The Fox and the Apple

 We love our iPods, iPhones, iPads, iTunes and pretty much anything else that begins with us saying I first.  IMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s have become the standard for personal computers. Having the latest Apple gadget is a necessity in today’s society and culture.  In the hallways of schools, children line the walls and share their white, plastic, blasting headphones with one another while film editors tediously work on piecing together strips of footage with Final Cut Pro on their 27 inch LCD displays. Apple has changed the way we live our daily lives, but would we still support this phenomenal transformation if we knew how Apple’s products were made?

Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese producer, was hit earlier this year with a public relations nightmare. A company that some analysts describe as an “industrial monster,” and has the reputation of treating its employees like pegs in a machine, faced eleven worker suicides.  Nerve racked, over worked and mostly young workers in their early twenties from rural areas, would leap off the ledges of their high-rise, crowded, ill conditioned dormitories to their death. Workers generally worked 24-35 hours a day, completing the same mundane task over and over again for an unsatisfactory wage. Although Foxconn had broken many of Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct regulations, Steve Jobs has yet to cut ties with the company even after extensive auditing in early 2006 or after this recent incident made its way to news articles. However, this is not surprising considering Apple’s mission statement.

Apple’s mission statement reads:

 “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.”

Not once in Apple’s mission statement does it mention any social or environmental responsibility. Apple’s only desire is to produce and sell the best, leading, and cheapest products to hungry, technology enthralled consumers. So it now makes sense as to why Foxconn would be an integral part of Apple’s make up and why Jobs wouldn’t want to severe ties with the company.  Foxconn’s use of cheap labor allows Apple to sell its trendy gadgets at lower prices, keeping buyers happy and naïve Chinese workers exhausting their energy on products they couldn’t even afford themselves. So I ask this question, if you knew how Apple made their products, would you still buy them? As much as I would like to think that our moral compasses would sway us away from such tainted goods, our distant relationship with the manufacturer and obvious benefits from owning Apple’s products would have us act other wise.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39099077