Has Apple Computer become a corporation that lives off the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese slave labor similar to George Orwell’s novel 1984?

In the 1984 Superbowl commercial Apple Computer likened itself to the savior of a mankind enslaved to big government and big corporations.  The Apple Macintosh would smash the dystopian, conformist world.

In the New York Times story How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work, the author’s describe slave labor camps that build Apple iPhone’s where people work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day for $17 a day. Apple saves $15 per iPhone by using Chinese labor.  

Chinese workers at Apple’s Foxconn City can be made to get out of bed on demand, like someone in a concentration camp. “Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.” NY Times

Apple’s management team made the mistake that forced 8,000 people out of their beds. The workers paid the price by working for a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Apple is not alone in using Foxconn, who is said to manufacture more than 40% of the world’s consumer electronics for the likes of Dell, Sony, Samsung, HP, Nokia, Nintendo and Amazon. Unlike the Nike scandal of slave labor, we look the other way when smartphones and flat screen TVs are made under such conditions.

Our demand for the lowest price for consumer goods at any cost is destroying the middle class purchasing power that used to drive the economy.

Some of course argue that unions and the demands of labor in North America and the EU have made resorting to cheap labor a necessity. However, that does not explain the rash of suicides reported at Foxconn city last year and the stories this year of Chinese workers threatening to throw themselves off buildings if working conditions didn’t improve.

Those few stories are the one’s that we hear. News and the internet in China is tightly controlled by the government. Censorship is a way of life for the Chinese internet.

iPhone 4S, $65 cheaper from China

Commenting on China’s internet censorship, the Los Angeles Times reported “It’s hard for people in the U.S. to understand Internet censorship in China,” said Wen Yunchao, a prominent blogger and outspoken government critic who left mainland China recently for Hong Kong. “In China, all the government decisions are done in a dark box. No one knows what’s going on. There’s never any legal reason cited.”

The pattern of cheap labor exploitation is not new.  After World War II, Japan was the West’s source of low cost labor. The market has shifted to Taiwan, Korean, Singapore, and currently China. As each economy got closer to the costs in North America and the EU, multinational companies moved their manufacturing plants.

“It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhone’s in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense.” NY Times

Image Apple Computer

Would North American consumers be willing to pay $65 more for an iPhone from the company that told us to Think different?

The New York Times article deserves to be read along with more than 700 reader comments at your leisure.