Apple Ping!
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Posted on 10/25/2014 2:31:17 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Ralph Nader, a five-time failed U.S. presidential candidate, has written an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Here it is, verbatim:
Dear Mr. Cook,
“Designed by Apple in California” has a nicer ring to it than “Assembled by workers paid about a dollar per hour, working 11-hour shifts, and sleeping eight to a room in the Jabil Circuit corporate dormitories in Wuxi, China.” But, no matter how you spin it on the iPhone packaging, you continue to turn away from the horrid working conditions and miserly pay at your Chinese factories. Just last month, while you displayed through a two hour event on the insandouts of tiny iPhone 6 and Apple Watch design breakthroughs how capable your company is of solving problems it cares to solve, China Labor Watch and Green America revealed in their newest report, “Two Years of Broken Promises” how you have failed to apply even a modicum of the problemsolving focus you bring for product design to the “serious health and safety, environmental, and human rights violations” at Chinese factories assembling the iPhone.
“That’s the price of affordable phones,” says the corporatist argument. This could be the case, if Apple was just barely profitable. But, as revealed in a recent letter responding to Carl Icahn’s call for more stock buybacks (you respond to billionaire’s pleas much more often than workers’ pleas), Apple is planning to have repurchased $130 billion of its own shares by the end of next year. In short, Apple is so profitable, that it does not know what to do with $130 billion except buy back stock from its shareholders to maybe boost its share price.
There are many alternate ways could have spent its surplus profits. For example, what if Apple decided to invest that excess $130 billion in dignified working conditions and living wages, instead of unproductively using their surplus to buy stocks back from the wealthy? Estimates differ, but according to Chinese labor watchdogs, factory workers in Apple’s supply chain make average salaries of, estimating at the high end, about $500 per month for about 80 hours of work per week. Doubling monthly salaries and cutting hours in half reforms that would make great strides towards having Chinese factories meet modern, dignified standards of a living wage from a 40hour work week would cost ~$1500 per month (~$18,000 per year) for each factory worker. To have achieved these reforms for the 300,000 Foxconn workers who assembled the iPhone 5s would have cost Apple about $5.4 billion annually.
If instead of buying back stock, Apple had used its excess $130 billion to endow a foundation to achieve these reforms, it would have paid out at a conservative five percent interest $6.5 billion annually, enough to double wages and ensure a 40-hour workweek for hundreds of thousands of iPhone workers, while leaving a $1.1 billion surplus as an annual budget for ensuring topnotch health, safety and environmental standards at Apple factories. The technology company that leads the way in profits and product design could, without changing anything but the amount of excess, unproductive money it uses to repurchase stock from wealthy shareholders, could also lead the way in dignified working conditions, hours and wages. Finally, some of Apple’s Chinese factory workers may become able to buy the iPhones they manufacture.
This goes to show that tolerating poverty wages is not the price we pay for affordable phones. Rather, poverty wages and harmful conditions are a consequence of tolerating outrageous stock buybacks. You had a choice for the $130 billion: living wages for workers or stock buybacks for millionaires? You chose buybacks. Here’s a challenge for the present and future use of surplus profits: why not let the customers decide? Just as they have consumer interests in thinner iPhones and sleeker MacBooks, they also have humane interests in more dignified working conditions and more liveable wages for the workers that make their products. And you, more than any other CEO, have the technological ability to poll your customers about who Chinese workers or millionaire shareholders should receive Apple’s excess money.
Are you scared that they might Think Different™ about this issue than Carl Icahn?
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
MacDailyNews Take: A few points:
For more info, Apple Inc.’s Supplier responsibility website is:
Apple Supplier Responsibility Website
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Tim Cook to Ralph Nader: “Didn’t you used to be somebody famous?”
He’s still alive? Seriously?
Also, wages in China are rising quickly, so much so that Foxconn, the actual manufacturer of iPhones, is trying to replace as many workers with robots as it can. Chinese companies are outsourcing manufacturing jobs to lower cost countries, and even US firms are re-sourcing their manufacturing jobs back here.
I remember, after Nader claimed to be poor, it was revealed that he owned cars and homes in his sister’s name. He has always been a phoney with a boner against people who actually worked for the money that that have; something he has never done. Non-profits? Forgive me for what I want to say.
Ralph Nader needs to speak to my boss.
He’ll listen, I’m sure of it.
Apple doesn’t have any Chinese factories, hence these are not “Apple’s Chinese factory workers.”
—
Technically probably correct.
But Apple sources quite a lot (a lot) of work there.
Bigtime.
Great idea, Ralph. Say, just out of curiosity, how many people have you employed over the decades (centuries?) you've blessed this earth with your business acumen?
Liberals are always so generous with other peoples money.
Me to Tim Cook: Move factories out of China and build in US.
What would happen - in China - if Apple forced Foxcom to follow Nader’s suggestion?
Apple would be offering wages far out of alignment with the local economy; these highly paid employees would have surplus cash to save or spend, this glut of money will cause prices to rise locally, injuring the thousands who aren’t on the Apple/Foxcom gravy train, it will suppress interest rates, discouraging savings, and will incur the wrath of government regulators who are interested in maintaining labor stability.
Like most ignoramuses, Nader ignores everything beyond the tip of his nose.
All I am saying, is America needs to start to be for America once again.
It is not good for America’s future, to continue to send America’s businesses to China.
China is a massive communist country.
Our investment in China is unwise, if it continues as it currently is.
That is what I am saying.
America needs to bring back businesses, right here to America.
Apple and others. I am not picking on Apple.
Our industrial base is now in a massive communist country.
That is to me, unwise.
I always thought he looked a bit zombie-ish anyway. . .
Apple MacPro.
21.5 inch IMacs
Ah! The Roger Moore of the Green Peoples’ Party Industry :0)
He sent American companies a letter saying pay their workers the same hourly wage they were making in 2007, and cut their hours to 29 per week.
That’s a different matter entirely.
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