Apple did all of this because they couldn't stand paying decent wages to US workers, so they outsourced Labour to China. Why people stand by this company...
I'm not an Apple fan, probably more of an Apple hater, but why is Apple the bad guy for seeking cheaper labor? Why is it the consumers problem that China allows it's citizens to be treated like shit? Why is this ethical responsibility somehow always offloaded to the consumer?
Even disregarding the human rights violations and lack of labor protection, there are fundamental problems with Apple's relationship with China. This isn't a business decision we're talking about, this is a domestic supercorporation using China as a crutch. America turns the other eye because tax money spends well, but the PRC keeps our highest-valued public company on a leash. That's... fucked up, considering the politics of the situation.
If you think the leash doesn't hurt and China is liable to be friendly towards America, that's your moral crusade. In my opinion, things have already gone too far.
bs. This makes it sound like these companies like Apple are harming the Chinese. I came from a developing country and I can tell you right now many people have to do much worse jobs to carve out some food for themselves and many others die from the lack of it. The moment you pull out jobs made possible by Apple and the likes, many will suffer.
That is not a reasonable criticism. However, Apple is far from the good guy. Look at all the pro China things they have done. People committing suicide after being forced to work endlessly. Agreeing to the Great Firewall rules to continue doing business in China. I'm sure it is similar in other countries too. We know the people who make nearly everything we buy are treated not much better than slaves. It is not just China, look at the Nabisco workers, look at the meat processing plants. And largely we don't care. There is no reason extreme pressure couldn't start to force changes at these companies but mostly we are just glad it isn't us. Our whole society has lost all sense of empathy and it is sad.
I don't understand your argument. I agree that Apple could move production back to the US and still be quite profitable. But wouldn't that mean that thousands of Chinese workers would be worse off?
You're constructing a narrative that puts history on its head. China has allowed foreign firms to come in and exploit cheap Chinese labor. Foreign companies have made enormous profits off of this. Not only do companies like Apple benefit hugely from Chinese labor, but they have also found a market of hundreds of millions of buyers of their product there. Foreign auto manufacturers dominate the Chinese domestic market - VW is the best-selling car brand in China, the world's largest auto market.
You're saying that China has been retaliating by giving foreign companies access to cheap labor and hundreds of millions of customers. That's completely backwards.
There is a deep misunderstanding here of US politics and foreign policy.
The US might act in various ways to protect American manufacturers, or oil industry, or other industries that are responsible for a lot of jobs in the US or are a strategic resource in some other way. See the 100% tax import for Chinese EVs. The US government doesn't care about Apple. Apple's economic impact is basically irrelevant for the US, because it doesn't provide a noteworthy number of jobs or any significant supply chain within the US. Apple's use as a strategic resource is completely irrelevant based on their antagonistic behavior towards the US government and they've shown themselves to be as eager to comply with Chinese laws as they are to flout US government policies.
I'd maybe see the US do something to protect Microsoft, with its deep ties to the military industrial complex, or Intel, which has both these ties and is clearly a strategic resource because of the advanced chips it provides, but really only if there were an existential threat that would also prevent Microsoft or Intel from performing their necessary roles in the US economy, the military and in US foreign policy.
But to suggest that US guns are in any way relevant, or that the US would bother trying to protect Apple, is frankly absurd.
The EU has smacked down Meta, Google and Microsoft already for things they felt were anti-competitive. The US didn't give a shit. Why would it be any different here?
Why exactly would bringing them back to America be noble? Apple has its roots in the USA but it is very much an international company. The USA are no more deserving of those jobs than any other place on the planet.
Apple should speed up improving the situation of their workers in China. That would be great. Bringing them “back home” would seem just strange to me. Definitely not noble, nationalism never is.
Your view seems very selfish to me and it seems strange that selfish and humanitarian seem to mix so well in those debates. It’s not better for Chinese workers if Apple were to pull out of China. The best solution for them is if Apple improves their working conditions.
This is the chilling effect of our close economic ties to oppressive regimes. I dont know if we can expect Apple to stand up to China. I think our government needs to do more to set the parameters of our economic interactions with them.
I am no fan of Apple - mainly for their closed architecture, but I am also a cold-hearted economist when it comes to these types issues and this article is a bit of a one sided hit piece.
I would like to throw in a few counterpoints so we can all maintain a proper context.
1.) When companies become as large as Apple and begin purchasing products from vendors. It is not possible for them to guarantee the safety and operation of every vendor. Just as when you go buy oranges at the grocery store, you might know what country or farm it came from, but you don't know working conditions at that farm. Even if you could know you don't have time to dig through that info - you just want an orange. You, like everyone else, just respond to the major media outrages and exposés and blindly avoid Wal-Mart, etc.
Apple has more leverage here since they are a large company, but when it comes down to it, Apple ordered more screens and the vendor made the bad decision to use n-hexane. All Apple can do is lean on the vendor to make it right and not let it happen again. Believe me, even if Apple hates the workers and secretly wants them to die a horrible death for their stock holders, they don't want this bad press and would have avoided it if they could have.
2.) Outsourcing has real costs. It's not just cheaper because labor is cheaper. When you outsource you have to worry about the government, the infrastructure, shipping, recruiting talent etc. If you paid the Chinese workers American wages, it would not be worth the other costs to outsource at all.
3.) You can't compare living and working conditions between countries. As bad as a 3rd world outsourced job is to us 1st worlder's it's still generally BETTER than what they would have otherwise. In fact Apple and other 'outsourcers' are the one and only reason for the breath-taking trend line that is China's per capita growth: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china+income+per+capita
Just read about living in China in the 60s. It's horrifying to even think about and makes China today seem like paradise. In short the Chinese are better with Apple than without.
4.) There are not a fixed number of jobs in the world - there are only a fixed number of resources. If China can make us a product cheaper than we can make it WE benefit. Our resources are free to build other things for China when they want to cash in some of those US Dollars they so graciously accepted from Apple in exchange for real goods. Voluntary trade benefits both parties by its very nature or it doesn't happen.
Also, the US unemployment issue is bit off the main topic of an already lengthy comment, but it has much more to do with sticky wages and our past decisions than it does outsourcing.
What benefits Apple doesn't benefit all americans. God forbid Apple lose some revenue to stop China from stealing billions of IP from other American companies. In the best case scenario China will obey international trade laws, Apple won't be affected and the IP theft will stop.
No one forced Apple to ship production to China. It was well understood what was going to happen before they did it and they did it anyway. It's hard for me to have any sympathy for their current position. Business is ruthless and Apple knows it. Apple has a long history of crushing small suppliers to their own advantage so it's not like their hands are clean in all of this.
I don't mind being price gouged, I can afford it, but Apple no longer makes laptops suitable for me.
Employers have been threatening and actively trying to outsource my employment overseas my entire adult life. This drove a lot of people out of the software industry. I made the bet that they would be less successful than they planned. Now I gouge them for access to my rare skills - a problem they created. I could easily have been wrong and if that happened these companies would have not supported me out the goodness of their heart.
I don't understand the argument here. If the issue is morality, then an effective boycott of Apple products harms Chinese workers, because nobody is working at Foxconn instead of some better latent opportunity in the Chinese economy.
If Apple paid workers the prevailing wage for US skilled labor, Apple would not be paying workers in China at all, because the discount on labor is the primary reason it outsources to China.
One looks at the spread between Apple's COGS and Apple's list prices and wonders how it can be reasonable that Apple captures that whole spread. But that's why we have markets: over time, wage pressure erodes Apple's margins; Foxconn (or comparable companies) obtain better clients, or are simply forced to increase their cost because of competition from other firms.
When Apple responds to that pressure by finding another third world country to buy from, it's simply repeating the same process in that country: unless they source forced labor from Myanmar or North Korea, the only way they can get labor is by improving the wages that were already available in that country.
Part of the issue here seems to be the (unreasonable) expectation that one company can fix third-world rural poverty instantly. Improving the lives of millions of people in Asia is a process that will involve many, many countries and take many decades.
That's how it strikes me as well, with the caveat that I worked for Apple pre-Cook, just before and during the Jobs years.
One could just as easily use the United States as a metaphor — obsessed with self-sufficiency, a "we're the good guys" attitude, suspicious of systems they didn't have a hand in creating, etc. The author's choice to use China seems especially petulant given that Apple is the only FAANG company whose business model isn't based on farming and selling personal data.
And to be even realer, Apple doing manufacturing in [country that isn't China] would have benefited the common factory worker in [country that isn't China] by driving up wages without also benefiting the totalitarian government of China.
Apple pays its employees much better than what they would have been paid working at something else. That's why people flock there for a chance to work. My parents and grandparents are those exact people that would have had a much better quality of life if they had been given a chance to work at places like Foxconn. Luckily, they were able to escape China.
If you are so against it all (basic economics, the history of the world, etc), then don't buy products from Apple or any other company that uses Chinese manufacturing.
Apple has done far more for people than what you will ever do and you have the audacity to critique them. Do you not comprehend the arrogance of your statements?
If it's moral for those workers in China to take employment working on Apple products, I don't see why it's immoral for Apple to make the deals that create that employment. So no, I don't really see a difference.
Business that especially benefits the Chinese government in particular, or that supports their oppressive activities, sure I can see that. I think Google took a principled moral stance in refusing to provide search services in China when it was clear those services would have to enable surveillance. I don't think they did anything wrong having their Pixel phones manufactured in China.
For context my wife in mainland Chinese, though now a British citizen, we go there regularly and have family there. I spend money in China, and don't think there's anything wrong with myself, businesses, or 'corporations' doing so either whatever we think of the CCP. So this sort of selective virtue posturing really rubs me up the wrong way.
What is so wrong about using our leverage as the world's largest economy to protect the interests of our citizen's, just like China does?
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