Brooke Crothers, CNET:
Should you boycott Apple products, as many commenters have suggested and some publications are now calling on you to do?
That question opens a pandora’s box that taken to its logical conclusion would mean eschewing pretty much all devices made in China–including the one on which you’re reading this post.
It’s a slippery slope.
If you are going to play that game then you really have to boycott ALL electronics because they all likely have at least one part that was made with ‘chinese slave labor’. then there’s your clothes, much of which was made in china. and so on.
and why stop with China, what about the poor mexicans in the sweat shops in LA that make the rest of your high priced clothes. Shouldn’t you boycott to protest their treatment as well.
And what about your fruits and veges. Don’t you know that pretty much all produce that is sold in supermarkets was harvested by hispanic farm workers, many of whom are illegals and are paid pennies for their worker because they can’t protest or they will be deported
and so on and so on
The supply chain is gone and will likely never return. No one has the political or monetary capital bring it back. And it’s not Apple’s job to elevate the quality of life of the Chinese lower or middle class. The Chinese are doing that already by themselves.
If you want to make a difference, how about ensuring that the devices are still engineered and designed at home – those higher level jobs are starting to leave as well.As a consumer the best thing you can do is support your local SME whenever possible. There are lots of small companies out there that could use the support. The best change starts at the bottom not at the top.
From a documentary: If Wal-Mart was a country, they’d be China’s 3rd largest trading partner. (Consider: How many people bitch about outsourcing jobs overseas as they go there to shop? One of many reasons you won’t find me in one. )
I agree. Why this is being hung on seemingly exclusively on Apple’s shoulders is starting to get maddening.
That said though, I’ve been thinking a lot about how some people may not understand the disparity between working here in NA and in a place like China (not that I do entirely). I have no doubt that there are big problems with the way things work in these factories, but I think looking at it from the North American perspective is dangerous. Hasn’t our system built up a false sense of entitlement, where over the past 50 years, Unions have raised the wages for blue-collar jobs to the point where someone putting bumpers on a car is getting $60,000 a year?
Here in Canada we have people going on strike because they aren’t guaranteed lifetime job security. Can people looking on the problem from that viewpoint really evaluate how “bad” things are?
Everyone deserves healthy, safe work environment. But beyond that, I think it pretty hard for us to assess from here what constitutes a “fair wage”. What’s the average take home in China? What’s the cost of living?
There is a huge disparity.
I’ve lived here long enough that I have started staring in wonderment at the salaries and pocessions of skilled or unskilled workers in Canada. I know people who have a high school education, work half a year, draw EI for the other half and yet manage to own a house and drive a large truck. The same here would require either a knack for entrepreneurship or more commonly a graduate degree and a number of long years working in a company.