What a week Apple has had! As if unveiling the new iPad and iPhone wasn’t enough, they also managed to increase their market value to $229 billion which puts them ahead of Microsoft.
In the same week of Apple’s great successes, came news of the 10 suicides at a Foxconn factory, one of Apple’s big suppliers. All of a sudden I went from asking how much is it to where did the iPad come from? Who made it?
Foxconn have been quick to assure the world that their factory is NOT a sweatshop.
Claiming their factory has swimming pools, cinemas and restaurants for which they cannot be considered a sweatshop. But is a swimming pool enough to distract you from the monotony of work and stresses at home? Instead of investing in swimming pools maybe Foxconn should have used that money to increase the workers wages. One of the reasons the workers may have committed suicide was to do with the compensation payouts. As the workers families have received compensation for the death of the worker.
As a means of righting a wrong according to ethicalcorp Foxconn has raised the wages by 30% which means that “the latest pay rise would double the basic pay of assembly line workers in Shenzhen and bring it to a level they currently only reach by working 12-hour shifts, six days a week.“
Would it not have made sense to just pay the workers fairly in the first place? Do the workers only get heard when they take such drastic and life threatening steps? It shouldn’t have to be like this.
We –the consumers can take a stand and demand that workers get paid fairly. At the end of the day it is us who buy the products anyway. We have the power, to influence brands like Apple through our purchase habits.
Would you want to buy electronics or clothes that you knew were the result of someone’s suicide?
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