It's a funny time in media history when our performers are the ones doing the real reporting. (Jon Stewart has my vote in the 2012!)
Case in point: Compare the coverage of Foxconn in performer Mike Daisey's one-man show The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" with Wired Magazine's treatment of the same subject, which ran as their March cover story. Daisey's show is touring the country -- first in Berkeley, then DC, and running April 22-May 22 in Seattle.
Chances are, the computer you're reading this post on was made in Shenzhen, China. And if it's an Apple, it was made at Foxconn. Shenzhen is a special economic zone where China's already lax labor laws don't apply. Foxconn alone -- just one company in Shenzhen -- makes over half of our electronics.
For his one-man show, Daisey took a reporting trip to the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen to find out how his beloved Apple products were made and talked to hundreds of factory workers. He claims workers lived in 10x12 cement cubes with up to "15 beds stacked up on top of each other." In our radio interview with Daisey, he says he "met a huge number of people with permanent nerve damage," from the toxic chemicals used to clean Apple touch screens, for which there's no compensation.
Now contrast this with Wired's reporting. The feature story doesn't include one quote from an actual Foxconn worker and more surprisingly, the writer downplays actual undercover reports of forced overtime.
For example, the reporter who worked undercover in Foxconn's factory and for nearly a month "experienced dreadful conditions... churning out iPods, iPads, and iPhones for Apple nonstop." This is according to Gizmodo writer Chris Chang.
Wired is like, really? The Public Relations rep didn't show me those kinds of conditions.
Going out on a limb here, it seems like Wired writer Joel Johnson met with Foxconn PR reps, was given a tour of the "campus" and, armed with lots of glossy brochures about the congeniality of life on the "Foxconn campus," wrote his story.
I don't blame Johnson -- he's a gadget reviewer for God's sake! You know the guys whose careers rely on staying in Apple's good graces? It's just troubling that Wired chose to send someone, to write a kind of exposé piece, who gets free swag from the companies he's exposing.
Johnson's not the kind of reporter who's well positioned to take on Apple if he expects to get a first look at the iPad 3 that may or may not come out this fall. His last iPad review was, well, gushing. Johnson seems to see it as progress that Foxconn is opening up company stores where the workers can purchase the gadgets they're making.
Performer Mike Daisey, on the other hand, paints Foxconn and all of Shenzhen as a kind of dystopic experiment in what happens when all restrictions on corporations are lifted. And with the constant drumbeat to deregulate here in the U.S., Americans should watch this "experiment" closely.
Foxconn, Daisey says, sees people as parts of a machine; "when they wear out, we throw them away." He claims someone died working a 32 hour shift while he was in Shenzhen and that that happens "all the time."
The Foxconn "campus," as Johnson calls it, has been dubbed "Foxconn City." It's a manufacturing plant with 300,000 -- to 450,000 workers, according to Wikipedia. Wiki also says it covers about 1.16 square miles and "includes 15 factories, a hospital, bank, grocery store." But scariest of all, it's got its own television network called "Foxconn TV."
Yikes. Just the name alone is creepy -- it would be like having a McDonalds City with a population the size of Atlanta where all your hamburgers are made in forced 32-hour shifts and then shipped. Hey, maybe that day's coming. I can just hear the rationale -- you don't want the price of Happy Meals to go up, do you? That'll hurt the economy!
Follow Tanya Jo Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/decade911
Daniel K. Gardner: Your iPod Is Polluting China and L.A. -- and Wyoming Might Be Next
Michelle Chen: Gadget Factories Charge Up China's Labor Activism
Apple's Foxconn Factory: A Moral Predicament? | Special Features ...
Foxconn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Apple iPhone-maker Foxconn ponders big Brazil move | Reuters
Why Apple is nervous about Foxconn - Business - Bloomberg ...
Apple reports on Foxconn, supplier workplace standards | Apple ...
Foxconn may build factory for Apple products in Brazil | Electronista
China's Chamber of Commerce has worked closely with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "and the Chinese government to sponsor a series of seminars in America to teach American businesses how to outsource jobs to China (called the China Grassroots Program)." Reference: http://economyincrisis.org/content/report-chamber-commerce-held-seminars-promote-outsourcing
Goldman Sachs executives have shuffled back and forth between the White House and Wall Street. The list includes Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary (Clinton), Henry Paulson, Treasury (George W. Bush), Robert Zoellick (U.S. Trade Representative, Deputy Secretary of State (Clinton), Jeffery Reuben, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (Bush), Joshua Bolten, Bush's Chief of Staff (Bush), Mark Patterson, Treasury Chief of Staff (Obama), Neel Kashkari, TARP (Obama), Gene Sperling, Deputy Dept of Treasury (Obama), Gary Genzler, CFTC Chair (Obama), and Robert Hormats, Dept of State Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs (Obama).
“I think it is fair to say that Wall Street firms seeking financial business in China have lobbied both Republican and Democratic administrations against action. Goldman Sachs’ and Caterpillar’s interests are more aligned with China than with the U.S. economy.” Peter Morici, Former Chief Economist with the U.S. International Trade Commission
Reference: http://www.tradereform.org/2011/03/5555/
People can't afford to pay a lot of moeny and that is why they make them in other places.
We need to get over our fascination with the newest toy on the market. I include myself in that group. I'm part of the problem, but I'm trying to become part of the solution as well.
Another sad truth is that even if consumers stopped buying items made in Chinese sweat shops, it's not like the Chinese government would make any attempts to remedy to the problem, given their less than stellar human rights record. It's things like this that have brought us al Qaeda and others who speak of "capitalist pigs". There's anger over the way our corporations, in collaboration with foreign governments, take advantage of desperate people and through the charisma of radicals, we see the results through more innocent lives lost. Big business of course does not care.
My mother worker for three decades at Western Electric, where she spent eight hours a day on an assembly line screwing parts into a telephone. It was mind-numbingly boring work, and she did everything possible to ensure that I would never have to do the same thing. Your parents may have done the same.
Not that today's -- dare I say spoiled -- children would ever consider doing something so "beneath them".
Is Apple half of the electronics in your house?
This is the reality of the modern economy. Apple and Motorola (another American company) and others would love to make these products here. But the reality is that Americans won't work for the wages necessary to make those products affordable.
I'm from Detroit, and we do still make some cars here (and elsewhere in the US). Durable goods are pretty much all we manufacture in this country anymore, and there's a reason for that.
Also, Apple has taken steps to address some of the issues at Foxconn. I assume that other companies have, as well. But it's a tightrope -- people don't want to pay $1000 for a phone that they'll replace in a year or two. And Americans don't want to -- and *can't* live while they -- work for $0.30/hr.
And it's not just electronics. You don't even want to know where that diamond engagement ring, or that sapphire necklace came from.
I find it interesting that apparently Toyota and Honda and Hyundai can afford to build cars here in the US, with US labor, and we can't.