Consider what those “exploited” workers would be doing if enough fewer people bought iPhones for their labor not to be needed. Would they be better off than they are now?
Presumably they are not being held against their will, so this is the best job they could find.
Low-skilled factory labor is a worse job than sitting in a Silicon Valley office all day, but it’s probably better than rural poverty or unemployment.
Consider what those “exploited” workers would be doing if enough fewer people bought iPhones for their labor not to be needed. Would they be better off than they are now?
This is the same attitude that led to the rise of unions in America.
The factory owners kept telling their circle of friends that the workers were better off than not working at all. It was all a big echo chamber until one day "better off" turned into "not good enough" and people died.
I'm not a big union guy, but I see a lot of history repeating itself in SV.
Those "exploited workers" probably made decent money relative to the cost of living in their location, and they got to do it from the comfort of a computer instead of hard labor in the sun, which is what someone in their same socioeconomic bracket would more likely be doing.
>In June 2011, Zhang and his teenage classmates were taken out of their family homes and dispatched to a factory making electronic gadgets. The pupils were away for a six-month internship at a giant Foxconn plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, a 20-hour train ride from their home in central China. He had no say in the matter, he told researchers. "Unless we could present a medical report certified by the city hospital that we were very ill, we had to go immediately."
>The report details the push to find workers to produce the iPhone 5’s 8-megapixel camera, and the means by which companies like Flextronics International, one of Apple’s largest suppliers, recruit for positions on factory assembly lines. According to Bloomberg, companies recruit across the poor cities and villages of Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Nepal to staff up the army of workers needed to create components. To accomplish that task, recruiters hire brokers, who charge families high fees — often a year's worth of wages, with interest — for the opportunity to work on the supply side.
>Factory workers were reportedly also obliged to surrender their passports to brokers to ensure they paid off their debts. This practice amounts to the very same kind of bonded labor that Apple has tried to combat in its recent supply-chain audits. According to Bloomberg, Flextronics has commissioned an outside group to conduct an investigation into the fees being foisted on recruits. Apple spokesperson Chris Gaither told Bloomberg that the company will ensure that "the right payments have been made."
Neither of those is the story I had in mind FWIW. I can find you more such reports from mainstream media if you like.
People get charged for a job, shipped out to a location; kept in a virtual confinement (eg passports taken, not allowed off campus), then sometimes the work disappears and they're left high-and-dry with a debt and still no job.
Yes I imagine many do make more in factories but that's not at all the whole story, not by a long shot.
It has more dimensions than is presented by Mike Daisey. I really is heart breaking, similar to the stores of child labour in Nike factories.
But on the flip side, you pull the industry out, and those 'poor workers' become just 'poor people with no income'. So the industry needs to be moved to more ethical standards. Apple do "seem" to be trying, with their releases of working conditions. But it's hard to tell how much of that is truth vs propaganda.
I guess raising awareness, will slowly put pressure on companies like Apple/HTC/etc to change these things.
Someone needs to think of a system that couples a profit motive to a 'people motive'...
A lot of points but you're not really adressing the argument you're replying to - that they would be even worse off not working in a sweatshop (e.g. farms).
The working conditions are pretty poor, but people are still choosing them over unemployment, for obvious reasons. Forcing them into unemployment by refusing to buy their products may assuage our consciences, but it doesn't help them, and it's not how we in the developed world got our improvements in quality of life.
I think it's fair to include in our assessment how much these people would be suffering if these jobs weren't available. People take these jobs because they're the best thing available. They definitely suck when compared to our sit-in-a-chair-programming-all-day jobs, but would they even be able to afford to live without them?
The solution is probably for these places to voluntarily start providing better working conditions and pay, which is unlikely to happen. However, I can't say with certainty that taking those jobs away from them and bringing them back here is going to provide a net gain for those people.
Workers living at the factory working for a low wage sounds like something from 200 years ago, a bit like a lite version of slavery. I think we should try to make peoples lives better in the future, not worse.
the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.
Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire.
Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this.
What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.
They will do an even shittier job or be without any income.
You want to say "better this job than the worse one then", right? I understand that. But if you view the working conditions of gig workers as exploitive, this can't justify their existence, IMO. Otherwise you get a race to the bottom and can justify any work condition with the exception of the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Whether or not you see the working conditions for gig workers as exploitive is up to you, of course.
The alternative to being "abused and exploitive" is an agrarian economy with an even lower quality of life. People work in sweatshops because it's their best option. As their economy develops they'll improve working conditions. How does sanctioning them help them improve their lot?
"The real solution probably isn't shutting down sweatshops, but getting these people better opportunities."
I think this is right. People seem to like to imagine that the factory owners are kidnapping people, locking them up and forcing them to work in terrible conditions. But these people are working there because there aren't better places for them to work...
This is the fallacy of the broken window, and not the entire story. After the mistake in Bangladesh, the activists learned from their mistakes, and the next country got rid of sweatshops, plus provided education and stipends for the children so that they didn't have to go into those poor situations.
This isn't about forcing those jobs to go away. This is about keeping companies from exploiting these workers. The workers that People Delight are exploiting don't get the benefits tech firms bandy about so freely, can't unionize, don't get the opportunities to advance. There is money to be made there without exploiting, but things don't get better unless you criticize the people doing the exploiting.
These jobs are not horrible, not for humanity's historical standards. They can be done from home, without commute, without physical and demanding labor. A medieval peasant, a 1800s factory worker and probably many of the 1900s low skilled laborers would take this over the alternatives.
Moreover, these people have every right and option to not do it, in fact right now the labor market is such that they have valuable alternatives!
We keep thinking about how this or that job is not acceptable for _our personal standards_, but until we get Fully Automated Luxury Communism we have to be honest that progress looks this: slightly less shitty jobs in exchange for higher quality of life.
The difference is that, unless they have been scammed by traffickers, every one of these workers chose that fate over a worse fate.
If you're buying a phone, or some produce, or pick something out of a shelf, you don't have blood on your hands, you have contributed to someone's life being a little better than it would otherwise have been.
Presumably they are not being held against their will, so this is the best job they could find.
Low-skilled factory labor is a worse job than sitting in a Silicon Valley office all day, but it’s probably better than rural poverty or unemployment.
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