iSweatshop: Growing Concern Over Apple Manufacturing

iPads. iPhones. Technology giant Apple has successfully branded its products as the tools and toys of the creative, talented, college-educated population. But could new concerns about working conditions at the factories that produce Apple products force the company to clean up its act?

Apple's labor issues are gaining prominence after award-winning radio program This American Life produced a special by Mike Daisey—a self-professed "Apple fanboy"—that investigated working conditions and standards at the Chinese plants where Apple products are manufactured. 

Daisey interviewed a 13-year-old girl who polished the glass parts of iPhones manufactured by multinational manufacturer Foxconn, which outsources other popular devices including the Amazon Kindle and Microsoft's Xbox 360. According to the young woman, the company knows when inspections are going to take place, and prepares by removing underage workers from sight.

Apple's cultishly dedicated user base, some of whom literally camp out for the release of hotly-anticipated new products, has never rallied against manufacturing conditions before—probably in part because of the company's perennially high prices. A 2008 thread on the MacWorld forums titled “Where are Apple products made?” garnered just six replies.

That might be changing now, but Apple management has been slow to catch on.

Apple’s founder Steve Jobs, who died in late 2011, was dismissive when President Obama asked recently what it would take to make iPhones in the United States. The prevailing wisdom at the company isn't just that hardware can be produced overseas under conditions that would be illegal domestically, but that the manufacturing system in China allows for a flexibility that could never be achieved in the developed world.

A recent New York Times report, for instance, describes how a last-minute change in the iPhone's design required a Chinese foreman to wake up 8,000 company workers—who slept on-site, in company dormitories—feed them each a biscuit and a cup of tea, and put them to work on a 12-hour shift.

While there are widespread questions about corporate responsibility in the electronics manufacturing industry at large, Apple is set apart by its profitability and stature, wrote Yahoo Finance's Henry Blodget. Their users demand quality products, and they may begin to call for better working conditions as well.

“Almost all of the major electronics manufacturers make their stuff in China and other countries that have labor practices that would be illegal here,” Blodget wrote. “One difference with Apple, though, is the magnitude of the company's profit margin and profits. Apple could afford to pay its manufacturers more or hold them to higher standards and still be extremely competitive and profitable.”

Apple is a tremendously lucrative operation; last quarter, it earned some $133 million a day. Couldn't the company afford some accountability overseas?

Jon Christian is a staff writer with Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @Jon_Christian.

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