“Next Wednesday, Apple is slated to unveil the iPhone 5 — the latest in a series of magical devices that have captured the world’s imagination. Given its incredible success with consumers and phenomenal stock price gains, Apple has come to symbolize the best of American ingenuity, technology and innovation,” Aaron Task reports for Yahoo Finance. “But Apple actually represents the worst of American business, according to award-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele.”
“In their latest book, The Betrayal of the American Dream
“In the 1990s, Apple products were produced at plants in Elk Grove, Calif. and Fountain, Colo. In the Colorado Springs area, Bartlett and Steele estimate more than 15,000 jobs, paying between $55,000 and $80,000, were lost when Apple sold the Fountain plant in 1996, costing the local economy $500 million,” Task reports. “Similar devastation occurred around Sacramento when Apple closed its Elk Grove plant in 2004… To be sure, Apple is not the first or last U.S. company to move its manufacturing overseas and Barlett and Steele write extensively about Boeing (BA), which is increasingly moving its operations to China. But Apple is the ‘most visible’ with the “most visible products,” Barlett notes, and the company symbolizes how outsourcing has moved far beyond the ‘Rust Belt.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This meme, blaming Apple for the U.S.’s lack of assembly jobs that, in reality, simply cannot exist today (CE assembly line jobs were and are simply not worth anything close to $55,000 and $80,000 per year), seems to be all the rage again lately. Whether it’s to sell books, an attempt to somehow damage iPhone 5 sales, or for some other reason, it smacks of a intentional PR effort. It’s FUD, plain and simple.
Apple is a symptom (and a minor one at that), not the disease.
Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said. – Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, January 21, 2012
And, by the way, many make their living from Apple who do not work for Apple, ourselves included. Mac developers and iOS developers, for two examples. iOS device accessory makers, for another. Extrapolate. The impact Apple Inc. has is enormous and the amount of employees on Apple’s payroll, regardless of country, pales in comparison to the number of jobs and economic activity the company actually generates around the world.
As per China (and Brazil, etc.) CE product assembly:
It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged. – Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, January 21, 2012
A study by Analysis Group found that Apple has directly or indirectly created 304,000 U.S. jobs. These jobs — spread across all 50 states — include thousands of jobs in numerous industries, from the people who create components for our products to the people who build the planes and trucks that carry them to our customers. For example, this figure also includes workers in Texas who manufacture processors for iOS products, Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone, and FedEx and UPS employees. Together with the 210,000 iOS jobs generated by the app economy, these 304,000 jobs make a total of 514,000 U.S. jobs created or supported by Apple.
Related articles:
Why Obama chose to use Steve Jobs over Google founders in DNC speech – September 7, 2012
Economists weigh in on Apple’s U.S. job creation claims – March 5, 2012
514,000 U.S. jobs created thanks to Apple Inc. – March 2, 2012
Launched by Apple, ‘App Economy’ has created 466,000 jobs in the U.S. alone since 2008 – February 7, 2012
Apple and the American economy – January 24, 2012
Apple, Steve Jobs, Obama, America and a squeezed middle class – 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
Puhleeeeeese!
I think what we also need to see is that Aaron Task took just this small bit of information from that book and blew it up to make it seem that Apple was the only topic that Barret and Steele had metioned, what Aaron Task did is plain old “bait create and wait”, since Aaron is very aware that anything with Apple in the headlines produces page clicks and increases Ad revenue, we see the problem and it’s pointing directly back at people like Aaron Task.
At the Yahoo site where this story originates allot of comments on how this information is just plain wrong in just pointing a finger at Apple, But understand that Aaron Task delibaretly pulled this story out to get page views, and also Arron Task didn’t put the rest of the information in context of the Book and by just pulling just this one story out has created a monster of its own.
So I see the main problem as the Yahoo reporter Aaron Task first and foremost by using just this one bit of information and taking it out of it context in turn that had included a number of other compinays that have been called out.
Then at the other end I can see that the information that was included by Bartlett and Steele had not been entirely correct, it was missing allot of key information on the direction our country has taken in production on our home soil and outsourcing that has been going on for years, but to just single out one company as Arron Task did just to create a story in itself it wrong and very sloppy.
Why wasn’t this bit of information printed bellow from the all things “D” interview with Tim Cook included in Aaron’s story?
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Asked if Apple would ever resume manufacturing in the U.S., Cook said “components such as glass and semiconductors are already manufactured here.”
“One challenge is the decline of tool and die makers in the U.S., he said, noting that all of those companies couldn’t fill the room.”
“There has to be sort of a fundamental change in the education system etcetera to bring back some of this but there are things we can do.
Mossberg asked, will Apple device manufacturing ever return to the U.S.
“It may,” Cook said.
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Above information and quotes from: http://allthingsd.com/20120529/tim-cook-video/
The question is why are these so called reporters not being held up to a standard of real reporting, they use sound bytes or context out of order and then creating a story that really didn’t exist in the first place, then unscrupulous reporters like Aron Task bill it as real news.
I live in Colorado Springs, Co. The reason Apple chose to close their manufacturing facility here was because the City Administration refused to give them any tax breaks. Intel also closed a manufacturing facility here for the same reason.
Apple moved their operations to that famous foreign country, Austin, Texas. Intel moved theirs to another famous foreign country, Albuquerque, New Mexico. A few years ago, Intel also warned the California state government not to raise state taxes any higher. Two weeks later, the California State legislature (ahem) raised taxes. Albuquerque now has Intel’s largest North American operations site for Intel. Intel employment in California has fallen steadily. Gee, I wonder why?
Colorado Springs has since given a 64 million dollar subsidy to the United States Olympic Committee for an office building that houses about 20 Olympic officers. (The Apple Austin facility employs over 4,000.) Within six months of this subsidy grant, another, larger office building, just a block away sold for only 7 million dollars. My city officials can sure recognize a bargain.
The trouble with the U.S. is the spectacular incompetence of most government officials, at all levels. Federally, we spent over a trillion dollars pounding the hell out of IRAQ, while looking for weapons of mass destruction, which they didn’t have. As in none. The trouble with articles like this one the fools who write and kinda miss the whole story.
Can anyone give FIVE examples of an American consumer electronics product that is completely designed, sourced and assembled in the USA?
Nothing current. If you go back far enough you’ll find radios used to be completely made here eons ago.
The Slave Wage Labor Movement
To compete in the current computer and electronics market, you have to sell at competitive prices. In order to sell at competitive prices, you have to do what your competitor is doing, which in our day and age means OUTSOURCING to the CHEAPEST BIDDER to get your product made and assembled. Specifically because of the higher cost of living and higher wage expectations of the USA, that means the outsourcing is NOT to third party companies within the USA.
When / If there are USA companies and employees willing to deal with the Slave Wages required to make and sell these products at competitive prices, manufacturing and assembly of these products will move to the USA, if only to cut shipping costs.
I do NOT advocate the Slave Wage Labor Movement. But it is a FACT of our modern age, like it or not. Customers are NOT willing to buy Apple products at DOUBLE or more the price of competing products. Not Gonna Happen. Total DUH Factor. It is entirely foolish to believe otherwise, nice as dreams of shiny rainbows and prancing unicorns may be.
IOW: Award-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele are being entirely UNREALISTIC and DISINGENUOUS. I give them a FAIL.
The tradition of abusing Apple within the envious, lost and self-destructive biznizz community never ends. I for one and entirely joyful to know that Apple IGNORES such stupidity and does what it must to be the single BEST COMPANY ON THE PLANET.
If only more companies followed Apple’s example and revolutionized our sick and sad worldwide biznizz community, the community that fell over in 2007 and still can’t get up. Meanwhile, Apple THRIVES. Learn from it, BizTards. 💡
I don’t know of any manufacturer of products that manufacture them in the United States. Especially in the computer industry.
To bring the price down you can’t manufacture in the U.S. without making prices of computers go way up. Blaming Apple as the worst company in the U.S. is just so Lame and so untrue in so many ways. Hopefully Apple will respond to this non-sense that was published because I think they have a lot of facts to say otherwise.
Hey, first things first. We dump the Kenyan, then lets talk about how to fix the US. These guys Barlett & Steele are off-the-shelf clueless asswipes.
Wait a minute. They wake up 8000 workers in DORMITORIES and give them a biscuit and a cup of tea and put them on a 12-hour shift – and a US exec is IMPRESSED rather than horrified?
There is a fair chance that manufacturing the iPhone may come back to the states but jobs will not come along with it. The factories will be totally run by robots. The problem with this , a lot of jobs would be lost in the asian countries which in turn takes money out of the world economy and simply eliminates jobs except for the management jobs to run the robotic plants.
These guys represent the worst in American journalism.
One more Marxist, intellectual moron who has no clue how to run a business, but thinks because he was indoctrinated at some university that he is knows it all.
With the direction we are headed here in the united states, I dont think jobs at the assembly line will ever return. We have reached a point where higher education in a necessity for getting a job due to all the technological advances.
Factory jobs and jobs that only require a high school deploy a are slowly disappearing.
“Apple is not the first or last U.S. company to move its manufacturing overseas”
Well, if they were not the first but just followers to stay alive against competition, then how can they be “The Worst” ?
If Apple didn’t move their manufacturing outside of the U.S. in the 90’s, there would be no Apple today. Just Dell’s and HP’s.
Besides, Apple is a global company, it sell’s about half of their stuff outside the U.S., why shouldn’t Apple employ, directly or indirectly, people around the world?
USA Unions 11.4% of Population / Unemployment rate: 8.1%
Germany Unions 18.6% of Population / Unemployment rate: 5.5%
Canada Unions 27.5% of Population / Unemployment rate: 7.3%
Finland 70% of Population / Unemployment rate: 6.9%
Yep, it’s those damn unions driving business away
Most of the European countries not making anything are in trouble the one that still makes products (Germany) isn’t? Germany also has all those social things red states say they hate? Hmm…Apple in the long term will to come back to the US or Europe, because tech and product security in Asia will eventually force them to (everything you make keeps going out the back door and down the street to your competitors).
I can’t imagine how much an iPhone would cost if it were made in the states. I can’t magine how fewer phones they would sell being so high priced (if made in the states). It’s business. Its all about what people will pay. And to reach that you have to get cost down. Us Americans aren’t cheap when it comes to being paid. Only when it comes to paying. Apple is doing what has to do, end of story.
Wonder why no one ever writes about the billion dollars Apple has paid out to developers because it’s iOS platform it’s created.
“A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.”
That’s called indentured servitude- nothing amazing about it and it’s a tragedy that it is allowed.