Recently I posted a two part article concerning the manufacturer of Apple products by Foxcomm, a Chinese company employing hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled workers putting together your phone. You can read the posts here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/toritto/2012/02/14/as_american_as_apple_-_part_ii
http://open.salon.com/blog/toritto/2012/02/12/as_american_as_apple
Huge numbers of these workers live in dorms on the "Ipod City Campus", work six days a week 12 hours a day and earn $17 a day for the twelve hours putting together your iphone..
There have been explosions in the factories and suicides because workers felt trapped with nowhere to turn.
"They use women as men and men as animals." And this is a quote from an 18 year old female Chinese worker!
Foxcomm is the largest assembler of electronic equipment in the world, making phones, pads, computers, playstations etc.
Conditions were documented in a series of articles in the New York Times and elsewhere.
I tried to do a decent job on my post. It got some readings and some comments so thinking it was Valentine’s Day I posted it again. Same result. Not much interest in what I had to say. Not that unusual.
I've seen shareholder meetings and conventions of geeks worship at the altar of Jobs, as if Apple were a religion - the salvation of mankind and capitalism. No indiscreet questions about the conditions of the workers who make the phones, none of whom work in America or actually work for the company. Not our problem I guess.
I watch younger people in groups not talking to each other - just checking their phones. Apparently iphones are like crack - highly addictive.
Does knowing how they are made bother you?
Put down your toy and look in the mirror. Ask yourself a question and answer it honestly.
WOULD IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO YOU IF YOU KNEW THE PHONE WAS MADE BY ACTUAL SLAVES?
Sure they are made by "workers" being paid Joad wages while Apple earned $400,000 per employee last year.
But would you care at all if they were not paid? If they really were slaves? Or would you want that damn phone anyway?
Think about it.
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The Songbird
Aristoxenus
JALI 17
L in the Southeast
Missilynn
Poor Woman
Salon.com
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I do not have any intention of getting one.
A simple cell phone is tether enough.
I haven't been able to participate much this week either here or fictionique cause I'm finishing up a work project that will leave me looking for the next adventure---a full time job in itself. And I finally got a chance to write something this morning---more suited to here.
I'm suer it won't be seen by as many as I'd like---so the question I'll be asking myself is---am I proud of the story? And most important---did I write about something important?
If both of those answers are yes---I'm OK.
Bless you for caring and for all your passionate posts.
It may be that the conditions at Foxcomm are particularly egregious. But I don't know if users of Apple products can be singled out here. How many of the things all of us use every day are made by modern-day slaves?
And yes, whether its electronics, sneakers or oranges we are blind to the workings of our capitalist economy. Here in Florida, illegal Mexican pickers pluck tomatoes at less than a penny and a half a pound. There has been an effort to raise the "pay" but the growers insist that the grocery stores pay the additional amount and several of the major grocers will not agree. Meanwhile we hear wails about illegals as we exploit them everyday.
Apple exploits. It makes vast profits which it stashes overseas to avoid taxes. It has hoards in Congress protecting its interests. And it is worshiped by geeks so enamoured of the products it seems they could care less if it was made by slaves. They never even think about it.
Sad.
I suspect it is that since the Chinese don't look like us, we are not moved.
I don't own one, although I've used a friend's and can see the appeal. What do I own that was made under similar conditions? Probably a lot - See the documentary "Mardi Gras, Made in China" for an insight into how debasing the existence of people who make crap like Mardi Gras bead is in China, while the owner of their company, a fat cat imported from Singapore, lives like a king. To quote Bruce Hornsby, "That's just the way it is. Some things will never change." Until they do, that is. What does it take? Something to rip away the complacency, The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, one example. Upton Sinclair, laying waist to the appetite of America with the appalling details of "The Jungle". Steinbeck, turning "Oakies" into humans, Tom Joad into everyman. Prior to that, it's easy to turn a blind eye and worse yet, take easy advantage of corruption, befoulment and injustice.
I first saw the film "Mardi Gras Made in China" in 2010 and it sickened me. It's not just high tech wonders that make Apple wealthy beyond belief, it's low grade dreck, damn Mardi Gras beads, that have people laboring like animals, treated like prisoners, debased in every way, while the owner of the company lives like a king. Watch it, you'll get sick. And yet ... Here we are, our stores filled with goods that our whole society depends on being cheap, because by their being cheap, we've been put into situation where we couldn't pay more for them. Worse yet, the perception is that you can't function well in this society without a lot of that stuff because it's become so ubiquitous.
It seems that each experience of moral complacency has to be met with an extremity either so wrenching to the psyche, deemed socially repugnant or undeniable in it's negative practical manifestations, before we'll give up what we perceive as an advantage in order to mitigate the harm. Or, that may just be the way it looks, because when processes are in play to proactively prevent abuses, it's a non-issue. This is something that has to be addressed and undoubtedly will be, the question is “how soon and how fast”? There are many powerful forces who don't want to rock the Chinese juggernaut, but it's the fact that we've turned a blind eye to the conditions that these people work under which has put Americans out of work, living with stagnant wages for decades and trembling in fear that the cost of anything they believe they can't live without will go up.
Maybe a couple of months making Mardi Gras beads or i-Phones for $ 17 dollars a day under the watchful eye of despots would give them second thoughts. Then again, maybe not.
R
I responded on one of your other posts about this, that the working conditions in China, about a hundred years behind us in economic and social development, is still far, far better for ordinary working folks right here in North America, suffered a hundred years ago. Especially our child labourers.
It is grossly unfair and unconscionable to compare China to us in our nations today. To do so without mentioning that China was 400 or 500 years behind us in development as little as 60 years ago is to ignore the fact that what they've had to do while having no empty spaces and few raw resources and a huge population to feed, house and clothe was a tremendous task. One we could not have accomplished with all our modern stuff. Heck we had it all, with vast resources, an educated, modern relatively small population and we still screwed it up.
Again I'll mention that one of the ways in which we are surely "exceptional" is in our incredible hypocrisy, this blog included.
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I'm moving on.
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But I do love my iphone and am very attached to it though I absolutely don't need to be, I do love checking the weather regularly and even when I'm sitting right here at the computer, it dings at me when I get a new email. And it's the original version, very old, and it was free, an upgrade, probably reconditioned (do they do that part here?) I never thought to check. I don't particularly admire luddite-ism(ness?) and don't at all aspire to it.
That said, by the quick calculations I made while reading the Times article on this subject, the damn things, the original version, would have cost an additional $18 had it been made here - an amount that would have shortened the long lines waiting to buy one by not one soul, at least based on the behavior of my own personal geek child who crammed one into his budget by allowing it as his wife's birthday, Christmas and anniversary gift to him that year.
That number, $18, kicked me in the head. I had been a little ambivalent about all the post-mortem Steve Jobs worship and, if nothing else, the $18 put me on the "not so much" side of that. Or, more accurately, "fuck him." I respect style & design but it's really just not $18 important. (And I heard about the supply stream factor, too, but, to continue a theme, fuck that. That could as well be here, too.)
In my defense, I check where the stuff I buy was made, aim as much as possible for made in the USA even if that's chauvinistic and not the best practice and I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter to any corporation at all because mostly I don't consume all that much, sometimes by choice, sometimes not.
Since I have learned, from reading here, that Nokias may be made in Europe, when this thing croaks, and it will, I'll be checking for one of those for its replacement. Even so, I don't delude myself that it will make a difference. The corporate overlord culture is pretty well entrenched. It's going to take a lot to unseat it.
And now I'll go read your other posts on the subject. I haven't been reading much at all lately; it's not just you.
The company executives enjoy life in California. The company enjoys access to the U.S. market. The company enjoys our legal system and strong property rights. The company is protected by the U. S. Military. The company has access to the President, can make unlimited donations to influence elections, has a hoard of Congressman defending its interests, worries only about making more than it already makes and doesn’t seem to mind that Chinese workers live in dormitories. The Chinese government keeps its currency low vis–a-vis the U. S. Dollar enabling Apple to obtain finished iphones and ipads at low cost and sell them here for massive profits. Iphones imported into the U.S. contribute to our massive balance of payments deficit with China.
"So ......how "American" is a company like Apple? It seems to me to be American in name only - it takes the benefits of being incorporated here but doesn’t feel any particular obligation toward American society as a whole.
After all, if the Chinese manufacturing world is so alluring why not move corporate headquarters there, incorporate in China and work closer to your manufacturing facilities?
Funny but I don’t see Apple moving its CEO to Shenzhen. Nope. There is something good about being incorporated here rather than there. An example occured in the 1990s when the Hong Kong & Shangahi Banking Corporation moved it's corporate head office to London from Hong Kong when China assumed control of Hong Kong. "The Bank" as it is known locally still has major operations in China but its executives no longer wanted to sit there nor be subject to Chinese law. Now why is that?
Now if there are real benefits to being incorporated in America, how about Apple and companies like it start paying for it - either in jobs in America - or if not, then in other ways.
How about we tax Apple on its global profits including those profits stashed abroad which were earned here selling their products?
How about a tariff equivalent to say $25 an iphone to discourage other companies from doing the same? Want access to our markets? Like our legal system? Like our military? Like our marketing and media clout? Like our law concerning property rights? Like living in Cupertino?
How about paying for the privilege? Think of it as a cost of doing business.
An Apple executive can always go home and tell the little woman "Hi honey! We’ve been transferred to Shenzhen!".
That is my point. Not that you like your phone. My daughter does too. I don't own one.
Thanks for reading.
The apology was more in reaction to all the comments from people who don't have cell phones or have 20 year old ones etc. and partly influenced by the fact that I've spent a couple days playing phone tag with someone who proudly hates computers and won't have email - luddite-ism pretending to moral superiority.
Got distracted and haven't finished your other posts yet but I still have the tab open!
http://open.salon.com/blog/f_arouete/2012/02/23/does_the_american_apple_rot_at_its_capitalist_core
To quote John Perkins in his jaw-dropping book Confessions of and Economic Hit Man
"Today, men and women are going into Thailand, the Philippines, Botswana, Bolivia and every other country where they hope to find people desperate for work. They go to these places with the express purpose of exploiting wretched people - people whose children are severely malnourished, even starving, people who live in shantytowns and have lost all hope of a better life, people who have ceased to even dream of another day. These men and women leave their plush offices in Manhattan or San Francisco or Chicago, streak across continents and oceans in luxurious jetliners, check into first-class hotels, and dine at the finest restaurants the country has to offer. Then they go searching for desperate people.
Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston, Cartagena and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing, Or they may elect not even to own the factory themselves; instead, they hire a local businessman to do all their dirty work for them.
These men and women think of themselves as upright. They return to their homes with photographs of quaint sites and ancient ruins, to show to their children. They attend seminars where they apt each other on the back and exchange tidbits of advice about dealing with the eccentricities of customs in far-off lands. Their bosses hire lawyers who assure them that what they are doing is perfectly legal. They have a cadre of psychotherapists and other human resource experts at their disposal to convince them that they are helping those desperate people.
The old-fashioned slave trader told himself that he was dealing with a species that was not entirely human, and that he was offering them the opportunity to become Christianized. He also understood that slaves were fundamental to the survival of his own society, that they were the foundation of his economy. The modern slave trader assured herself (or himself) that the desperate pople are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community. She also understands that these desperate people are fundamental to the survival of her company, that they are the foundation for her own lifestyle. She never stops to think about the larger implications of what she, her lifestyle, and the economic system behind them are doing to the world - or of how they may ultimately impact her children's future."