I'm afraid that I coming to an unfortunate conclusion about some of these people protesting about the wages and working conditions at Foxconn where Apple's kit is made. They don't seem to have much understanding of the world that they inhabit. The people at SACOM (Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) have released yet another report insisting that Apple and Foxconn just aren't doing enough.
As far as I can tell there are three major complaints:
Gruelling workloads, humiliating punishments and battery-farm living conditions remain routine for workers assembling Apple's luxury electronics, according to one of the most detailed reports yet on life inside China's Foxconn factories.
The researchers claim that intimidation, exhaustion and labour rights violations "remain the norm" for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese iPhone workers, despite Apple redoubling its efforts to improve conditions.
Really? You mean it might take some time to change a corporate structure and culture? That an organisation of over 1 million people cannot be reformed overnight? Not even in only 30 or 45 days?
Wow. Who knew?
Well, I guess anyone who has ever actually tried to change a corporate culture, anyone who has ever read any of the literature on doing so or anyone who has ever observed the real world but other than that....and I'd expect, at least hope, that students and scholars would be capable of one of those three.
Then there's the danger of the work, the illnesses and accidents in the factories:
There were 728 industrial injuries at Foxconn factories in Shenzhen in the year to May 2012, according the Shenzhen regional public register. This is a small portion of a workforce estimated at 500,000 in the city, but Sacom believes injuries are under-reported: "The management simply negotiate with the injured workers for a settlement. According to the respondents, cases of industrial injuries have an impact on the annual bonus received by middle management. Therefore, the middle management are very reluctant to report all the cases."
I can see the incentives there and have no doubt that accidents and so on are under-reported. However, we do need to get some sense of proportion here. In the US the actual level of such accidents and illnesses is 3.5 per 100 employees per year.
Nearly 3.1 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses were reported among private industry
employers in 2010, resulting in an incidence rate of 3.5 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers--
down from 3.6 cases in 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
So among the Foxconn workers in that town, all 500,000 of them, we would expect to see 17,500 such illnesses and injuries. That's if the plants were as dangerous as the average US workplace. Unless those managers are only reporting under 5% of such cases it looks like Foxconn is safer than the US then.
Ths final major complaint is that the workers in the Chinese factories get less than those working in a similar factory in Brazil:
Sacom, founded five years ago to campaign for better conditions in factories making toys for Disney, is demanding the formation of genuine trade unions within Foxconn; a living wage for Chinese workers, whom it says are paid half the salary of workers in Foxconn's Brazilian factory, and receive five as opposed to 30 days' annual leave; and compensation for victims of labour rights abuses.
Well, yes. You know what else is twice as high in Brazil? GDP per capita is twice China's rate in Brazil. So yes, wages are going to be higher because both numbers are measuring, in their different ways, how rich the people are in a place. GDP per capita is higher in the US than it is in Brazil and wages are higher in the US by about the same multiple too.
So quite what is being complained about I'm really not all that sure.
Yes, I am aware that working conditions there aren't great and that wages, by your and my standards, are low. But that's what being a poor person in a poor country means. Working hard at a bad job for little money. All of which is well known and so I really do find it terribly difficult to understand what SACOM are on about. Maybe the bright students are studying and the others are running SACOM?
