Sweatshops, Unions, Apple, and Nike

Sweatshops are the direct application of wage slavery. Cutting costs through labor is the easiest and most effective way to increase profit margins. This is why sweatshops and their conditions are so widely spread; because cutting labor costs is the easiest way to increase profit. Materials have to be paid for and depending on what and how they are used is the only way to change the cost. This is why it is much more advantageous for an employer to ascertain a cheap and exploitable work force.

Nike shoes is usually the first thing that comes to most people's mind when they think of "sweat shops." Indeed, if they didn't have endorsements by some of the greatest players of all time in popular sports (like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan) their image might be less wholesome. Indeed these players need Nike just as much as Nike needs them.

However, when we think about wage slavery, we should (also) think about Apple computers. The fact is that Apple is paying much less for labor over in China then in America, which is why they are there and not here! Not too long ago, Apple had more money then the American government... upwards of 70 billion, which is admittedly impressive. But, they had all that extra cash because they sell their products at the highest premium in the market but pay workers cents on the dollar to create them. If they instead used their money to pay workers in the U.S. no one can argue the positive effects it would have on the American economy. Instead, what is all to common is for big business to find a cheap labor force and exploit it for higher profits.

To be fair, I am writing this post on a Macbook Pro. I like Apple products but that doesn't mean I condone their business activities, and just as discussed in Going Green people vote with their money so I am just as much to blame as anybody. However, there are real world repercussions for such malicious activities and obvious disconcern for human dignity.  I was talking to a fellow consumer the other day and we were talking about cellphones. He asked what phone I had, I told him "I have an LG Android smartphone, and he had a droid." Then, because someone else at our table had one and it initiated the conversation, he said he would never buy an iPhone because of the conditions people worked in over in China. He literally said "that company in China where people are trying to jump and kill themselves" (verbatim). Which I responded by saying "Oh, you mean Foxconn?"

The fact is that although people are happy with Apple products, they are not happy with Apple production! However, the blame is not all on them considering Foxconn makes Kindles, Playstation 3s, and the Wii U. When we also consider Nike, this isn't a contained instance or a single 'bad apple' (pun intended) it is the system as a whole, which is a fundamental problem.

To be fair, as discussed in The End of Suburbia  A Crude Awakening (which is about peak-oil production) these companies are only acting within their own self-interest and doing what is require of them; i.e. the bottom line in profit.

Again, this only make sense because the world we live in values money more then it does people. The bottom line is profit and capitalism demands it as such. It creates a world of employers and employees or lords and serfs, which is why John Dewey termed capitalism, Industrial Feudalism.  This ideology is now spread around the world thanks to globalization.

As Newton would say about physics, for ever action there is an equal opposite reaction. Many an economist like to claim that economics is the physics of society. Well, this is exactly why there are unions. It is societies response to the inherent problem of capitalism which creates a human-less machine from human labor. Unions put back human protections in a protection-less and protectionist 'free' market through collective representation. Indeed, labor unions are not only responsible for protecting wages but an 8 hour work-day, overtime, and the weekend.

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My other blog(s): The Socioeconomic Market, FREE THE WEED, 
EDULUTION, Lyceum Recordz, Occupy Hip-Hop