I wouldn't say that I'm surprised by this finding in the least. The investigators researching conditions in the Foxconn factories in China which make Apple's products say that such conditions are pretty good really.
The reason I'm not surprised by this finding is that contrary to what some seem to think the people who work there are not slaves. Those 1 million people have made a choice, they've looked at what is available to them at Foxconn and what is available to them at not-Foxconn. And given that there are that million people at Foxconn we have proof perfect that what is available at Foxconn is, to the tastes of those million people, better than what is available at not-Foxconn.
Working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants where Apple Inc's iPads and iPhones are made are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country, according to the head of a non-profit agency investigating the plants.
The actual comments made were:
After his first visits to Foxconn, van Heerden said, "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."
He spent the past several days visiting Foxconn plants to prepare for the study.
"I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," he said. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. . It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."
Boredom and alienation are indeed problems: both Adam Smith and Karl Marx noted how the division of labour can lead to them. But that is a complaint about the division and specialisation of labour, not about the working conditions in Foxconn factories.
Further, as a species we humans haven't yet found a way of navigating from the absolute poverty of feudal peasantry to the sunlit uplands of 21 st century life without going through that industrial revolution part. Along with all of the boredom, alienation and anomie that entails. We really do rather wish we did have a way of avoiding it but we really haven't found one as yet.
As I've had occasion to note before, I think that people are getting confused, and thus outraged, between two different things.
These two different things are the absolute conditions, pay, in the Foxconn factories that supply Apple and the relative conditions and pay.
From our vantage point of being lucky enough to have been born in rich countries when those countries were already rich the absolute conditions are horrible. 60 hour work weeks, perhaps $6,000 a year in wages, sleeping in a company dorm and eating from the company canteen. No, I wouldn't want to work like or for that and I very much doubt you would either.
But it's worth putting these absolute conditions into context. Currently China (as measured by GDP per capita, adjusted for PPP and inflation, not a perfect measure but perhaps the best we've got) is about where the UK was in 1948. $6,000 or so a year in that GDP per capita. Whatever the average Chinese living standard is today it has to come in under that number: just as did the UK living standards of 1948.
Which means that no, just as we wouldn't want to trade places with the guy in Shenzhen nor would we want to with our own grandparents. Because they really were living those 64 years ago at about the same standard of living as those in China do today.
And to add to this point: in 1978 China's GDP per capita was just under $1,000 a year. About the same as the UK's was in 1600 AD.
So the reason that pay and conditions are not as good in China as they are in the UK or US is simply because China isn't as rich as the UK or US as yet. They're further behind on the economic development thing and that just means that they're poorer than we lucky people.
Then there's the second point, that Apple's (or Foxconn's) factories are worse than others in China. That they should be better perhaps, given the margins being made, given Apple's branding as an ethical company and so on. As we seem to be finding out, their factories are better than others in China, so on this point at least they seem to be doing something right.
However, as I say, I think there's a confusion between these two things in the minds of some. We see the absolute conditions of labour and are repelled by them given that they are so much lower than our own. Yet this spills over into repulsion of those who are improving matters, the very Apples and Foxconns that are being attacked.
The thing is, we should be repulsed by the absolute conditions. We do know how to solve absolute poverty. As China is indeed solving this absolute poverty by having that industrial revolution that solves it. But that repellent poverty is not caused by the manufacturing plants, it is solved by them, which is why it is so odd to attack the very things that are curing the problem of poverty that we have identified.
If you do want a scapegoat for poverty in China then you'd be best off blaming the Maoist idiocy, the communist nightmare, of the period 1949-1978. As other places went through their industrial revolutions (Japan for one, Hong Kong another) China didn't because of the politics and political system of China. That's where the blame, if any there is, lies, not with the industrialisation which is solving this very problem of poverty.
This part of the report rather amused me:
The eventual FLA report will identify areas the suppliers need to improve and offer suggestions, van Heerden said.
"There might not be a clear policy on hiring, that could lead unwittingly to discrimination against hepatitis B sufferers," he said as an example.
If one of the major problems we might have to address is discrimination against those with hepatitis I think we're getting to First World problems, rather than Third, don't you?
