HN Explorer

Ask HN: Can Apple pivot from Chinese “sweatshops” to more humane manufacturing?

5 points by pwython ↗ HN
I'm an Apple guy: iPhone, iMac, Apple TV, etc. It's all very convenient for me.

But I feel guilty after reading all of the articles about Apple's manufacturing facilities. The stress, low-wages, even suicides. I know this isn't unprecedented (eg. Nike), but specifically relating to Apple, do they have a way out of this process in the foreseeable future? If their spend on labor goes up, will it really impact their stock/shareholders in the long run?

Are there any solutions?

7 comments

[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] thread
nabla9
Apple has been actively moving away from China for a several years now, namely Vietnam, India, and Thailand. The reason is both geopolitical risk and increasing wages in China.

Btw. Unnecessarily horrible working conditions are an issue that should be fixed.

Low-wage is not a bad thing in itself. People from China and India escape malnutrition from countryside to cities, then landfill scavenging into sweatshops. Low-pay and hard work is escape for them and wages increase very gradually until it's cheaper to assemble electronics in some poorer countries.

gregjor
Stress, low wages, even suicides happen in American workplaces too. I lived in Thailand for a few years, saw the sweatshops (garments, backpacks), I know what they pay. It didn't look like great work, but it also seems to differ from the cubicle farms I used to slog off to every morning only in degree, not in kind.

People on HN with good educations and jobs in advanced economies complain all the time about stress, burnout, the personal toll of the job, feeling unappreciated, disposable, and underpaid. I'm not saying we should just accept what goes on in developing-world sweatshops so we can have cheap running shoes and iPhones, but the problem of oppressive workplaces seems more pervasive and baked-in to global capitalism.

> Are there any solutions?

Not that we can address as individuals, no. Wages and working conditions will improve in China and elsewhere, just like people in Britain and America no longer have so many horrible sweatshops and factories full of low-paid and interchangeable workers (compared to 75 or 150 years ago). Read Dickens for example -- every industrial economy so far has gone through that phase. Then eventually the Chinese can sit in cubicles getting ordered around by an AI, while under strict surveillance, getting paid more to keep their consumer economy rolling, stressed and miserable just like Americans.

thorin
How will it change if they are living in a dictatorship under total Government control. If you look at the history of European workers rights many of the movements would not be allowed in this context. The only alternative seems to be some kind of violent revolution?
gregjor
Have you not paid attention to Chinese economic growth over the past two decades? China has grown a substantial middle class and an economy that outpaces the USA on some measures. They already had the violent workers revolution, in 1949.

The European and American labor movements from the 19th and 20th centuries got met with violence under regimes less explicitly authoritarian than China's current regime. As Marx observed a long time ago, the owners of capital don't like workers organizing and demanding fairness, regardless of the political window dressing.

I'm not saying that China doesn't have problems, but the Chinese economy already has cost of labor rising to the point that Apple and other companies now look to less-developed and poorer countries. And oppression of workers can and has happened everywhere, along with terrible working conditions, surveillance, and suppression of wages. Compare to an Amazon warehouse with union-busting executives, for example. A Starbucks with a busy drive-thru looks just like a sweatshop to me, except in Thailand the workers can sit down.

thorin
I don't disagree with any of that, but it's interesting to consider how China might move to be a place where like in the UK (aspirationally at least) or in Germany or Scandanavia where people might enjoy freedom, healthcare, social care etc. Americans have their own freedoms. Do we see this slowly evolving in China too or is their regime a barrier to that?
gregjor
As an American I wish I had the health care and social safety net Chinese people have. “Freedom” seems kind of nebulous and relative, and doesn’t always translate from aspirations to actual conditions.

I’d prefer Denmark or Sweden but those countries don’t really want American immigrants.

thorin
Really? Interestingly, my friend just moved from UK to Norway and is learning Norwegian and now has a job in IT security. From my perspective those see to be the best countries for my kind of living, but I would struggle with the cold dark winters. It's not really a place for entrepreneurs though.

America seems ok for young, healthy people, or old rich ones!