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It’s never pleasant to point out progressive hypocrisy, but here it is, plain and simple. We love our techy gadgets, and for many of you, the level of iPhone/iPad/Apple devotion is something I can’t grasp (I’m a Droid girl, myself). I know plenty of progressive folks who wait on lines for hours outside of the Apple Store to get the blessed devices, knowing full well they are made in China, where wages and work environments would otherwise be subjects of your outrage and disdain. But the truth hurts – we are just like most of America, with the bottom line more important than principle. (The Week):
When President Obama famously dined with a handful of Silicon Valley titans a year ago, he had a question for Apple chief Steve Jobs, say Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher in The New York Times: What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Jobs’ answer was unambiguous and sobering: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
Now, in a lengthy story, Duhigg and Bradsher explain — based on conversations with executives at Apple and its tech rivals, economists, and government officials — why Apple and just about every player in the consumer-electronics universe has all but given up on “Made in the USA.”
What are the factors discussed? Some easily guessed, others more complex. Those jobs not coming back are related to the parts used to build the revered devices.
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” a former high-ranking Apple executive tells The Times. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
According to the piece, labor costs, the most obvious factor, is actually not as large a factor if you disregard the working environment and such (hard to do, but even Apple looks at the bottom line). It would only cost the company an additional $65 to the retail price of each phone. But the aggressive labor environment in China means all tech gadget manufacturers will continue sending work there. An example from the NYT piece, “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work“:
One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”
Yes, even the beloved Apple. Do progressives feel any better, swiping your techy fingers across the device’s screen, about your support for an innovative all-American company that no longer supports the American workforce? Mind you, I’m just beating up on iPhone and iPad lovers to prove a point — all American consumers generally avoid these moral dilemmas and buy the cheapest items. But that the blind spot is pretty damning; for all of the political activism and chest-thumping the left does related to unfair wages, poor labor conditions and outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing, without a thought, we pull devices out of our pockets and purses every day that epitomize the problem. We salivate at the latest release of a laptop, phone or tablet, giving a pass to tech world that we don’t to, say, corporate farmers exploiting workers.
I’m not saying there’s any easy solution to this; clearly the global economy has changed corporate America and the American consumer in ways that are unlikely to change without upsetting the economic apple cart (no pun intended) and uncover these blind spots about profits, labor and working conditions.
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Mind you, I’m just beating up on iPhone and iPad lovers to prove a point — all American consumers generally avoid these moral dilemmas and buy the cheapest items.
Good point, Pam. Because this goes way, way beyond i-Devices. Most of our electronics, almost all of our clothing, all furniture (with even the “high-end” brands moving work to China). Manufacturing of mass consumer products is disappearing. Much of the manufacturing that does still exist here is in niche products.
And as those jobs have shifted overseas, it has increased pressure on the middle class, and made it even worse on the working poor.
The poor working conditions at some of these factories are appalling, and easy for us to overlook.
That said, there’s another side to the story of manufacturing overseas. I work for Intel (who, by the way, is currently building new wafer fabs right here in the U.S., including Chandler, AZ, where I live and work. Obama is coming here to speak tomorrow!). The demand for products with Intel microprocessors is fairly flat in the U.S. and other western markets – these aren’t the big growth markets anymore. But business is booming in China, India, Brazil, and Russia. That’s due to the confluence of two factors: people in those countries are making more money and prices of electronics are coming down (due in part to the cheap labor, but also to manufacturing/scientific advances and economies of scale).
So we are making a faulty assumption when we assume that all those products being made in China are being imported back to the U.S. Many of them are being sold right there in China, as well as the rest of the world. And why shouldn’t Chinese people be just as interested in buying products made in China as some people think we should be about buying products made in the U.S.?
(Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesperson for Intel. The viewpoints expressed here are my own.)
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I think people are also looking at it from another view. The US consumers and government had the shots to stop this–all they needed was tariffs. But no one wanted them. In the article, there are many interesting points such as China having access to engineers easily and no US factory able to retool like China can. The US manufacturing workers are incredible–but if a factory can not move quickly, they lose. Frankly, it’s more a CEO/management issue–the US auto manufacturers knew for decades they were building crap and that oil was going to go up. They didn’t do squat. Add in the Wal Mart mentality of many US consumers and then all hell breaks loose. I use Apple products–Apple has done many good things. Would I like them to manufacture in the US? Yes. I understand Jobs’ points, however. It isn’t hey, China has slave labor. It’s China is nimble and has resources.
New and higher tariffs will not go through. But one could achieve the same goals with some form of consumption tax* (VAT, sales tax, excises) and lower corresponding taxes on labor and businesses and provide a personal income as compensation. The consumption of foreign goods and services would then also contribute to social systems.
If you read the article, you know that the US needs to overhaul job training and education. While schools and university is discussed in federal politics, it seems that nobody ever talks about vocational schools. Considering what they’ve done to schools (NCLB, RTTT), that may be a blessing.
(And I agree with Richard Stallman about Jobs. *Ducks*)
* Not as a replacement for the income tax, of course.
As it turns out, Steve Jobs was John Galt….and workers forced to live in Dormitories, turned out whenever the customomer in the US wants something changed, and paid 17 dollars/12 or more hr days is what Jobs and others like for a workforce…..Until Americans are willing to be like the Chinese, the jobs stay there and American companies make China more powerful to keep up artificial profits. It really isnt a free market with slave labour, by the way
But it would be horrible if you broke such companies up and threw the managers in prison …
I don’t understand how Apple and other customers of Foxconn can claim to have no responsibility for the slave-like conditions and the deaths of workers. It’s even worse: Many people apparently have no problem with that.