Apple is disgusting

There's no denying that my views on Apple's stock price were wrong last February and remain wrong today. The stock is today up about 15% since my prediction of a fall. But Wall Street has also started looking at the company's broader impact on the world, something I mentioned briefly in this post. Take a look at what Henry Blodget says at Business Insider:

Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using "hexane," an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.

Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers' hands no longer work, obviously, they're canned.

...

If Apple decided to build iPhones and iPads for Americans using American labor rules, two things would likely happen:

• The prices of iPhones and iPads would go up
• Apple's profit margins would go down

Neither of those things would be good for American consumers or Apple shareholders. But they might not be all that awful, either. Unlike some electronics manufacturers, Apple's profit margins are so high that they could go down a lot and still be high. And some Americans would presumably feel better about loving their iPhones and iPads if they knew that the products had been built using American labor rules.

In other words, Apple could probably afford to use American labor rules when building iPhones and iPads without destroying its business.

So it seems reasonable to ask why Apple is choosing NOT to do that.

More: Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

Comments

[Murli Ravi]

More on this: http://bigthink.com/ideas/41890

[Ankit Agrawal]

This is an extension of the prior controversy that plagued Nike and its competitors when they were found guilty of child labour. I'm sure if a thorough inspection is carried out, most of the companies who have outsourced their production to China would be found guilty of such unfair practices. It is really sad that the Chinese government would take a neutral stance on issues like these in order to keep its export-led growth engine running and this I think should raise the broader question of how sustainable is China's model in the long term.