The iPhone 7 is being manufactured in Shanghai, by the Taiwanese electronics company Pegatron. A report claims that 62% of the company’s employees work more than 100 hours a week. This makes more than 14 hours per day, every day.
In theory, Apple stipulates a contract by which workers should no work more than 60 hours and have at least one day off. Nevertheless, just 3% of employees work that amount of time. To worsen their working conditions, they are not paid for those extra hours. On average, the wage in Shanghai is 5939 yuan ($895), Pegatron’s workers earn the half of it.
Who is responsible?
-Apple, first of all. In fact, since the Apple market is not growing and rather decreasing in demand, the company requires it suppliers to cut costs. Apple is putting its profit over the well-being of workers.
-Lack of effective labor unions’ protection of workers. The U.S. is the main country in contrasting those unions to protect Chinese workers.
-The needs of the West. “Workers are powerless to escape the grind”, says Quartz.
There is a thing called modern slavery: an umbrella term that gathers all different types of slavery present in modern times. Slavery is a situation when people of the world are oppressed in different terms. Among those, there is the ‘slavery global supply chains’. This is the most common type of slavery in Developing Countries.
The Western demand for goods and services is condemning developing countries to a subjugated economy where they function as suppliers. This behavior annihilates the middle class and deepens an unequal distribution of wealth.
What can be done?
-Decrease the demand. The market functions extremely easily: what is produced equals what is demanded, in simple terms. If the demand reduces (if fewer people want that good), the production will reduce. However, above, we saw that Apple is cutting costs and exploiting workers especially because the demand for Apple goods is decreased. Apple shows how the market is de-regularized and how influential is corporations power. Events are, in fact, agreeing with S. Strange: “where states were once the masters of markets, not it is the markets which, on many crucial issues, are the masters over the governments of states” (The Retreat of State by Susan Strange (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
-Support Local Markets. Globalization is a process that has pros and cons. If one wants this process to improve and not worsen, local goods and services should be purchased instead of overseas’ ones that support slavery, inequality, and oppression. In fact, global trends (see also the case of Nike) require the mass production and the workers to work massively in order to respond to the massive demand. In simple terms, in your daily life, demand less and break unfair global trends.
