Apple churns out amazing products, but at what cost?

Americans love hot dogs and electronic gadgets, and they don’t like to think much about how either is made. But recent news reports about working conditions at Chinese factories that assemble cellphones, tablets and other devices invite indigestion.

The factories have been depicted as dreary places that underpay and overwork employees, some of them underage. National Public Radio’s This American Life told of Chinese factories surrounded with nets to stop workers from committing suicide.

Much of the scrutiny has, understandably, focused on Apple, which has become the world’s most valuable company thanks to the phenomenal success of products such as the iphone and ipad. A remarkably detailed story in the The New York Times recently described an explosion of aluminum dust at a Chinese ipad factory that killed four people, including a young engineer whose face was so horribly burned his girlfriend recognized him only by looking at his legs. The Times reported that Apple had been warned about conditions at the factory two weeks before the explosion, but that no steps were taken to make it safer.

Apple shouldn’t be surprised it’s a ripe target. Its own audits have found labor abuses at its overseas suppliers since at least 2006. Now, faced with a consumer backlash over its manufacturing processes, the company has gone into damagecontrol mode. It has stepped up its own audits, and tried to buttress its credibility by hiring an independent organization called the Fair Labor Association to check the factories. But the FLA promptly undermined its credibility when its president proclaimed that the factories were “first- class” and “not a sweatshop”— as the audits were barely underway.

All this invites boycotts of Apple products, at least until the company lives up to its own standards on working conditions. Its stature and market power make it a unique point of leverage. But like a lot of stories about global labor standards, the situation is not quite that simple.

For one thing, virtually all the big electronics companies have products built at Chinese megaproducer Foxconn and other companies in China and elsewhere in Asia. For Apple to unilaterally impose U. S.- level labor standards on its suppliers, or move assembly to the United States, would instantly make the iphone uncompetitive against its Android rivals.

For another, Apple’s practices are simply a window on the global economy, where a decadeslong chase for low- cost labor has sucked manufacturing jobs out of the USA. While American workers wouldn’t stand for the working conditions in Chinese factories, those conditions are a big step up for hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants.

Any blame for abusive conditions has to be shared with the Chinese government, which looks the other way when it comes to enforcing its own nominal labor standards, and represses labor unions that try to right the balance. In that respect, China isn't much different from the United States of a century ago, during its transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. It took decades to raise labor standards to where they are today.

These aren’t excuses for looking the other way. The fact is, big companies such as Apple have brand images to protect. They hold enormous sway over working conditions at their suppliers, and they care deeply about what their customers think. Anti- sweatshop campaigns against companies such as Nike have shown as much.

So it’s surely no coincidence that Foxconn announced over the weekend that it was raising worker salaries as much as 25% and cutting back on excessive hours. The lesson was clear: Pressure works.

By Kin Cheung, AP At Foxconn: Workers on the production line last May in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.