Apple Computer like virtually all computer manufacturers, depends on foreign manufacturing, particularly in the Far East, where labour is much cheaper. This is, of course, one of the reasons why computer get cheaper every year, even though they get also get better. So cheap labour is good. Lower wages aren’t neccesarily a bad thing if the cost of living is lower, too. Strong economic ties between the developed and developing countries foster political and social ties, and the more countries depend on one another, the less likely they are to engage in wars or other such disputes. That’s the McDonalds Law: no two countries with a McDonalds have ever gone to war with each other.
The flip side of course is that cheap labour often goes together with a poor working environment, lax safety laws, and the absence of things like trades unions to ensure workers’ rights. A few weeks ago, a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, ran a story based on their undercover exploration of the Longhua plant run by Apple’s partner in China, Foxconn. In particular, the Mail on Sunday criticised the low salaries and was especially concerned that the living conditions that the employees used were out-of-bounds to visitors, and thus can be assumed to be poor.
In response, Apple sent independent auditors out to the Longhua plant to follow up on these accusations. To call the iPod factory a mere factory is underselling it by an order of magnitude. 200,000 people work there, and most of them live in dormitories attached to the plant. Besides housing, various amenities are provided on site, from healthcare and banks through to sports facilities.
Anyone who’s read any history books describing 19th Century England will immediately think of the crowded towns that sprang around the mills that powered the Industrial Revolution, but there’s little doubt that in many ways these Chinese “factory-cities” are much safer and nicer places to work. For a start, the auditor’s report confirms Apple’s assurances that no child labour is used at all. The auditors also found that most of the living conditions and amenities were good.
However, there were a few problems. Apple’s code of conduct for foreign contractors limits workers to 60-hour weeks with at least one day off per week. The auditors found that this was regularly exceeded during peak production periods (presumably like the run up to Christmas or when new models are being issued). On the other hand, off-peak overtime wasn’t abundant enough in the opinion of many of the workers interviewed. Other problems involved substandard conditions in a few of the dorms (for example triple-decker beds) and limited transportation for those employees who prefer to live off-site in neighbouring towns.
Apple have responded to the report by announcing that more dorms would be built to reducing the crowding in the existing ones, and that new transportation rosters would be devised. Overtime rules have been revised to ensure “a healthy work-life balance “. Apple’s response can be read in detail at the link below.
What does this tell us about Apple that we don’t already know? Not much, though it’s good to see Apple responded quickly to the negative press and that they seem to be doing something to fix the major problems. Apple operate in the real world, and while they sometimes cultivate the reputation of being the vegetarian option compared to more predatory companies, simple market forces simply won’t allow them to return to using labour in the US or Europe. So it’s critical that factories in China, India, or wherever used by American and European companies are regularly investigated, if only to make sure that we don’t get our cheap electronic toys from the labout of underpaid children working in sweatshops.
Links:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=14915
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/ipodreport/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5262110.stm
Neale Monks
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