+1, Ronaldo.
They’re using the Greenpeace strategy.
Perhaps the New York Times should do an expose comparing the number of US military personnel that commit suicide versus those at Foxconn and why.
Hint its much higher. In fact, in recent years more military personnel have died from suicide than combat.
Oscar Wilde was right.
Untill Apple started manufacturing in China, everyone complained about Macs being overpriced and not competitively matched to teh rest of the market that manufactured aboroad.
Anyone that criticized Apple for manufacturing in China or more specifically Foxconn, should dump and dispose of EVERY CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DEVICE, WHATEVER BRAND it is, is: MADE IN CHINA and probably at Foxconn too.
Oscar Wilde was right.
Untill Apple started manufacturing in China, everyone complained about Macs being overpriced and not competitively matched to the rest of the market that manufactured abroad.
Anyone that criticizes Apple for manufacturing in China or more specifically at Foxconn, should dump and dispose of EVERY CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DEVICE, WHATEVER BRAND it is that they own because it is: MADE IN CHINA and probably at Foxconn too.
And don’t forget:
Apple is the only technology company in the USA that keeps its technical support here.
When you call Apple for tech support, you get well spoken and trained US personel .
And they don’t ask if you’d like some lamb curry and naan with your tech support.
Mostly you get “support” personnel with 5 weeks training and a checklist. We get LOTS of horror stories of misdiagnosis. Like restore from a backup when the hard disk has less than 1gb free space. How do you suppose that’ll work? Or reformat your drive and reinstall your system. Bad luck about your data. Or pay $99-$500+ for varieties of so-called support /training?
Anyone who has ever called Applcare knows that you are full of shit and tHat that’s not the case.
we have had hundreds of clients over the years complaining about Apple’s inaccurate and poor support. And it appears to be getting worse. The so-called genius bars are little better. Case in point. So-called genius replaced the hard drive 4 TIMES in a new 17″ mbp. Still didn’t fix the issue and tried to refuse the client’s demand for a refund (illegal). One definition of insanity is performing an action that fails and then continue to perform the same action in the mistaken belief that maybe next time it’ll work. (often seen in print queuing) This turned a windows switcher off Apple completely. We made some progress back with her by solving her iphone problems (gratis) and telling her that if she gives Apple another try, with us, she’ll getproper expert service and support.
You are a liar.
Apple has, year after year, received customer satisfaction votes of ANY US company for its technical support excellence. Polled and surveyed customer satisfaction is around 90-97%, consistently.
Apple emails very detailed comprehensive surveys to every customer that has received tech support or visited a genius bar, to get feedback and enquire about tsatisfaction. When one calls in they always get screened and soemtimes remedied by front line staff . If necessary one will get reffered to senior advisors which will always solve the problem with thorough troubleshooting and customer service skills. You may run into personality conflicts as in life in which case you can ask to be transferred or complain if you think you’re not getting good support – but I can tell you for a fact that the best customer satisfaction and service, is an uncompromising goal and objective that Apple is very focused and consistent about – hence the consistent high scores for it’s customers.
Apple has, year after year, received the highest customer satisfaction votes of ANY US company for its excellent technical support and customer service – this is public ally verifiable.
These “do-gooders” who cry about sweatshops think they are helping these people but they are actually hurting them. Sometimes, especially in third world countries, so called “sweatshop” work is the ONLY work available. If protesters force them to move elsewhere, the factory closes and then there are NO jobs for these people. I recall a story about a protest several years back against Nike products, I believe, that forced Nike to remove their business from the factory, which subsequently closed and the 14 year old girls that were making clothing were now forced into prostitution. Well done.
The bottom line is, we can’t compare conditions here to conditions in developing countries because we’ve already been through the difficult stage that they are going through now. Our grandparents and great grandparents suffered through crappy conditions so that we would have it better, just as future generations will have it better in China and other places. Honestly, it floors me how ignorant people can be as to how economies work. The people bitching about these kinds of things don’t realize that the only reason that they live a life where they have enough free time to bitch about how evil Capitalism is is because Capitalism has worked so well that they don’t have to work 18 hour days like previous generations did.
Really? I suppose that government regulations and new laws governing child labor, allowing labor unions and governing how they can negotiate with companies, and new government departments like OSHA didn’t have anything to do with our increasingly better standard of living, then, huh?
Look, capitalism is great – if all you are interested in is accumulating money, and if the money being accumulated is yours. In a pure capitalistic economy, workers rarely have the power to demand the kinds of things Americans take for granted – it took a combination of government regulation, laws, and labor unions to force these things on the corporations that were in power in the 19th century.
Today, the Republican Party is being controlled by those same (and newer) corporations to work towards taking those things back to the way they were – hence Gingrich’s remarks on child janitors and Wisconsin’s attack on labor union negotiating powers.
Having a modern, civil society that cares for its citizens is a cooperative venture – and venture capitalists aren’t the guys with the values that make it civilized – they only care about the money. The things we take for granted that make life livable – 40 hr work weeks, health insurance, life insurance, workman’s comp, protective gear in dangerous environments, a living wage, etc., COST companies money, and labor unions often had to fight tooth and nail to get them at all back in the beginning.
Allow those corporations to take control of the government, and watch first the unions disappear and then sit back and watch your living standards disappear, too.
If future generations in China have it better, it’ll be because the Communist Party gets tossed out on its ear – it has no interest in protecting the little guys in China.
First of all, I’m not a Republican, so I won’t take your bait and defend Newt and company.
Second, take a good look at the chart showing safety in the workplace since OSHA was founded. You’ll see that accidents declined. Then take a good look at the chart showing safety in the workplace BEFORE OSHA was founded. Accidents were already in the same decline before we had OSHA. That’s because in a free market system (even though we’ve never had a truly free market) employees can decide not to work for companies that have unsafe conditions. Companies need to be competitive to prospective employees just like they do with customers. If they can’t get good people to work for them, they can’t get products to market, and they can’t make any money. It is in their best interests to provide a safe workplace.
Likewise, while unions have their place, in the early 20th century, non-unionized workers in the United States got benefits like 40 hour work weeks and paid time off years before their unionized European counterparts. Again, it happened courtesy of competition, not a forced hand.
It is en vogue to slam on companies and businessmen as evil, greedy bastards who don’t care about their workers right now, and while there certainly are some who fit that description, most do not. But what most people don’t seem to understand is that in a free market system, the motive does not have to be moral for good to come of the actions. Even if every business owner was a greedy, uncaring jerk, their profit motive would still work for the general good because to get good employees they would have to offer a decent wage, decent benefits, and decent work conditions.
ndelc is right.
Paul Krugman exposes the hypocrisy of globalization opponents and skewers their sanctimonious outrage by outlining the economic argument IN FAVOR OF foreign investment in developing countries. Thanks to John Gruber for unearthing this Slate piece from 1997.
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html
Guys, 100B in cash. I don’t think it is insulting Apple to say they need to do better in China. Everybody should in life anyway.
They don’t own Foxconn. True. Foxconn is the manufacturer and not Apple. True. But Apple have them as partners.
Apple can really afford playing the strong hand with Foxconn and request top notch working conditions for employees.
I hear also a lot of people saying that other companies use Foxconn. True. They should do better too.
The all scene is at least half responsible for what is going on. But Apple is the leader and everybody copy them. Bottem line:
If Apple is that good of a company when it comes to innovation, let them innovate when it comes to ethics too. Better world.
Apple is already above the fray in working toward change.
Not to mention that the NYT simply fabricated a lot of their article. Read the correction letter to them from one of their sources sometime.
“If Apple is that good of a company when it comes to innovation, let them innovate when it comes to ethics too”
They have, and they do. Pay atttention.
Did you just learn the word ethics?
Sorry, I didn’t see the “quote”…
Regional minimum wage in Indonesia is around $100 per month. If you didn’t give the job to them, does it mean their life become better?
I see this are more about give US the job rather than a concern about labour in China.
I suppose most American never get out of US? It is weird that there are journalists that expect Indonesia or china labor conditions as it is in US. They really journalists.
no they are not journalist, at least not if you think journalists write truthful stories. They just write stuff to sell papers. It’s not reAlly about knocking the successful either. It’s about knocking the biggest thing to get the biggest audience. Just happens big is often successful.
In December, as part of my assignment for a client, I toured about half a dozen Chinese factories associated with vehicle manufacturing in Liuzhou. Generally, I was impressed – the facilities were clean, numerous safety measures were in force and the workers seemed well treated. I’d compare what I saw to the conditions in the equivalent American plants from the late 1970s or 1980s. Not a lot of automation, but modern equipment and processes. I also had meetings with many college-educated engineers and managers in offices that had roughly the same levels of technology as their American counterparts.
My point, I suppose, is this: If your conception of Chinese manufacturing is dingy sweatshops, think again. Sure, it is an economy and society in transition from agriculture to manufacturing and tech, so wages have a ways to go, but those who would characterize it as subhuman are simply wrong.
How quickly society forgets their own past. All modernized economies went through the same growing pains — however, there was no North state that wagged its finger at us in the 18 and 1900’s.
Thus article makes several huge points that the NYT article failed to. NYT just wanted to sell papers by attaching Apple to it.
“just wanted to sell paper by attaching Apple to it”
Spot on.
Then the other side of the problem is a bunch of people who jump on that bandwagon either for attention, because they don’t understand/don’t want to understand the real situation etc.
Poor journalism and poor readership..
So it is only through “and American lens” that a moral human would find it objectionable for rich, first-world companies to rely on 14-year-old laborers to “put food on the table”.
If that’s acceptable, then human decency hasn’t evolved one bit in the last 200 years since we supposedly set aside colonialism. Apparently it is alive and well, we merely use more legal and economic weapons today.
THOUGHT POLLUTION
Tom Kaneshige is being as ridiculous at the NY Times.
Personal Family Experience: My grandfather was pulled out of school, without the opportunity to finish high school, in order to work and make money to support his family. This is despite the fact that he was a brilliant musician with perfect pitch who started and managed the first youth orchestra in his city. Because of his poor education opportunities he was NEVER able to live up to his full potential.
I do NOT what this to happen in China or any other country on the planet.
I also NEVER want any citizen of any country to ‘put up and shut up’ regarding a criminal government or culture.
The fact is that US companies, one of which is Apple, taking part in the current Slave Wage Labor Movement, are ENABLING China to be what it currently is: A CRIMINAL NATION. Cut the enablement. Force the country to come to terms with its own internal catastrophes and CHANGE ITSELF.
Where would I RATHER US companies fulfill their need to follow the Slave Wage Labor Movement, if indeed it is a requirement of our current Consumer Culture? In NON-CRIMINAL nations. Brazil qualifies. Taiwan qualifies. Mexico does NOT qualify. Canada qualifies. Slovenia qualifies. Pakistan does NOT qualify. Etc.
Ethics are required for sane living. Ethics are constantly compromised because of default self-destructive human behavior. Nonetheless we are always responsible for our choices and the most responsible compromise is to assist NON-CRIMINAL nations and to dis-enable criminal nations.
What is the difficulty here? Oh yeah, the usual spirit-of-the-age garbage: greed, ignorance, short term profit with long term disaster, personal gain at the expense of the lives of fellow human beings. This is my species? But I rant… 😕