Western Customers, Chinese Workers

Mike Daisy did a great deal of damage not just to "This American Life" radio show, but also to Chinese workers by fabricating the facts about work conditions at Foxconn. Now it would be harder to convince people about poor working conditions there, although other journalists observed the same.

So does Apple deserve bashing or not? They are not Foxconn's sole big client: if you take just United States part of the list you will find Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Motorola Mobility. It is hard for me to imagine that working conditions in their part of the factory complex are much different from those in Apple's part. Why is Apple then taking all the heat?

For one, Apple makes biggest profit of them all. They have money, but they didn't use it so everyone in the production chain is properly rewarded. This is stupid reasoning. It means that if you have lower profit margin, than it is OK to have poor working conditions. Secondly, Apple has a large group of devoted customers, who were disappointed with Apple's behavior. Get over it. Apple is company as any other.

Some claim that it is OK because they have better lives than they would have if they have no work at all. That would be true if those are only two options. However, that's not true. Customers of their customers come from countries with different working and environmental standards. What would happen if they all push them to change? China will be still the cheapest country and workers would have better lives.