Every now and then a story comes along that makes my acid reflux kick in. I’m still trying to digest a riveting story of the Foxconn plants in in Shenzhen, China where all things Apple (and a lot of other things) are made. Basically just deplorable working conditions like 16 hour shifts, no talking at work. None. Period. Overtime that doesn’t get paid out and if you complain you will be blacklisted and fired. On the job injuries that are completely avoidable like repetitious movements that are non-stop with no rotation into other duties. Think carpal tunnel but in a country where you’re not going to get any FMLA or Workers Comp. Underage workers and cluster suicides have been documented. It’s hard to listen to and not start thinking “I can’t believe everything I own,” and I mean actually a great deal of things I own since I am a computer nerd, a geek, a guru and a participating citizen of this great nation of consumption, “…is made in this manner.”
So it doesn’t sit well with me when I hear that Apple did their usual thing with releasing the iPhone 4S in China. They built it up. They had people stand in line at the stores. People paid other people cash money and provided them meals to stand in line for them to get this new device. Come this morning at an Apple location in Beijing, they were denied access to buying the phones that were made on their own soil. Something keeps trying to tell me that I’m over-reacting to this news. That there’s somehow no problem with all of this, but it can’t be that simple. The plants that manufacture these phones accommodate hundreds of thousands of workers a day, but an Apple location will simply not open because a crowd is too large?
Maybe I’m just upset so that I can feel better about owning an iPhone 4S, 2008 Macbook and the two iPads “Santa” bought us for Crimmals this year. It’s my guilty conscious that is writing this post here today and somehow getting mad at Apple helps me feel better about hearing all these wonderful things that go into building all my personal computing devices all the while knowing that I’m not capable of giving them up. And to be clear, I’m not. I’m not able to give these things up. What’s my alternative? The other phones are made in China too. So are the computer monitors I do my work (and my Crasstalk) on everyday.
I just can’t help thinking: Let them have iPhones, dammit. Apple always handles this stuff in this Orwellian sort of way. They refuse to comment, they project a large wall of silence. They blame the crowds that they encouraged to form. Could you imagine an Apple event that wasn’t hyped to the point of mass hysteria? The stock price would slip and everyone would bemoan the days of Steve Jobs and when everyone really wanted an Apple device. Apple needs these events to be huge and spectacular. Closing an event because it was too huge seems a little asstastic to me. That’s right: Ass-tastic.
You can rail against them all you want but it doesn’t matter, Apple doesn’t hear you and they don’t have to. I just think if someone waited outside of an Apple location for four days – in any country – you should probably act like you owe them something. Knowing just a little bit more about the Foxconn super factories where the workers aren’t even allowed to sit down – ever – while they work, where spray cleaners for LCD’s can turn out to be a powerful neurotoxin that renders workers into useless husks of human wreckage and I start thinking you really owe them something. We sort of all do.
