Bankers Making Apple Run Sweatshops in China

The sweatshops Apple runs in China have recently come up in the news. Instead of using machines to assemble iPhones, iPods and iPads, Apple is using humans as machines. A factory in Shenzhen employs 430,000 people who work in halls with up to 20,000 to 30,000 people each. Workers aren’t allowed to talk to each other, there are no recreational breaks and people work under video surveillance. Some of the workers are children in their early teens, who are kept away from sight when inspectors arrive. Whereas the official work day is 8 hours, the standard shift is 12 hours, which commonly extends to 14-16 hours, at 70 cents per hour.

People asking for overtime are shrugged off and blacklisted; if they resign in protest, they’d have a difficult time seeking another job. Seeking to unionize is an imprisonable offense.

Occupational hazards include exposure to neurotoxic agents used to polish glass, such as hexane, whereas safer cleansers aren’t used because they take longer to evaporate. Monotonous, repetitive work leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and other disabilities. Those with disabling injuries are out of luck.

Many of these human-bots haven’t even seen in person, let alone held, a complete, functional iPad or another Apple product in their hand to evaluate what it is that they’re building. And when they sleep, they do so in cubicles packed with bunk beds, like prisoners in a crowded facility.

And to think that some people would describe this despicable situation as a wealth transfer from the the West to the East in terms of manufacturing and other jobs sent abroad! Superficially, the earnings of these workers have easily quadrupled compared to their working in rice farms earlier, but look at their living conditions, and watch as the purchasing power of money keeps going down because the government borrows from bankers, at interest, money the bankers create out of thin air.

If the Chinese masses work in farms, produce enough food for themselves, produce surplus food to barter against petroleum, medicine, etc., and the government creates it own money without debt, the Chinese can live independently and can sustain themselves, whereas now their economy’s in the hands of the international bankers while many of their people work like machines, sustaining mechanical injuries and damage from exposure to toxic chemicals.

The West doesn’t benefit either. Many Western consumers are precluded from buying bling bling such as iPads because of a lack of disposable income, and a good proportion of those who buy such bling bling do so by borrowing money, for which they’ll pay dearly in terms of interest.

Apple could technically improve worker conditions by cutting its profit margins, but is unable to do so because it’s a publicly traded corporation, and financial corporations have enough of a stake in it to dictate policies, the bottom line being increasing profit to attract investors. When the time’s ripe, these financial corporations will bring down the stock market, thus effecting a wealth transfer from the masses of naive investors to the bankers behind the financial corporations.

Many of the financial corporations having a stake in major non-financial corporations in major economies such as America’s are located offshore as well as many of the bankers. This diminishes the odds of a successful political revolt against the bankers. And we can see that the outsourcing of manufacturing and numerous other jobs from the major Western economies is further insurance against the same as weakened Western masses are less capable of revolt.

Posted by R-news on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 03:39 PM in Business & Industry, Economics & Finance, Globalisation, World Affairs
Comments (6) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Graham_Lister on January 27, 2012, 05:17 PM | #

Is not the invisible hand of the market which ensures that when each seek their own satisfaction they unwittingly supply the needs of others and serve the public good? The invisible hand transforms particularity into universality, after all in the logic of the market is not everyone’s money equally good? Why would the seller or producer of goods discriminate on non-rational, non-economic, non-profit-maximising grounds? Sure the precise preferences of our universal consumers may vary but that does not dissipate the corroding effects of the all-encompassing logic of market-exchange as homogenising acid.

Oh sorry forgot it is only those J-things that ruthlessly seek to maximum profits no matter what externalities they may generate. ‘Our’ corporate leaders are really nice guys that feel really bad about using near-slave labour in China…now children its time for some other fairy tales.

Posted by Lew on January 27, 2012, 06:59 PM | #

Are any of you going to give up your I-Phone? I’m not. A major problem in mounting a challenge to globalization is that it delivers the goods.

Posted by Barrel o' Fun on January 27, 2012, 07:34 PM | #

This was a very good article. I like how the author makes the case that both the consumers, the US, and the producers, China, lose. The only winners are the fatcats at the top and their profit-at-any-price methodology.

Posted by john on January 28, 2012, 08:01 AM | #

3D printing will change everything because the labour cost is eliminated.

Posted by Lurker on January 29, 2012, 02:00 PM | #

Globaization didnt make your iphone Lew. The accumlated skills, insights and knowledge of (mostly) white scientists, engineers and designers are what made it possible, just like they made everything else possible. The use of asian slaves just made it a bit cheaper.

After all if you really couldnt do without it you would happily pay 10, 20% more, yes?

And as some of the guys have been saying; 3rd printing (I think of it as ‘rapid prototyping’ btw) will disrupt the whole cheap labour thing.

Posted by J Richards on January 29, 2012, 03:30 PM | #

Dr. Graham Lister @1

Is not the invisible hand of the market which ensures that when each seek their own satisfaction they unwittingly supply the needs of others and serve the public good?

Why don’t you acquaint yourself with what the market really is: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0878 ?

‘Our’ corporate leaders are really nice guys that feel really bad about using near-slave labour in China…now children its time for some other fairy tales.

It seems that without straw men you’re incapable of coming up with a valid response.

Lew @2

Here’s my response: http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/alternatives_to_globalization_delivering_the_goods

John @4

Here’s the response: http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/money_when_machines_increasingly_replace_human_workers

Next entry: Alternatives to Globalization “delivering the goods”

Previous entry: A potential one-man mental hospital for Anders Behring Breivik!

Existential Issues

White Genocide Project

Of note

General News

Science News

Science Categories

All Categories

The Writers

Each author's name links to a list of all articles posted by the writer; the hashes link to authors' homepages.

Links

Endorsement not implied.

Controlled Opposition

Crime

General

Immigration

Islam

Jews

Nationalist Political Parties

Science

Whites in Africa