With all the recent investigations into the working conditions at companies Apple uses to produce its products, I figured a scheduled protest of this at the Apple Store in San Francisco would draw a bit of a crowd. I mean, this is San Francisco, we protest if the sun hasn’t come up in a while. That’s why I was surprised to get to the city’s flagship Apple store to find that the eight or so members of the media far outnumbered the protesters.
The numbers may not mean anything because movements always start small but this seemed like a layup for this city, as it involves workers’ rights, moral outrage and iPhones. It’s easy to pick on Apple too because it has nearly $100 billion in the bank and it could likely take a hit on its profit margin and still be fabulously wealthy, but the dirty secret about pretty much the entire consumer electronics industry is that all these awesome gadgets are generally made in working conditions that we wouldn’t accept. We’re talking about conditions where child labor is accepted and people work so hard that they commit suicide.
A great New York Times piece sheds some light on what these workers have to go through in order for us to have our fancy iDevices and some of it is heart wrenching. The part that I thought would make this protest larger is when a former Apple executive told the paper that if Apple demanded that the conditions had to improve, it would. Instead, it seems like Apple has chosen higher profit margins over the well-being of people in China.
Apple, Dell, HP and every other companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value and producing devices in China and other countries with abysmal labor laws can greatly add to the bottom line. Even Nokia is moving its production to China in order to save on costs but also because these factories enable companies to be more nimble with production. Nokia wants to get high-quality phones out at a quicker pace and right now, that’s only possible using Asian factories.
The moral outrage argument feels right but it may not be totally. Paul Krugman is known for leaning toward the left and even he believes that these “sweat shops” are needed and provide value because “bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all.” He also argues that these conditions may be appalling but they are better than the cruel existence of subsistence farming or or having no work at all. He writes:
In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.
Krugman has forgotten more economics than I’ll ever know but it’s tough to shake some form of moral outrage. Yes, every country may have to go through an industrial revolution of sorts which includes some nastiness but in this interconnected world, we can demand better conditions if we really want them. The only way to do this is with your dollars.