by Anna Ford

January 2012

The life of Apple computers and gadgets is shorter has a history shorter than my own.  In the 28 years since the birth of Apple it’s one of the few companies that people say has changed the way we do everything.

As with nearly everything out there, there is a darker side to the genius of Apple.  If you have been reading the news lately you may have noticed a bit by the New York Times about Apple manufacturing plants in Chengdu, (not specifically Foxconn the largest Apple product supplier in the world) and the conditions that workers are asked to endure as consumers thirst for the latest and greatest products grow by the day.  Specifically, that there is a human cost considered in the production and sale of products.

Said one executive at one company that helped bring the iPad to market “The only way you make money working for Apple is figuring out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper, and then they’ll come back the next year, and force a 10 percent price cut.”

For those of us here in China, this news of companies wanting to find ways to make products for less, most likely does not come as a surprise but to the industrialized countries we have left behind, working conditions and salaries of just over a dollar an hour is shocking.  Work conditions like these are not limited to Apple suppliers and extend to nearly every product on the market that uses human labor as a less expensive alternative to machinery and long term infrastructure that needs maintenance.  Human labor is easily replaced with the next worker from an outlying province who dreams of earning a wage.

Factory Girls tells this same story and points out that in fact, many of the manufacturing plants are filled with women who leave behind everything to pursue a sense of success while living and working in extreme conditions.  Surrounded by the products the western world needs these women have earned a place to eat, sleep, work and achieve status that is lesser than a machine.

The issue isn’t one of of Chinese workers demanding and deserving better wages and work conditions for producing products that conspicuous consumers need the world over.  The real issue is whether we always need the latest and greatest new iWhatever or New Sport trainers to complete our lives no matter what the cost is. Every product has a human cost…how many lives are you willing to expend?

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