The Smear Campaign Against Apple
Shortly after Steve Jobs’s death I started hearing murmurs from the left about how Apple exploited Chinese workers. In recent months, the murmurs have grown into an obnoxious chorus.
One of the major sources of the complaints about Apple and Chinese workers was a report on This American Life, a weekly public radio show. Well, turns out that the source for that report has been exposed as a fraud.
So what are working conditions at the companies Apple works with in China? Tim Culplan describes his firsthand experience visiting Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer that was featured in the original This American Life story.
Mike Daisey claimed to have come across 12-year-old workers, armed guards, crippled factory operators. We saw none of that. And we did try to find them. Nothing would have been more compelling for us and our story than to have a chat with a preteen factory operator about how she enjoyed (or not) working 12-hour shifts making iPads. We didn’t get such an anecdote.
In our reporting, as “Inside Foxconn” detailed, we found a group of workers who have complaints, but complaints not starkly different from those of workers in any other company. The biggest gripe, which surprised us somewhat, is that they don’t get enough overtime. They wanted to work more, to get more money.
The nightmarish picture painted by Apple’s critics of forced labor and recklessly unsafe conditions is baseless. That’s not to say there aren’t real problems—harsh bosses, long hours, bored employees—but such problems aren’t unique to Chinese companies, and they are primarily problems for the businesses involved: They will ultimately lose out if they can’t attract and retain good employees. But it is totally disingenuous to put problems of that sort in the same category as genuine rights violations.
Are there any cases of actual rights violations going on in Foxconn factories? I can’t say for sure. The only potential one Culpan mentions is a preventable factory explosion that tragically killed several people. If a company’s negligence results in the death of employees, that is something the government has an obligation to investigate and remedy. If the Chinese government did not do its job and protect the rights of workers, then that deserves to be condemned. But the blame in such a case would rest primarily with the Chinese government, and would not justify demanding that Apple pull out of China. In no case, would a single incident of this sort justify the smear campaign against Apple.
Which raises the question: Why are so many eager to think the worst about Apple? Might it be because Apple is our most successful business? If the Occupy Wall Street protests showed anything, it was that some Americans view business success as inherently suspect if not outright evil. What if that—and not Apple’s “worker exploitation”—is what is driving the smear campaign?
3 Comments to “The Smear Campaign Against Apple”
The attacks on Apple are most certainly hating the good for being the good. But also, the specific idea that Apple is “exploiting the workers” comes straight from Marxism. Their main gripe against capitalism is that profit amounts to the boss stealing some of the value-add created by the workers, and thereby exploiting them.
But this is not true because it is the boss’s business business knowhow, organisational skills, capital and plant that is multiplying their output, giving them more (not less) than they would have got without him, even as he takes his cut.
There’s an interesting related bit on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, pp.184, describing a visit to Apple’s factory in the mid-80’s :
Things were not quite as sweet when Danielle Miterrand toured the factory. The Cuba-admiring wife of France’s socialist president Francois Miterrand asked a lot of questions, through her translator, about the working conditions, while Jobs, who had grabbed Alain Rossmann to serve as his translator, kept trying to explain the advanced robotics and technology. After Jobs talked about the just-in-time production schedules, she asked about overtime pay. He was annoyed, so he described how automation helped him keep down labor costs, a subject he knew would not delight her. “Is it hard work?” she asked. “How much vacation time do they get?”. Jobs couldn’t contain himself. “If she’s so interested in their welfare”, he said to her translator, “tell her she can come work here any time.” The translator turned pale and said nothing. After a moment Rossmann stepped in to say, in French, “M. Jobs says he thanks you for your visit and your interest in the factory.” Neither Jobs nor Madame Miterrand knew what happened, Rossmann recalled, but her translator looked very relieved.
Marxists come in different flavors, and the French one is particularly nasty.
The smear campaign probably is driven by hatred of business, not by any alleged wrong doing by Apple. And government is there to take action against businesses responsible for preventable accidents that injure or kill anybody. But, why hadn’t preventive measures been taken by the company? Why was it negligent? Subsequent remedies, if employed, are fine, for the future. What’s to see that remedies are employed, trust?, after negligence already injured or killed somebody? Contracts (meaning, CONTRACTS) with suppliers and customers must require prevention, with outside inspection. Such private measures, plus the guarantee of government action upon preventable accidents (and “preventable” must be reasonably defined, in law!) are essential. The market tending to its own self determined interests and the government doing its proper job are BOTH needed. Government’s proper job can mean going after managers responsible for what’s going on in the work place, in a civil or criminal action, whether they own stock in the company or not. That can certainly lessen, greatly, the chances of more negligence, without violating anybody’s rights.