Please, if you are in favor of child labour and worker exploitation, the best thing you could do is express your outrage at Apple for independently auditing, investigating, and punishing their suppliers for these practices.
I think all American companies should know that, if they take it upon themselves to reveal what is already happening in China in an attempt to right the wrong, they will be rewarded with sensationalist headlines, public outrage, and bad press all for the sake of page views.
Actually, I'm not sure I believe the "pro-Apple" story entirely. It states "During most of our audits, suppliers stated that Apple was the only company that had ever audited their facility for supplier responsibility".
Seriously, who the hell asks their suppliers if they have been audited by other clients?
I think its great Apple audited their supplier, but I'm not convinced we have the full story (in fact, its possible they were tipped off in this case too, and that's why the age audit was initiated). I should also add that we shouldn't praise hardware companies for performing an audit once or twice. Furthermore, they certainly aren't penalising their suppliers for their poor working conditions!
All that will happen is a few underage workers will stop working. The living conditions will still be a joke, workers mistreated, and the dodgy supplier wont suffer in any way (other than needing to find replacements).
"Seriously, who the hell asks their suppliers if they have been audited by other clients?"
Who says anyone asked? If I was the only company auditing my suppliers, they would probably say "I don't understand why you're doing this; none of our other clients have ever audited us."
How completely repulsive is child labor? Is that worse, or it is worse to deny being the father of your child, and being a deadbeat dad who forces your baby's momma to support your child using welfare?
"Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity."
I understand the general sentiment against child labour, but somehow a 15-year old doesn't seem incapable of working at a factory. Child and teenager are diferent words, except when they're not. People have been working the fields from small ages throughout history. As long as the child didn't drop school or something else to go there, maybe getting a job was the best idea. Having a hard age limit just seems arbitrary, outsourcing the worries about worker mistreatment (a real problem) to a magical number. Perhaps, counterintuitively, not being able to get the amount of workers necessary for the cost allowed by apple's contract, leads manufacturers to press workers to work longer.
Regardless of what the term should mean, if the law says it's illegal to employ a fifteen year old, and fifteen year olds are employed, then the law was broken. Routinely broken age labour laws, where records are purposely falsified, creates an environment where other labour laws, and laws in general, can be seen as obstacles to be subverted rather than protections and responsibilities.
It's not a trivial thing.
P.S I had two paper routes simultaneously when I was fourteen.
P.P.S Can kids even get paper routes in the US these days? My limited observation is that it's now large routes driven by adults who throw papers from car windows.
Yes agreed. However I still believe we need to be careful calling this "child labour". Something went wrong here - but it wasn't necessarily malicious. Children are definitely forced to work in other places; and throwing this in with that is a) unfair and b) gives the real exploitation less impact.
P.P.S Can kids even get paper routes in the US these days? My limited observation is that it's now large routes driven by adults who throw papers from car windows.
I think it's a combination of fewer newspaper subscribers (meaning larger distances between each subscriber, so less practical for bikes/walking) and a culture where parents are afraid that their children will be harmed if allowed to bike around delivering papers (because cars or pedophiles or something else).
Similar things were said in the U.S. when we outlawed most forms of factory work for children. Our society became better when we did outlaw this.
How about this form of outsourcing? Rather than Apple owning and managing the factory in question they contract it out so they can assuage their guilt when children end up working there.
> Our society became better when we did outlaw this.
Cite for this, please. As far as I know, we outlawed child factory labor purely because children, with their small bodies that could fit into more-easily-constructed mineshafts, dexterous hands that could assemble small parts, and lesser demand for pay, were being preferred for most jobs, and so adult workers basically had a union action against them to make sure their own jobs were safe. This decreased efficiency, took a source of discretionary income away from children who wanted it (these weren't forced workers; they just took jobs to better their life), and artificially lowered the unemployment of adults who couldn't compete with kids.
Is this a serious request? You want me to cite the basis for me stating that our society became better by outlawing the employment of children in factories and mines? This isn't obvious to you? I am grateful that people with your point of view didn't prevail when the United States confronted this issue.
The US and the rest of the west experienced unprecedented per capita BNP growth since around the time western countries banned child labour. This is the reason for increased living standards. It would not have mattered much in the long run who prevailed because rich (by the standards of 1850 we pretty much all are) parents don't let their children work full time in factories.
When I say the U.S. became a better country by outlawing child labor this had nothing to do with economics. We became better in a moral sense. We Americans equate, too often, the concept of better in a money sense. This is a bad trait amongst us. (I'm not saying you have this bad trait.)
I am not completely sure we are better off. Being barred from meaningful work is to the moral detriment of precocious kids.
Not that we should let people in general subject themselves to danger they don't understand, and kids might lack judgement about that. And education absolutely shouldn't be blown off. But there's something appealing to me about kids being able to work real jobs if they're willing and capable.
But it would have mattered to the children who would have worked in the coal mines had they not been prevented from doing so by the government. In the long run you are correct but we should not let this be the reason for inaction.
I think you may be assuming that either A) the children were forced to work or B) the children (and their parents) just did not know what was good for them. Both seem unlikely to me.
The US passed laws against child labor when it did because it could afford to, ultimately. You don't find too many poor societies which spontaneously decide to build schools for everyone below the age of 18 and prohibit them from working. You might find a few where some foreign imperialists decided to build schools and send all of the country's youths to it, but I assume you're against that sort of thing.
Notably, the US also decided for themselves when to pass such laws--they didn't have the matter dictated to them by the countries they exported goods to.
I'm not suggesting we change the laws of China. I'm suggesting we don't benefit from the exploitation of labor. We stopped trading with the Apartheid regime for moral reasons. This was a good thing. Even capitalists should occasionally do the moral thing.
I worked at a lab programming for minimum wage when I was 15; this isn't sweatshop work. Children are allowed to work in the US, too. (Though, certainly, not at factories.)
The title is is misleading, as well: Apple contracts these oversea factories; they don't hire or force children to work for them. It's all a bit inflammatory.
Ah...the old imperial justification. Apple doesn't directly hire the children to work in the shops so their moral obligation ends there. I'll bet those kids even earn more than would have made if Apple hadn't contracted out to the factory.
I wonder if your working conditions were the same as the Chinese kids' working conditions. Hmmm...I wonder if you would be willing to work under the same conditions as these kids work in.
"I wonder if you would be willing to work under the same conditions as these kids work in."
That rather depends upon what the possible alternatives are, doesn't it? The average middle-class, privileged westerner wouldn't, but the average middle-class, privileged westerner has much better options--and for that matter, turns his nose up at the idea of living without cable TV or a microwave oven.
If there's a way up to the developed world's standard of living that doesn't involve sweatshops, it hasn't been discovered yet. Thankfully, the sweatshop stage is growing shorter and shorter over time.
Indeed. In the west, we have high safety and comfort standards, and expect children to spend their time learning and playing. These are luxuries, and not everyone can afford them. In places that cannot afford them, the alternative to sweatshops and child labor is not nicer work environments or idyllic playtime. It is crime, prostitution, or starvation.
Alien as it may seem to our culture of riches and comfort, there are places where these jobs are a significant blessing. Slavery is evil, and should never be supported by the west. But taking a job from a willing worker (or even a child), in a poor country is NOT helping him.
I'm from the Canal Zone. I grew up there. I'm a former American colonist. The bulk of the workforce was Panamanian. Their wages were much lower than American wages. The justification by we Americans was that they were paid better by the Company than they would get in Panama. It's the standard imperial justification and it's wrong.
Panama has done quite well without America and their wages have improved. This isn't universally true but the justification that this is just something that every country must go through is wrong factually and morally. It is immoral for us to profit off of forced labor, unsafe working conditions, and child labor. That our country turns a blind eye is repugnant.
If the choice is between paying someone in another country the same amount you'd pay someone at home and not hiring them at all, the simple fact is, they're not going to be hired at all. The unspoken assumption, of course, is that we can let the whole rest of the world languish in poverty so long as we're sure that every appliance in our electrified houses and every damned faucet for our hot and cold running water was made by American hands in an American factory. That's even a consistent worldview--but you have to acknowledge what you have to give up in order to maintain that consistency. If we have to consistently choose not to interfere with cultures less technologically and economically advanced as our own, that means no interference. That's a hard pill for most people to swallow. What's more imperialistic--contracting with a Chinese company for manufacturing or "rebuilding Haiti" (in our own image, of course).
No one said anything about forced labor. I included it in a list of things that it is immoral to benefit from. In that list of things was child labor; the point of the discussion. Sorry for not making this clearer. I should have left it out.
Corporations aren't building factories in China so that China benefits. They are building the factories so that they benefit. There are lots of reports of forced labor in China, of unsafe working conditions, and of worker exploitation. Our companies are fine with this arrangement because they fall back on the, "But we don't actually hire these workers. We contract this out." It's wrong.
The American public is OK with the arrangement because it means we can buy cheap crap. We don't mind migrant laborers in this country being exploited because we want cheap food.
What we lose sight of is the damage that this does to us and the world. That pollution that the factories produce in China to make cheap shit for us, in the long run, will do a lot of harm to China and the world. It's immoral for us to benefit from this.
What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met. Make companies run the factories instead of hiding behind, "We don't actually hire the workers." The externalities need to be addressed.
"What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met."
That's exactly what Apple does, and that's exactly why you're reading this story about Apple, instead of Asus or Lenovo or any other company--because Apple, unlike almost every other company, does the audits and enforces the standards on their contractors.
After rereading the article and reading the comments on this thread I'm inclined to agree with you as far as it pertains to Apple. The overall point I made applies though. Not necessarily to Apple itself but to behavior of Western companies in general.
I don't think that OP was ok with the working condition. Just that the article throws blame in the wrong direction. You can work as a 15-yo in many countries, but you have special law protection and lower maximum working hours. I don't see anything wrong with children working.
Meanwhile there's a much bigger problem: "The technology company's own guidelines are already in breach of China's widely-ignored labour law, which sets out a maximum 49-hour week for workers." If there were no children, would it be ok? Would the article even be written? This rule affects all the workers. And since the rule is "widely-ignored" I expect many more factories with even worse conditions.
Unfortunately "Apple fails" + "Won't somebody please think of the children?" seems to be more important than specific law being broken on a nation scale.
Right now, it's not clear what those conditions were; my comment was meant to address the only clear-cut part of this vague article: that 15 year-olds were working in a factory.
I'm not justifying poor working conditions, nor am I justifying overwork (though I find it interesting that we don't see it as criminal when professionals spend around 130 hours a week working.) I was simply astonished at the knee-jerk reaction so many have when children... gasp... work!
Substantiated claims that the working conditions of these children were poor can be addressed separately.
But, by all means, protect these children from feeding their families.
I find it awkward as well. I grew up on a dairy farm and helped out with chores starting at the age of 10. Technically that's child labor and it's fairly common place. The utility of my labor had the same effect of helping my family. Though one key point would be it was usually never more than 2 hours on school days and 8-10 hours during summer vacation -- the reason kids originally had summer vacation.
Why do you think the kids work there? Is it voluntary or involuntary?
Suppose it's voluntary. If so, then if you stop them from having that job, they will believe you've hurt them, by taking away their preferred life option. Correct?
Did you work sixty hours a week when you were fifteen?
"In its report, Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. Apple admitted that at least 55 of the 102 factories that produce its goods were ignoring Apple's rule that staff cannot work more than 60 hours a week."
So there were 7 15 year olds at a factory in China. Most of the employees were adults here, but a few weren't. Perhaps this isn't an example of forced child labour, but rather some 15 year old being the primary bread winner for their family?
The social safety net does not have to be the same everywhere for us to make ethical decisions on the products we buy, or for a company to make ethical decisions about how their products are made. I'm sure these teenagers' wages were important to their families. I doubt they were saving up for a Xbox, but I can't exploit that fact because I want a cheaper Nano. I just can't. I'm glad Apple is taking care of this.
You're mixing things here. It's like you say you didn't steal the wallet, and also there wasn't anything in it.
Either those children working is a bad thing, or it's not. If they're making money necessary to feed themselves and their families, then you should be proud of paying part of those money.
Of course, we don't really know if it was a good thing. We don't know if they were 17 or 10, whether they really needed the money or how many hours they worked. The situation is much murkier then the knee jerk "I can't exploit it". And unfortunately not trying to think more about it doesn't help those kids one bit.
"That someone exists hanging off a cliff is a bad thing. So I shall remove the cliff." The only way you can achieve a positive benefit for these children is by paying their wages. Removing that payment is removing the benefit, and nothing more. Nothing good will come of it, save for a smug look on your face as they go back home empty-handed for the day, or as the factory switches to making parts for Dell or Toshiba instead.
When I was 13 or 14, I worked picking strawberries in the summer in Oregon. It involved getting up very early, riding a school bus for a couple hours to the fields, working all day doing back straining work for little pay, and then taking the bus home. I didn't need to feed my family, but I wanted to work because I wanted to have some spending money. I'm glad I live in a country where that opportunity was made available to me. Is this "OK"? Were those "unethically" picked strawberries?
"Apple admits using child labour […] At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.[…]"
"In 2009, our audits identified 17 core violations: eight violations involving excessive recruitment fees; three cases where underage workers had been hired; three cases where our supplier contracted with noncertified vendors for hazardous waste disposal; and three cases of falsified records provided during the audit."
"Apple discovered three facilities that had previously hired 15-year-old workers in countries where the minimum age for employment is 16. Across the three facilities, our auditors found records of 11 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, although the workers were no longer underage or no longer in active employment at the time of our audit."
And how are going to make Apple force the issue with companies like Foxconn and Wintek? These conditions are the reason why Apple enjoys the margins it does.
According to the article, they launched this audit and have already pressed the issue to the point that the three factories in question are no longer employing 15 year-olds.
Apple enjoys high margins because of a very effective marketing strategy, excellent product design, and an extremely loyal customer base. It has nothing to do with the fact that their subcontractors were employing a few underage workers.
Yeah, and how often does this occur? How many factories are contracted out to in China by American companies that aren't subjected to public outcry? Apple should face very severe sanctions for allowing this to happen. They are not innocent.
Apple audits their suppliers, finds violations and fixes them, so you want them punished? Not a very good way to encourage other companies to clean up their act.
If you are right about Apple then I retract my statement as it applies to Apple. However, this is not a legal requirement for companies who do business in the United States and it is not a standard practice. Even when it is standard for a company to do this it is done with a wink, so to speak. Companies and consumers in the United States (and Europe) are content to leave the issue of exploited labor out of the public debate. The general justification being that the companies don't actually hire the workers and so their hands are clean. It's convenient and immoral.
My overall point stands and it is sad that it has been down voted so much. It reflects poorly on the social awareness of the rich.
I don't know why you are getting down voted. It's says much about society that you are. People on this site get outraged about App Store policies but not about child labor and Apple's ability to wash it's hands because the labor was contracted through a third party and they periodically do audits. God forbid Apple actually own the factory that makes their products and ensures that no children ever work there.
Apple may not own the factories (why the fuck would they, they're not a manufacturing company) but they do what they can to ensure children don't work in the factories that build their products. They've stopped doing business with the contractors that were using child labor.
This story is the moral equivalent of turning "Apple fires employee for kicking co-worker in crotch" to "Apple caught kicking employees in crotch".
Indeed, they shouldn't own the factory. If they owned the factory their bottom line might be affected. People might start asking uncomfortable questions about the pay of those employees. The current arrangement allows they to say, "We didn't hire these kids, it's not our fault. Why the fuck would we own the factory? "
You seem to be implying that Apple deliberately contracts out their manufacturing specifically to exploit child labor. I find that absolutely contrary to the evidence--in particular, if Apple were doing that, wouldn't they try to cover this up instead of auditing the manufacturers themselves and making these abuses public? As it stands, Apple goes out of their way to ask the uncomfortable questions.
There are lots of perfectly non-cynical reasons to outsource manufacturing--or for that matter, anything your business itself isn't exceptionally good at.
American companies contract out factory work so they can wash their hands when improprieties show up. They know this shit goes on and their quest for greater profits is more powerful than their social conscience.
Apple could easily run the factory itself. If this meant a loss in profit then we must ask ourselves why it would mean a loss in profit. It would mean a loss in profit because Apple itself would never run a factory that was unsafe or exploited the workers. And this is the reason Apple and other Western companies share in the blame.
"Apple could easily run the factory itself. If this meant a loss in profit then we must ask ourselves why it would mean a loss in profit. It would mean a loss in profit because Apple itself would never run a factory that was unsafe or exploited the workers. And this is the reason Apple and other Western companies share in the blame."
This is a fallacious and ignorant argument. To understand why, stop and consider why things like AWS and Google Apps exist, just for starters. Then think about why Apple doesn't own their own cargo ships for international distribution, and why Apple uses FedEx rather than driving their own delivery trucks. There's no essential reason that manufacturing is any different. Apple's a design, development, and marketing company, not a manufacturing company. They don't know shit about manufacturing and they wouldn't be able to accomplish much by hiring the people who do.
If you'd really rather buy a laptop from a company that runs their own manufacturing, buy a Lenovo. Of course, they're manufactured in China, and Lenovo doesn't do anything to audit the labor practices of their own factories, so we'll never know what goes on in there. But at least they're not evading responsibility for things they'll never tell us about.
It's not an ignorant argument. Of course Apple isn't going to own or control every piece of the puzzle for getting its products here. But there is a reason their factories are in China and not in a country that has, you know, actual labor standards. Steve Jobs needs more money and people like you need cheaper products. I'm sorry. They don't own the factory so they are absolved of guilt and people like you can shop without thinking about the bad externalities with the current arrangement.
The reason Apple uses Chinese suppliers is because the Chinese are the only ones who can do the supplying. There is no other place to get a computer made. Apple could start a factory in the USA, but it would take 10 years to spin it up. Chinese labor would need to be imported because nobody in the USA has the right expertise.
The factories in the article are not Apple's. They are Chinese factories owned by Chinese companies run by Chinese people. This isn't old school imperialism. This is new school global trade. Apple already leans on the Chinese to clean up their labor practices, which is arguably more imperialistic behavior than doing business with them.
These standard imperial justifications you and others give are part of the reasons why we are looked upon negatively by the developing world. We have exploited on a massive scale and very few Americans/Europeans care. We are a hug part of the problem and out collective morality is so poor that we actually buy the argument, 'We don't actually do the exploitation, we pay someone else to do it for us.' This is a shitty country.
No, it isn't the same moral equivalence. WalMart contracts out its night time cleaning. They didn't do this in the early days but they do it now. Of course one of the companies ended up hiring illegal workers and treating them badly and naturally WalMart claimed innocence. They didn't hire the workers. The company that did this lost its contract with WalMart. It's the don't ask, don't tell policy that corporations love to engage in so they can wash their hands clean for a gullible public.
I think all American companies should know that, if they take it upon themselves to reveal what is already happening in China in an attempt to right the wrong, they will be rewarded with sensationalist headlines, public outrage, and bad press all for the sake of page views.
Oh, and you might want to read the other side of this story: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/27/apple_taken_to...