Apple's horrible Chinese working conditions

Did you hear the This American Life about this a few weeks ago?  It really turned me off to ever wanting to buy an Apple product.  I had hoped to get an iPad, but I'm nt sure I will.

A NYTimes article details the horrible working conditions in Apple's factories in China.

Apple's own audits found that hundreds of its supply factories in China require employees—some as young as 15—to work more than 60 hours a week, or more than 6 days a week, sometimes in deadly conditions. Yet fewer than 15 suppliers have been terminated for transgressions since 2007, according to former Apple executives. “You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” a current Apple executive told the Times. “And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

I care, and you should too.

I need to preach about this.

Comments

[Travis]

I also found this extremely troubling. I don't have an iPhone or an iPad, but I do have an iPod and use iTunes all the time, and if I support Apple in any way, am I not, at least tangentially, supporting these horrible working conditions in China?

I fear, however, that this issue reaches far beyond Apple. A substantial portion of the goods and clothing that we buy in the US are manufactured in China and other Asian countries under working conditions that are as bad as those at Apple's suppliers.

And the problem is not just with manufactured goods: it also bedevils the agricultural industry, which is why I only buy fair trade coffee and fair trade chocolate.

As consumers in a global economy where we are so far separated from the people who make the products that we use, we often feel powerless to take any action that will really have a substantial impact. If more journalists, bloggers, and religious leaders (keep up the good work, Scott!) would speak out vocally on this issue, maybe (and I'm probably overly optimistic here) the political beast could be spurred to take decisive action. Sadly, I fear we care more about our pocket books that we do about our sisters and brothers who work under these conditions.

[Scott Jones]

Travis,

Thanks.

This is also an example of the Christian doctrine of sin and how it is systemic, structural evil in which we all get trapped, even if we are well-intentioned people. It also something that we cannot simply choose to free ourselves from. It must be defeated, and we do that by the formation of alternative communities who choose to live in the here and now our future hope of justice and peace.

Last year I was at a reproductive justice conference and hanging out with all the feminists afterwards having cocktails and said something similar. You should have seen the shock when I started talking "And this is why I like the Christian doctrine of sin . . ." Though I'm not sure they had heard it characterized quite this way before.