The Human Costs of the iPad and iPhone

I’m not quite sure what to do about this ethically. I love Apple products, but my love of them has incentivized my turning a blind eye to their labour practices. This new piece in the NYT on the Chinese workers making iPads and iPhones is horrifiying, from suicides at the plant from people who have gone mad from being over-worked, to the use of posionous chemicals, it’s awful.

One Apple executive says it all, and notice his ice-cold prevarication by describing these factories as those that ‘seem’ harsh by American standards. They aren’t really harsh, he implies, they just seem that way because we coddle our factory workers:

“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

Indeed, sadly, we do.