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Recent
revelations about the deplorable working conditions at
an Apple factory in China provide a cautionary tale
about globalization and consumerism.
On Jan.
26, the New York Times ran a front-page article that
exposed some of the facts of life within Apple’s
Foxconn Technology factory in Chengdu, China. These
include underage and underpaid workers, excessive
overtime, seven-day workweeks, overcrowded dorms and
dangerous conditions.
One day
last May, a fire broke out in one of the buildings where
employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day. “Two
people were killed immediately and over a dozen others
injured,” the story said.
“Apple
never cared about anything other than increasing product
quality and decreasing production cost,” Li Mingqi, a
former Foxconn employee, told the Times.
Another
former employee added, “You can set all the rules you
want, but they’re meaningless” if suppliers don’t
make “enough profit to treat workers well. If you
squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.”
Early in
2011, Steve Jobs met with President Obama on economic
growth. He told the president he had no intentions of
bringing Apple’s manufacturing back to the United
States. Furthermore, he warned that unless the United
States became more business-friendly, it stood to lose
its competitive edge against countries like China. He
noted how easy it was to build a factory in China, where
he didn’t have to deal with tough labor laws or
environmental protections or unions demanding better
wages, benefits and safe working conditions.
Apple,
one of the richest and most successful companies in the
world, gained its wealth and power, in part, off the
sweat of exploited Chinese workers.
Apple is
not the only electronics company doing business in
China. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, Nokia,
Sony, Toshiba and others manufacture there. All of these
companies benefit from the appalling working conditions
in China. Neither the American public nor the labor
movement here would stand for such conditions.
But China
is eager to overtake America as the No. 1 economic power
in the world, and is willing to do so at all costs. That
is why business and China make such excellent partners.
Since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms took effect in
the 1980s, multinational corporations have poured into
China to take advantage of its vast pool of cheap labor
and natural resources.
At a time
when America sure could use some manufacturing jobs to
boost our own economy, it would be patriotic — and
humane, given what we know of the overseas workplace —
for those companies to bring some of those jobs back
home.
And if
they don’t, then we — the wired, high-tech consumers
— should be more conscious about the products we
purchase.
———
ABOUT THE
WRITER
Winifred
C. Chin is a research affiliate at the
Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program & Institute
at New York University. She wrote this for Progressive
Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on
domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with
The Progressive magazine. Readers may write to the
author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main
Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; email: pmproj@progressive.org;
Web site: www.progressive.org.
For information on PMP’s funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.html#anchorsupport.
This
article was prepared for The Progressive Media Project
and is available to MCT subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune
did not subsidize the writing of this column; the
opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily
represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
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