Apple Inc. has released a report entitled Apple Supplier Responsibility containing details of labour related practices overseas in factories used by the company to create items such as the iPad and the iPhone. It does not make for happy reading as the report includes: child labour, chemical poisoning, excessive hours, low pay and high numbers of worker suicides. (CNET – Apple report reveals grim truths behind gadgets).
On the positive side Apple Inc. are using their bargaining strength to change the conditions within those remote factories and let us hope that they have great success, but in the meantime what do we do? (Guardian – Will child labour claims stop you buying Apple?). It is a dilemma for us because we would wish to support those remote workers by buying the produce while on the other hand our purchases could imply that we condone what is happening. Somehow we have to show those companies that knowingly exploit that we do care about what is being done in their and our names. Fortunately companies such as Apple Inc. are using the power they have to make things change for the better, and signs are that they are moving steadily in that direction. More local to us are supermarkets with extraordinary buying power, like Tesco etc, who in their drive for cheaper produce and greater share of the market are still pushing the farmers and other producers in this and in other countries into poverty. At what point do we say “enough”?
Industry as a whole seems to ignore the implications of their choices (BBC News – China police probe Xinjiang ‘slave labour’ factory) until they feel the sting of publicity and voices being raised in objection (Times Online – Revealed: Topshop clothes made with ‘slave labour’). We the consumers have a duty to find out and to be more aware.
We also have a world-wide human trafficking problem which is related to the darker side of consumerism. It is often initiated when young hopefuls try to find a back door into other countries where life is said to be so much better. They pay an extortionate price, often signing away a significant amount from their wages earned in the future, to be packed like cattle in ships and lorries only to be forced when they arrive into prostitution and slave labour to pay off their debt to those same trafficking gangs or to other organised crime rings (The Guardian – The teenagers traded for slave labour and sex). This is a real problem and it is a problem that exists right now. Most of us remain blissfully unaware of it going on all around us while those that are the victims are living in fear of their lives. It is a simple equation: The demand for prostitutes and pornography creates the profits in human trafficking and exploitation. Migrant workers will often live under the threat of exportation if their residency is not legitimate and so they can only find work with unscrupulous employers who will not register them. They pay very low wages (under the legal minimum) to keep their profit margins high and keep their workers in slave labour conditions. Vulnerable people, those least able to defend themselves, are falling victim to prostitution, organised crime and unscrupulous businesses.
There is also a surge of unseen slavery amongst the working population of the UK, worsened by the UK government’s insistence that the 48 hour week maximum should be voluntary (and the sudden surge of companies that reissued Contracts of Employment that in all but plain language said “sign away your right to 48 hour maximum or lose your job”), and now made even worse by the current recession. Millions of workers are working overtime for free because it is the culture of the job, many are working dangerously long hours that affect their health, both mental and physical, and make them dangerous on the roads due to fatigue (BBC News – The new face of slave labour). While our own slavery remains in place we may not have the strength to change the situation for others even less fortunate.
A few years ago I joined an understaffed company (sadly a normality these days) and ended up working 60+ hour weeks. After a while I resigned because I was physically and mentally exhausted. I can only guess at how another feels doing these hours with no hope of change. Working well over the 40 hours without being paid overtime is a very common scenario in the UK because the threat of being homeless through not meeting mortgage payments added to the difficulty of finding alternative employment means that one simply does not dare object to doing more and more just in case one is discarded, and the employers know this. It is blackmail on an industrial scale and it is prevalent.
Whose lives we are living?
Sources:
Apple Inc., BBC News, CNET, Guardian, The Sunday Times.