Alan Jacobs


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Apple is not the main worker-safety problem in China. Nor even Foxconn. Not even close. Internationally owned factories are at the better end of the Chinese spectrum in wages, working conditions, safety, and (usually) environmental policies. Foxconn’s wages are higher, and its accident rate is lower, than for Chinese-based factories as a whole — and Chinese manufacturing overall is much safer than the Chinese mining or metals industries. (Back in 2007, I saw an item in a Chinese paper saying that 32 metal workers had been horrifically boiled to death, when a giant ladle full of molten steel slipped off its hoist and spilled onto them. The episode got almost no international attention.) Pressure on the Apple supply chain is sensible and valuable if it always presented as a lever for raising Chinese safety and environmental standards generally — and as an ever-ascending standard that the rest of them should meet.