Anybody catch Apple’s gauzy new TV ads during the NBA finals?
Or see the full page version in the NY Times and elsewhere? The new campaign, reports
Bloomberg News, "will emphasize the quality and reliability of Apple’s
ecosystem of products, apps and content."
Smart people at Apple and their ad agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, think
this sort of brand advertising is a better way to sell gadgets than spots which
focus on the gadgets themselves.
Okay... but if we're talking about the Apple ecosystem, could we spare a
word about the people who actually make the stuff?
Here's a remix,
featuring a few factoids Apple left out:
More than a year after the death of founder Steve Jobs, Apple is still turning out what he liked to call "insanely great" products. The remix above, for example, was created on a MacBook Pro, using iMovie.
Absent such powerful and easy-to-use hardware and software, your humble correspondent could never have pulled off this type of ad parody. But it's insanely grating – for me at least – to see this particular company brag that "Every idea we touch... enhances each life it touches."
Because working conditions at the giant factories operated by Chinese manufacturer FoxConn, where Apple products are made, are literally driving workers insane.
By "insane," I mean: "My life is so intolerable that I'm going to jump off a high building and kill myself."
Between 2010 and 2012, according to China Labor Watch, there were 18 suicides reported at FoxConn's China plants -- and perhaps many more unreported. In response, Apple and Foxconn took a number of steps, including:
·
Requiring workers to sign a
pledge *not* to commit suicide
(Not making this up, ask Stephen Colbert);
·
Installing
nets beneath Foxconn building, to catch potential jumpers;
·
Providing
mental health services, to prevent people from jumping in the first place;
·
Reducing
overcrowding in Foxconn dormitories, which had been sleeping as many as 300
people to a room
·
Raising
wages.
·
A
promise to allow a vote on independent trade unions.
As reforms fall short, workers are still falling: Three suicides were reported at Foxconn’s factory in Zhengzhou, China in April and May of this year.
Workers taking their own lives isn’t the only less-than-life-enhancing tragedy linked to workers at Apple’s Chinese suppliers. Four people died in factory explosions in 2011, with scores more injured. The source of the problem – combustible factory dust – is a well understood hazard, MIT safety expert Nicholas Ashford told the New York Times:
“If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”Indeed, making factory life more livable isn’t rocket science. It’s a lot easier than coming up with the next insanely great version of the IPhone, IPad or MacBook. All that’s required is to move resources – that is to say, money -- from one part of the Apple ecosystem to another. That shouldn’t be so hard, you would think, for a company with more than $140 billion in cash on hand.
-RK
