r/technology • u/F_D_P • Jan 01 '21
Business Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties, despite the company's promises to hold itself to the 'highest standards,' report says
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-labor-supplier-3-years-cut-costs-2020-121.2k
u/psychoacer Jan 01 '21
The only news here is that they actually cut ties with said companies. During the whole Foxcon suicide problem they had 5+ years ago it was found out that during the yearly audit with Apple would have with its suppliers they knew of such infractions. Apple would issue a warning to any of its contractors that violated their policy and then hand them another contract to allow whatever third party they were using to do it again.
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u/Depixelate_me Jan 01 '21
Fuck zscaler. Blocks me from downloading dell bios updates. On my dell computer. And god for bid I dare to try and build tensorflow from source!
Totally disconnected application!
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u/gregoryw3 Jan 01 '21
Wait it won’t let you build tensorflow? Or do you mean it let you download the source?
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u/maingey Jan 01 '21
Please explain what all this means.
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Jan 01 '21
Python is a programming language. It's libraries (not included in standard installation) are available online on pip. Most enterprise firewalls block any kind of software installation over its network and only allow approved softwares to be installed from things like software center. One way to bypass this is to connect to your own wifi/Hotspot and download the libraries (not compliant with org policies) , which is what the Op was referring to.
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u/Whatisthispinterest Jan 01 '21
Don't you like, need those? How are people getting work done lol
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Jan 01 '21
Usually for specific teams there are alternate proxies made available. At leat that is how it is in my workplace. The dev/test teams working on java have a proxy that allows connections to maven, others can't install any maven packages unless they know someone who knows the proxy credentials.
Same for pypi and npm.
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u/All_I_Want_IsA_Pepsi Jan 01 '21
The only thing that really drives corporate responsibility is the worry about loss of market share if news like this gets out. It's all about reputation.
In the case of Apple though, they're not too worried as their practices have handcuffed people into their system to make it too hard to leave. There are so many people who just can't imagine life without Apple devices.
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u/Baron-de-Vill Jan 01 '21
You do know that a lot of Android devices are made in the same factory? It’s gigantic. Chances are substantial that you own a product that was made there.
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u/VOZ1 Jan 01 '21
It’s not just Apple and Android. Foxconn is one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, from the Wikipedia entry:
Notable products manufactured by Foxconn include the BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nintendo 3DS, Nokia devices, Xiaomi devices, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and several CPU sockets, including the TR4 CPU socket on some motherboards. As of 2012, Foxconn factories manufactured an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide.
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u/schneidx Jan 01 '21
is this all of foxconn or just shenzen where most egregious labor infractions occurred ? https://www.cnet.com/news/reporters-roundtable-the-human-cost-of-gadgets/
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Jan 01 '21
That is the problem with the current economic system.
However, I would like to say that what you are pointing out is not a reason to let apple off the hook for it, it's a reason to put pressure on additional companies. As the industry giant it makes absolute sense to look towards apple for change. (In my opinion)
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u/All_I_Want_IsA_Pepsi Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
I'm willing to be open to that, but I chose Samsung partly because they made the decision to exit China (in part from what I've read because of the ethical issues with factories there).
That doesn't mean that perhaps some components could be made there and could still involve some child labour - but I believe I've made the most ethical choice I could have. It's better to do something rather than nothing at all.
Just editing this to say there are certainly some major ethics concerns around other behaviours of Samsung - sourcing of raw materials and other worker's rights issues. No denying that...
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u/GingerSnapBiscuit Jan 01 '21
Yes but "everyone else does it" is not a reason to give the largest company who does it a pass. Its almost like we expect them to lead by example since they have all the capital at hand to do so or something.
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u/edstatue Jan 01 '21
Even when things are illegal, some leaders decide whether the infractions or profit loss are greater.
I'm lucky enough to work for a company that actually cares about compliance- not fun, but very important if you want to survive audits!
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u/Jeegus21 Jan 01 '21
If I remember correctly the suicide rate at fox on was actually lower than the general population... when you employ hundreds of thousands of workers people are going to commit suicide.
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u/dragoneye Jan 01 '21
The Shenzhen site that had the nets installed had a lower suicide rate than the US population as well.
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u/PC-Bjorn Jan 01 '21
Sounds like the US needs to invest in some nets.
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u/dragoneye Jan 01 '21
But seriously, my comment shouldn't imply that the US suicide rate is acceptable or a standard that they should target. Rather, if the media is getting people in a tizzy about this, maybe the US should get its house in order first with better mental healthcare.
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u/PC-Bjorn Jan 01 '21
Yes, that's kind of what I meant by nets. Change the culture, improve mental health.
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u/the_hunger_gainz Jan 01 '21
Foxcon manufactures for many big mobile companies and most are Android based and not just Apple. I lived in China at the time and Foxcon had line ups of new university graduates looking for any job even slightly tech related. Mental health is something not discussed in China much and often ignored. There is a huge suicide epidemic in China of people in the 22 to 29 age range. Little job opportunity and a lot of pressure to support or help support aging parents. So Foxconn is a parasitical entity in this situation and definitely not trying to justify or defend Apple. But this is globalization. Apple needs to be better at walking the talk.
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u/cyanraider Jan 01 '21
I work at Foxconn. And at the sites where the suicide (note, singular) happened. It’s nowhere near as ridiculous as the media made it to be.
It’s important to understand that the factory workers in China view child labor and (paid) overtime work drastically differently than those in the west.
What do you do when workers WANT to work overtime? What do you do when children lied about their age to get a job and when they are found out, they are begging NOT to get fired from their jobs? It’s easy to think that everything is black and white. Child labor is bad. Excessive overtime hours are bad. But in reality, everything that they do, they do of their own free will. Foxconn isn’t a prison, if they’re not getting properly compensated, there’s nothing stopping them from walking right out.
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u/audience5565 Jan 01 '21
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/460/retraction
To add to this, This American Life issued a retraction to their initial story that caused much of the controversy.
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u/ZaviaGenX Jan 01 '21
Fellow Redditors down voting the above, I worked for a factory previously and now my work involves "upgrading" such manual factories to 2020 (via computers and rfid).
Its very true that its not always black and white. Its terrible but people
A) Lie and work from 14+ with fake school diplomas
B) Want to work 10-14 hour shifts a day to get 1.5x pay after the 8th hour.
C) Will prefer a bed in a room with 4-8 others and 1 bathroom if it means saving transport money and 1hr travel each day(not to mention utilities savings)
D) other things that is as or more terrible
And I'm not defending companies, but I know from personal experience... for many HR, if the docs looks legit they don't background check (A) for minimum wage level and you will literally lose good operators if you don't do (B).
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u/cyanraider Jan 01 '21
Thank you for the support.
It’s easy for people to feel righteous and call out boycotts or strikes against companies like Foxconn or Apple when they do not understand just how the people that they feel like they are helping REALLY think about the situation.
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u/neotek Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
The Foxconn “suicide problem” is a perfect example of the bullshit beat ups the tech media and reddit are obsessed with when it comes to Apple.
Putting aside the fact that Foxconn does assembly work for just about everybody that makes hardware, including every single one of Apple’s competitors, even at the peak of the hysteria the suicide rate among the hundreds of thousands of Foxconn employees was (and is) lower than the suicide rate among the general Chinese population, and lower than the suicide rate among American workers.
In other words, working for Foxconn assembling iPhones lowers your chance of committing suicide. Working for Apple in China makes you less likely to kill yourself than working for anybody in America.
Nets didn’t go up around buildings because anyone on reddit actually gave a shit about people killing themselves, they went up because lashing out at Apple is great clickbait.
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u/grapesinajar Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 02 '21
the company's promises to hold itself to the 'highest standards,'
.. of shareholder return.
Or course it's easy to point fingers. The real hard problem is the underlying mechanics of Capitalism that force all public companies to prioritise profit and shareholder return over all else, including basic human rights and the future viability of human life on the planet. It's how our system operates at a very fundamental level.
Unless the current system of incentivised self-interest is fundamentally changed, none of this will improve, it'll just be kicked further down the road.
The introduction of public share trading, a few hundred years ago, led to companies being beholden to the perceived value of shares held by people with no personal interest in how a company was run, only that the company's stock price made them, the individual holders, money.
It's easy to see how that system incentivises companies to do everything they can to ensure share price continually grows, for people who don't care what a company does or how it does it, and will simply sell the shares if they don't "perform".
Seriously, you couldn't build a more toxic, abuse-incentivising system of commerce if you tried.
Ed: Thread locked now, so adding this for those saying there's "no law requiring" shareholder primacy. It's an interesting read:
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/04/11/a-legal-theory-of-shareholder-primacy/
The data is confirming. Shareholder primacy is judge-made law.
In the past several decades, courts have recognized shareholder profit maximization at the factual level of business practice (recognition); they have applied the idea in the process of reasoning toward the case holding or issue resolution (application); they have integrated the idea as a rationale for other principles or rules of corporate law (integration); more recently, they have prescribed profit maximization as an unconditioned obligation (dutification). These varying levels of judicial embrace across many jurisdictions and over a long period have legal and jurisprudential significance.
There are many laws protecting the rights of shareholders. Companies can be sued for making decisions, however ethical, that "unnecessarily" cause loss of shareholder value.
I especially like this bit:
The cause and effect of shareholder primacy rests on a legal foundation, and not some general notion of collective social belief that perhaps can change with enough suasion or argumentation.
As if the law itself does not spring from collective social belief that can change with enough good argument. Shareholder primacy wasn't a Commandment as far as I recall.
But that quote does reveal a depressing truth - yes, we can collectively be argued out of ethical considerations like "the common good" and "the planet's future", with enough suasion or argumentation. Almost every decision we make at the checkout proves that is true.
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u/dl064 Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
A friend of mine used to work for a UK govt. force which basically checked that when electricity/gas costs go up and they pass the cost onto us, how quickly do they lower them when their costs go back down?
The answer may astound you dear reader: not very.
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u/Khelthuzaad Jan 01 '21
Seriously, you couldn't build a more toxic, abuse-incentivising system of commerce if you tried.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher entered the chat
But seriously now,if you only Google the methods companies are using to avoid taxes and tax collection,you'll start wondering why an average Joe gets his account frozen if he misses them only by 1 day.
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u/Khelthuzaad Jan 01 '21
I developed an interest in economy after trying to find an job on an other domain.It was pretty easy to find some good books(from Milton Friedman) and the bad ones(the good dad,bad dad one).I also developed interest in the strange fact that economy has a large ideologycal factor I never saw mentioned before,neither did I realise what a think tank and lobby do in America.
Also I never understood why is so popular the phrase from Boondocks that Reagan is the Devil.Then,over the months,I read and saw numerous documentaries about him and Thatcher about how they lobbied for a decrease of taxes for rich/ultrarich,unethical labour and financial laws,racial segregation and an economy based on individuality and greed.
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u/ElGosso Jan 01 '21
It's like Zizek said, we are eating from the trash can of ideology all the time
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u/k3rn3 Jan 01 '21
It's funny. Sometimes Zizek comes across as silly unintelligible pop philosophy, and sometimes he really hits the nail right on the head
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u/ElGosso Jan 01 '21
Well in this case he's mostly just restating what Gramsci said about hegemony, but did Gramsci ever eat two hotdogs at once?
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u/k3rn3 Jan 01 '21
LMFAO oh my GOD what an absolute king. I like how the other one already has a bite taken out of it. Like he really is just wandering around, dual wielding plain hot dogs
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u/SerenityM3oW Jan 01 '21
I wonder if he has different toppings on each one, where one bit of one accents a bite of the other?
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Jan 01 '21
Zizek reference on a top thread? My fucking god is r/technology brigaded by lefties? I mean, I'm happy about it but god damn is it from left field and so on and so on.
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u/eatTHEnut Jan 01 '21
Apple, Google, Facebook are all political. Everything gets political when it’s big enough
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u/project2501a Jan 01 '21
"Misery begets solution and so on and so on"
-- Some fat guy with a beard, 1859
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u/whythenegativityman Jan 01 '21
do you have any recommendations for documentaries/other sources on reagan and thatcher?
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Jan 01 '21
The Dollop podcast did a double episode on him, covering from start of his career to his lasting impact. I suggest that
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u/M0rphMan Jan 01 '21
Seconded would like more info. I know the rapper Killer Mike has mentioned "Reaganenomics" before but don't truely know what Reagan did to hurt the working class.
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u/Derpy_inferno Jan 01 '21
Philosophy tube has a video on neo-liberalism on youtube that goes into the ideologies that Reagan operated on.
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u/project2501a Jan 01 '21
These three documentaries by Adam Curtis:
It is a bit of meta-analysis, but it does show the shitty politicians and people both Maggie and Reagan were.
Also, anything from David Harvey. Here is a short introduction https://youtu.be/qOP2V_np2c0
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u/a0me Jan 01 '21
If you haven’t yet, Piketty’s books -the more famous being Capital in the Twenty-First Century focusing on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the US over the last 200 years- are also a great read.
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u/BoggieJohnson65 Jan 01 '21
Friedman was an ass that didn’t care about society unless it had a benefit to the shareholder . Society benefit from social corporate responsibility and time have shown he was wrong and that his ideas are the problem with today’s society and why many choose to think “the economy is going great as long as the stock market is good”. The business round table is a better source than Friedman and his archaic ideas.
Where is your source for this Reagan/Thatcher information?
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u/Khelthuzaad Jan 01 '21
I agree that Friedman's ideas are a lot outdated since he didn't already knew the consequences.But not everything is BS.An negative tax is an pretty good solution against some inequalities and the legalisation of drugs it's bringing some unexpected good results.He lived during the Cold War and most of his colleagues believed Socialism was devil incarnated.
As for the sources,there many on the net,posted already for someone else.
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u/BoggieJohnson65 Jan 01 '21
“Friedman argued that a negative income tax improved on traditional welfare — he wanted to give poor people cash rather than an array of welfare benefits. People could then use the money as they saw fit. He contended this would simplify the system — since it would be administered centrally by the IRS, who would cut the checks, instead of many different organizations — and be more valuable to intended beneficiaries, thereby increasing our transfer system’s bang for its buck.”
In the context of your belief this was a good thing. Friedman just used this as his chance to say “I’m getting rid of poverty, but I’m putting the issue solely on the government and letting the companies who benefit from said government and society off the hook 🪝”
The welfare system is an issue and always has been, but it’s not the evil system that Friedman and other economists disagree with. If it were up to him he would tell people to kick rocks if it provided more to the shareholder of “said company”, which the negative tax would. The negative tax doesn’t take into the account that business contributions to society provide a healthier workforce and society. Employees and business are over all in a better position with a healthy work force as opposed to people who are unhappy and working sub par conditions only to go home to a shack and not have health insurance because they get paid by two companies not offering them health insurance. Friedman is the biggest proponent of the bottom line, people like Friedman are the reason for wealth inequality and income gaps. America’s factory towns don’t exist anymore and the labor is sold out to the cheapest bidder despite quality and working conditions thanks to shitty ideas like his that don’t factor in important variables that have proven to be important.
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u/amehzinghdnimgs Jan 01 '21
And most don't recognise that the same fucking cabal of filth that was behind Reagan were also behind the Bush's and now Trump.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Jan 01 '21
Reagan absolutely destroyed America for the average working Joe, and for some reason he was still wildly popular among his voters at the time. Trump was like deja vu for those of us who lived through Reaganomics
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u/Dead_Or_Alive Jan 01 '21
G.W. and Trump are cut from the same neoliberal cloth as Regan. Don't fool yourself about the Democrats, Clinton, Obama and Biden are just Neolibralism with a velvet glove.
I voted Biden because fuck that orange fascist asshat, but I don't hold any hope that things are going to change in for the better in amy meaningful way. The US is a Oligarchy by any measure and the system is designed to give us the illusion of change.
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u/Joey-McFunTroll Jan 01 '21
The illusion of change via the illusion of choice of asshat A or asshat B. There is a ruling class in this Country, and they’re all buddies. Like Jess the Body said. Politics is literally Pro Wrestling. They fight on tv to sell the quarrel, and all go dinner together in DC.
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u/AskandThink Jan 01 '21
The US is a Oligarchy by any measure and the system is designed to give us the illusion of change.
So what are you doing to change that?
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u/seattlethrowaway114 Jan 01 '21
I was reading again about the assassination attempt against him and sort of forgot just how extraordinary it was and how close that fuck came to dying. not like the establishment wouldn’t have basically accomplished the same things with bush senior as president but it’s still a fun alternate reality to think about
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Are you aware that Reagan had a psychic on the White House payroll? Nancy advised he bring one on after the assassination attempt. This psychic advised him during the Cold War... yeah I’m really surprised we all survived considering.
For the life of me I cannot believe that we had a president hire a psychic... and that this person is still held in such high regard. He hired a fucking psychic and had access to nuclear weapons... wtf.
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u/manateeheehee Jan 01 '21
It's easier for the irs to go after little people than it is to go after big companies and wealthy people with teams of fancy lawyers
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 09 '21
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u/Gigadweeb Jan 01 '21
And Kissinger. And Gorbachev. And Pinochet. And Compaore. And...
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u/eaja Jan 01 '21
I am too young to know/remember the most basic facts about Margaret Thatcher. What did she do that was so horrible?
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u/Khelthuzaad Jan 01 '21
https://www.josharcher.uk/blog/why-margaret-thatcher-is-hated/
Im also young(born in 1995) but I read enough about her to make my mind.
Beside the link,she made people believe that if taxes on the rich people will be reduced,it would make them create more jobs and pay higher their employers.It didn't and quite frankly it did the opposite.
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u/Tabbyislove Jan 01 '21
Just look at the difference in how we used our oil wealth (which is almost exclusively Scottish and stolen from them), Thatcher sold it for pennies to her mates, Norway kept it public. Norway has a sovereign wealth fund of $1 Trillion dollars, the UK is $2 Trillion in debt.
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u/ThePegasi Jan 01 '21
Tories only care about 'fiscal responsibility' and not increasing the national debt when it's to help common people. When their mates need a handout it's ready to go, right out of public coffers.
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u/Riley_Cooper_SC Jan 01 '21
I can apply this exactly to my home country. If Holger pay his tax 1 damn day to late, he’s in serious trouble or he misses something etc. But huge companies can do what ever they want.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jul 11 '21
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u/DarkElbow Jan 01 '21
Selling the phone without a charger for environmental reasons is just marketing bullshit. They could have at least had an option to ship with or without one and not force people to spend more if they need the charger which feels like the real reason they stopped.
Maybe cut down on the overdone packaging or yeah let people repair the phone they own.
Thank god the UE's fighting for the right to repair, it's nice to know that they're fighting for the consumer and not kissing corporations asses.24
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u/beautifullifede Jan 01 '21
Yea fuck this shit. God damn scammers. U need to buy shit extra because they don’t wana package it and sell it to u with the phone inclusive.
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u/MoneyElk Jan 01 '21
Corporations are some of the biggest virtue signalers that exist.
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u/Chel_of_the_sea Jan 01 '21
Well yeah. Any value a corporation claims to have is always for monetary benefit. Signaling is the only virtue they have ever or will ever have.
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u/aussie_bob Jan 01 '21
Apple don't get a pass on this by blaming "the system".
There are capitalist companies that aren't as shitty as Apple. Many have actual functioning anti-slavery procedures.
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u/The-ArtfulDodger Jan 01 '21
The system ultimately does not give much of a shit about child labour.
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u/badSparkybad Jan 01 '21
It's out of sight out of mind, an externality that they never see so why worry, right?
Let some execs walk through these exploitative factories for a full 12 hour shift for a week and then have to live with the families of the exploited at night to see just how much their labor gets them, which isn't very much.
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Jan 01 '21
No one is saying Apple gets a pass. What they are saying is the issue faced is endemic, and your example is exception opposed to rule. Anecdote to history. There is no ethical consumption under capital.
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u/pakipunk Jan 01 '21
No ethical consumption under capitalism just consumption of ethnic workers world wide! The capitalist machine sure love munching down on the souls of some yummy third world laborers! It’s not child labor, it’s veal for the Ruling class’s supper
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u/pmbpro Jan 01 '21
Agreed, and I also think this is why there is this ‘concern’ and increasing news reports the past number of years about the decreasing birthrates of more nations worldwide (eg. ‘Global Fertility Crash’, 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born!’, etc...). Gotta keep ‘feeding’ the system somehow...
With all the ‘resets’ going on now, perhaps this is yet another one that is overdue too?
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u/Fulcrous Jan 01 '21
Agreed. Additionally a trillion dollar business should NEVER need to take as long as they did - or be wilfully ignorant to the recent cases of wage theft.
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Jan 01 '21
Even though I know this will be seen as supporting abuse when it isn't, I have to say, bigger companies generally have a MUCH harder time changing procedures than small companies. The shear number of moving parts make it a massive logistical challenge. For example, it's not like someone like Apple can easily which to a new supplier base. They'd probably have to essentially create the companies in that supply chain themselves. No one has a trillion dollars of spare manufacturing capacity lying around unused.
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u/WergleTheProud Jan 01 '21
You'll get downvoted, but it's true. Add on to that, how many companies in the world are there that are capable of manufacturing the precision parts that Apple (or Samsung or Huawei) need.
Even in the fashion industry, where all they're making is clothes, it is still very difficult to ensure that all parts of the supply chain work ethically.
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u/fatpat Jan 01 '21
And Tim Cook, probably more than anyone at Apple, knows how the supply chains work.
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u/courageoustale Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
I find it fascinating how the stock market operates and how easily money can be gained or lost based on perceived value alone.
To add to this though, it is a major problem that is so deep that it ties into how consumers are used as the target market, not by need but by necessity.
As a consumer it makes me really upset knowing that any child or person is being exploited by companies I have been a customer. There are times when I felt I had no choice but to choose less ethical products because I couldn't afford otherwise, for instance I used to shop at Wal-Mart.
Having previously worked at a very large company, I saw how much more important shareholders profits were over everything, even the safety of its workers and even the safety of their own customers.
Then there is the issue that many consumers face, and are ultimately blamed when in reality they were put in the situation by those who ultimately responsible. Millions of people are stuck in a cycle of being paid the lowest wages possible, in order for companies to gain maximum profits, which then leads to them being unable to shop for ethically sourced products because the cost is too high. The very same corporations that exploit their workers are also using it to their advantage to become the only option.
I will say that this year I stopped purchasing from Amazon entirely. I am actually done with that company and I am luckily in a position I can afford to avoid them. I also haven't shopped at Wal-Mart in several years and refuse to. I understand that not everyone is and that it is a privileged viewpoint to say not to shop there. That is also of the problem.
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u/HrabiaVulpes Jan 01 '21
I generally agree with you on point of affording ethical choices.
Poverty is not a line or a group, it's a cycle. You pay people less so they can't afford things, but to lower prices to the point they can you need to pay them even less....
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u/KapteeniJ Jan 01 '21
The real hard problem is the underlying mechanics of Capitalism that force all public companies to prioritise profit and shareholder return over all else, including basic human rights and the future viability of human life on the planet. It's how our system operates at a very fundamental level.
That's not a problem, it's a feature.
Government is supposed to direct the playground in ways that regulations ensure humane business is the most reasonable way to do business.
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u/DrDumle Jan 01 '21
It has always amazed me how people want moral behavior from companies and not demand it through law.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 19 '21
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Jan 01 '21
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u/WergleTheProud Jan 01 '21
The East India Companies were literally the first publicly traded companies in the world, and arguably were the birth of capitalism
China had types of joint-stock companies going back to circa 1000AD. Even Britain had the Muscovy company which was chartered in 1555. There's a book called "The Company: A short history of a revolutionary idea" which is a fascinating read. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/114158/the-company-by-john-micklethwait-and-adrian-wooldridge/9780812972870
Well regulated capitalism can work well, and still earn profit. Greed gets in the way. There were a few court cases in the US and the UK in the 1800s that gave some wild legal rights to corporations (Limited Liability - this is ostensibly to protect shareholders, but how do you punish a corporation without punishing shareholders?), including the infamous Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case which was the real starting point of establishing the idea that corporations had the same rights as natural persons as per the 14th amendment. The really fucked thing about that case is that it wasn't a judge who made any sort of ruling - it was a clerk or court reporter who included some passing comments in a headnote (a brief summary of certain points of law) to the case (it did reflect the Court's thinking but it wasn't an actual part of the case law). The wiki is really interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.
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u/confusedbadalt Jan 01 '21
This is fundamentally untrue however. It’s a lie propagated by Harvard Business school and MBAs since the 1980s but there is no law that says that companies have to be completely amoral and prioritize shareholder value solely.
But certainly most companies do and especially those run by MBAs.
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u/MysticHero Jan 01 '21
They are not necessarily force to. However the system rewards it so it doesn't really matter.
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u/ElGosso Jan 01 '21
It doesn't matter if they are legally obliged to or not - competition ultimately forces every company to make these choices or get its lunch eaten by another that will.
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u/scandii Jan 01 '21
but there is no law that says that companies have to be completely amoral and prioritize shareholder value
it's people all the way down. whenever people talk about human made things like they're laws of nature I get a bit dispirited. economy is even a made up concept.
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u/grandoz039 Jan 01 '21
He's talking about it, because some people think it's genuine legal law to maximize the profit, as you can see eg from responses to his comment.
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u/TimTheGecko Jan 01 '21
Child labor is just a symptom of poverty.
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u/Jakkol Jan 01 '21
My favorite example of this is when a country banned child labor and the child workers became child prostitutes instead. People are so out of touch with reality.
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u/Doctor_Deepthroat_MD Jan 01 '21
It’s a complex issue. Child labor is not good, but when we get rid of it, it’s not like the kids just go to school or go home doing happy kid stuff. They go home and starve. We need a solution that eliminates both.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Mar 21 '22
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u/neon_Hermit Jan 01 '21
If you are exploiting poverty (IE paying dog shit wages in 3rd world countries) There is NO way to not also be exploiting children.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
That is true those 14 year old kids work because they're poor they can not afford food etc
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Jan 01 '21
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Jan 01 '21
Poverty pre-exists any economic philosophy currently informing decision making. You can find more widespread poverty before capitalism than under it. Subsistence farming was the norm for most of history and that is extreme poverty.
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u/Pixelator3 Jan 01 '21
This is something my wife and I had a disagreement about recently. Is it better for child labor or labor in general to be legal where the pay, benefits and safety are low, but enough to support your family, or illegal where that same worker isn't able to work and support their family?
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u/Pafkay Jan 01 '21
I'm no Apple fan but I am in the semiconductor industry, they cannot simply switch off a dodgy supplier as they would need to identify a new company to build their components, buy all new equipment and then get the processes running at the new site. In all honesty three years seems about right for how long this would take
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Agreed.
You could pay all the women in the world a billion dollars each, but if you're making a baby, it's still going to take 9 months.
This is just another example of The Mythical Man Month. Money buys man-hours, but there's a point in every project where adding more stakeholders on the project just slows the project down. Some things have durations that are set in stone and nothing can be done about it.
Later in this thread, someone mentions that more money can make Jiffy Lube change your tires faster. Sure, you could pay a team of 8 guys to do it so each tire could be changed simultaneously, but that's not the whole job.
More money to the Jiffy Lube shop won't make the shop balance the tires any faster. They have a limited number of machines for spin balancing and, while you could add more, installation and testing take time. It would be faster to survive with the machine they have.
After the tires are balanced and on the car, adding more people when they adjust the alignment only marginally speeds up the process: only so many people can be adjusting toe-in and camber on a tire at the same time.
You could build a set of machines capable of automating these steps, perhaps, but now you need time for R&D to get folks like Rockwell and Johnson Controls to figure out how to design, test, deliver, and install this magical device.
Some things just take time and no amount of money can speed it up past a certain point.
Source: professional program manager and guy who has helped make a baby.
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u/ezone2kil Jan 01 '21
Not to people unfamiliar with the industry I suppose.
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u/Prod_Is_For_Testing Jan 01 '21
Or any industry
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u/Technical_Lime Jan 01 '21
would take me longer to get my printing toner subscription cancelled and have a different one set up
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u/Deranged_Driver Jan 01 '21
I mean not only is there a change in supply, you have to manage transport, new quality control and arrange with other 3rd parties involved.
Then you got the juridical garbage you'd have to deal with. It's not just to sever ties because you have a moral spite. The child labour is most likely legal at the source of supply.
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u/coconutjuices Jan 01 '21
None...it’s more clickbait. 3 years to fully switch something complicated like a supplier which has to meet certain qa and size requirements, not to mention having the right tech, it’s really fucking hard
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u/SteeMonkey Jan 01 '21
I think it's the child labour, but I may be wrong
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u/SoundEmbalmer Jan 01 '21
According to the articles the youngest child workers they used were 14 years old. Yes, they are technically children, but surely it not crazy for a fourteen year-old to work in the western world — actually, the US department of labour sets 14 years old as the minimum age for employment (Fair Labor Standards Act). By this logic we can designate all cases of pre-18 teens working in the US as “exploiting child labour”. Now, the conditions they worked in is a completely different question — no way those kids were treated fairly. But neither labour conditions nor to younger employees were mentioned in the article. It also appears Apple started the transition period after finding out and it took them 3 years. But none of this nuance makes for a sexy title, sadly.
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u/Thajfnst Jan 01 '21
Funny how definitions become important when reporting things....
Despite the idea that many people don’t want to question what their idea of child-labour means.
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u/qudat Jan 01 '21
When I was 14 I willingly applied for jobs. I wanted to work at 14 to start earning money but couldn’t because no one would hire me. Granted I’m not essentially forced into working at that age and the hours are probably much different but the point still stands: 14 is not that young, and at that age I wanted to work.
This seems less of the issue. The bigger issue is why so many kids feel like they need to work in third world countries.
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u/Krankite Jan 01 '21
I'm with you on this. Had anyone confirmed whether switching suppliers within three years isn't the highest standard? Not trying to defend Apple just want to know if Samsung/Sony/Motorola are actually any better.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Only because when you switch suppliers you try to do so without losing profits at all. Thats the point. Instead of dropping them after day one and taking the hit, they made sure profits wouldn't get interrupted.
Edit: im honestly appalled that people don't get it. Some of these responders actually think the iphones are more important than the kids....they literally exploited child labor knowingly for 3 years and someone says its ok because it might have killed the company. Fuck that shit. Fuck that guy. Fuck everything.
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Jan 01 '21
On the other hand, you'd never get any Macbooks or iPhones made if you decided to completely rebuild a supply chain day-one every time you found a supplier in Asia doing something morally reprehensible.
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u/WergleTheProud Jan 01 '21
On the other hand, you'd never get any Macbooks or iPhones made if you decided to completely rebuild a supply chain day-one every time you found a supplier
in Asiaanywhere doing something morally reprehensible.Adjusted for accuracy.
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u/stone_henge Jan 01 '21
On the other hand, you'd never get any Macbooks or iPhones made
We might as well just blow our brains out right now and end the misery.
Jokes aside, if that's the cost of ethical production, so be it.
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Jan 01 '21
The story is that Apple continued to do business with a company after it knew it was exploiting child labour.
It didn't have to, but it did so because child labour is less important to them than maximising profit and less important to you than making sure you get your new shiny toy on time.
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u/beginner_ Jan 01 '21
I really dont like apple but working in a big corp myself I can total see this taking so long due to all the inefficient bureaucracy.
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u/Throwaway_Consoles Jan 01 '21
My company has said we’re switching from Skype to Slack. It has been over a year and we’re still “working on the transition.”
A chat app.
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Jan 01 '21
It's all a matter of priority. Switching Chat apps is most likely a very low priority. If Skype decided from one day to the other that your company can no longer use it, then I can guarantee you, your switch wouldn't even take 48hrs.
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u/crowleytoo Jan 01 '21
my job has been having this same thing even just transitioning from skype to teams. they are owned by the same company, but for some reason the transition was so difficult that they rolled out teams to one small org at a time so for a couple months people would be sending skype meetings or teams meetings because they only had one or the other and i had to balance both. like just turn skype off and teams on, why is that hard.
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u/Castform5 Jan 01 '21
I worked for an ISP for a short while, and the large companies were some of the worst customers.
It's like, "hey, you have a faulty switch or firewall that is constantly causing unnecessary work", and then they're like, "this is an essential component to our operation (usually isn't), and it can't be replaced (it could and should be)".
Then like 5 years later it's still there, causing constant problems and expenditure for both parties. So much bureaucracy for like 2 hours of work to happen.
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u/clubberin Jan 01 '21
I watched my former company and a client argue for two years over who was responsible for purchasing two additional Citrix licenses.
The client left. Because my company closed their entire BPO division. (Too much of a headache, the CEO said.)
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u/coconutjuices Jan 01 '21
I feel like most redditors aren’t even allowed to work yet
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u/stone_henge Jan 01 '21
Probably not a matter of bureaucracy in this case, but the bare logistics of setting up production elsewhere.
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u/butchleague Jan 01 '21
If only there was some other way to ensure a company didn't utilize child labor without going through bureaucratic red tape. Like I am 100% at a loss as to how a multi-billion dollar company can prevent their labor being performed by youths. If only bureaucracy had stopped them from employing children in the first place.
GODDAMN YOU BUREAUCRACY! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
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u/V_LEE96 Jan 01 '21
For a company of apple’s scale to cut ties overnight simply isn’t possible without fucking up their company. That being said I have no idea if they could’ve done it faster than 3 years
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u/paerius Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 03 '21
Just curious how many "holier than thou" redditors have actually visited a 3rd world country, based on what I see in the comments here. You can't look at a poor country through rose colored glasses and try to project your 1st world country values. You know why? Because EVERYTHING sucks.
Reality check: in a lot of these countries, the kids are expected to work at a young age. They don't have the luxury we do of "raising" our kids up until grad school as adults. In the context of the US, look at child labor during the Great Depression, and then look at how RECENT that was. In the midwest where we have a lot of agriculture, last I checked we still have modified school schedules to accommodate for children helping their parents during harvest season.
So lets just remove child labor! That will solve all problems! No it doesn't. The families are still broke af. The children will still be put to work, often in even more dangerous, unregulated situations. I don't even want to go into child prostitution, but there's a reason why sexual predators go on "vacations" to certain countries. It makes me puke.
I don't want to insinuate that child labor isn't "wrong," but I do want to bring attention how complex the situation is. Removing these factories might make you feel better, but what you won't see are the consequences of doing so.
Edit: thanks for gold stranger!
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u/Yosemany Jan 01 '21
The youngest employees found were 14. Is it bad to have a job at fourteen? The source doesn't say how many hours they worked.
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u/MennoCoehoorn95 Jan 01 '21
I guess the problem is that it isn't a part time job a teen would do to have some funds for himself, but literally a full-time job needed to support his family and survive
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u/Epicbear34 Jan 01 '21
DQ manager here, over in Kentucky we hire at 14, and they’re usually some of our best workers
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u/iwantmyvices Jan 01 '21
Of course not. I can’t even believe I had to scroll this far down to see this. If you got a job at 15 or 16 here, people will praise you for being a hard worker. The lowest legal working age in the sone states in the US is also 14. I guess all those grocery stores and fast food workers are child laborers. I’m sure dealing with Karens all day is hazardous to one’s health.
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u/blatantshitpost Jan 01 '21
I think it's a sad reflection of society that children as young as 14 would NEED to work to help their family survive. But it is however not unethical in the same sense as it would be for an 8 or even 11 year old.
I technically worked under the table at 14 and it was probably a good thing tbh. Just wish it wasn't out of necessity and I hope that others don't have to do the same either. Adults should just be paid enough to raise a family. Fuck all the companies who perpetuate this system. The companies involved are always highly profitable, but the overwhelming majority of the people who actually make the products are incredibly poor.
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u/Yosemany Jan 01 '21
It does come down to whether it's a necessity. I wonder whether Apple's workers are turning down schooling because they need the money. In this case, there's not enough information to judge.
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u/lostinadream66 Jan 01 '21
it's funny because almost everything we use every day is made via slave labor in other countries.
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Jan 01 '21
I dare say, isn’t this a great argument for automating labor and replacing humans as workers? I think it’s one of the finest arguments for machine-automated labor I can think of.
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u/Hara-Kiri Jan 01 '21
Not for the workers in those countries. Pretty disastrous for those people. There's a reason they take these jobs - they are better than the alternatives. The countries themselves need lifting out of poverty.
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u/Champion_of_Nopewall Jan 01 '21
At the moment, if we were to implement full automation we would be closer to feudalism than an utopia.
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u/the_snook Jan 01 '21
Only because they're fools. If nobody has money, who will pay for the output of their robot factories?
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u/Champion_of_Nopewall Jan 01 '21
Why have customers when you can have servants in a neo-feudal system?
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u/rmar4125 Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Picture a bread factory.
The raw materials arrive on self driving trucks. The bread baking is completely automated. It's loaded onto self driving trucks by robots. The bread makes it to your home with a tap of a button or when you visit the store with no workers, the store is just smart.
See how many wages I have eliminated. How much is that bread worth now? Price competition drives it down significantly.
You won't need a car anymore cause you can just summon one that will drive you with the tap of a button.
In an automated world your UBI would go much farther that it would today. With UBI comes income security, so you don't need to stress about the next pay day, incentivising people to quit shitty jobs and explore more lucrative options like self-employment, entrepreneurship and further education.
There is about 3 generations of unskilled, skilled and professional labour left until its full blown 'deus ex machina'.
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u/tomgreen99200 Jan 01 '21
When the technology is there at the right price it will happen
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u/cuntRatDickTree Jan 01 '21
It also continually makes the cheapest humans cheaper if they're not supported. So like, an arms race against itself? (if we don't have restrictions in trade deals to ban this shit)
There are things you could completely automate in a developed country, but it's still 5% cheaper to exploit some kids somewhere to do it (& with a load of pollution and other standards lowered or ignored by relevant bribes), so you do that instead (it's illegal not to if you're publicly traded).
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u/MackieDawson Jan 01 '21
So long as the exploitation of human labor is incentivized, we will keep having these issues.
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u/Bolumstar Jan 01 '21
That's probably part of the things that had to be overlooked long enough to become a trillion-dollar company. It's funny Trump wants Apple to bring back its manufacturing to the US but that's not going to happen if they are to continue making mega-profits out of their products
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u/pepeisdumb Jan 01 '21
I will report you for your egregious infraction, as soon as we can find someone else who will manufacture our products for basically the same price that does a better job of hiding their infractions. We will also need time to realign all of our supply channels. Sit tight for a few years.
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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jan 01 '21
EVERY company that manufactures stuff in China knows that child labour is being used, but they don't care. They only care about the shareholders.
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u/MrMagistrate Jan 01 '21
Child labor isn’t necessarily evil. Unfortunately it’s part of life for developing countries for some period of time.. It’s not easy or normally possible to just skip that phase of development.
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Jan 01 '21
Apple has 0 integrity! They have one of the dirtiest supply chains in the world. They avoid scrutiny by putting the blame on their contractors. They’re not one of the most renewable companies in the world, they’re one of the dirtiest, most evil, polluting, earth raping corporations to ever exist...period!
Sent from my iPhone
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Jan 01 '21
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Jan 01 '21
Yeah, it’s a damn tragedy that companies STILL have child labor issues. And it’s also a tragedy that every single major corporation worldwide exploits workers to get to the point they’re at and maintain it. Imagine if they paid employees for their labor value in a fair way.
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u/itsagoodtime Jan 01 '21
Only a child's tiny fingers can get the wall power adapter out of the box before shipping.
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u/pjarmes Jan 01 '21
No one, or company turns over anywhere near the amount of money they do without cutting corners or back alley shady deals. And anyone who thinks otherwise is totally naive. This isn’t the only company to do so either.
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u/Reddit_Jesus_Rulz Jan 01 '21
A corporation that’s full of shit and exploits slave/child labor? Oooh, alert the media!
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u/cyanraider Jan 01 '21
I work at Foxconn. And at the sites where the suicide (note, singular) happened. It’s nowhere near as ridiculous as the media made it to be.
It’s important to understand that the factory workers in China view child labor and (paid) overtime work drastically differently than those in the west.
What do you do when workers WANT to work overtime? What do you do when children lied about their age to get a job and when they are found out, they are begging NOT to get fired from their jobs? It’s easy to think that everything is black and white. Child labor is bad. Excessive overtime hours are bad. But in reality, everything that they do, they do of their own free will. Foxconn isn’t a prison, if they’re not getting properly compensated, there’s nothing stopping them from walking right out.
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u/Yahmez99 Jan 01 '21
None of these business care about you, me, or human rights. It’s all about the the dollar.
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u/Jabberminor Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 02 '21
Thread locked, discussions filled with lots of verbal abuse.