Apple discovered additional workers as young as 14 years old during an audit just three months later.
Historically, ages 12 to 14 were traditional coming of age birthdays. (I think this is where we get the Jewish bar mitzvah, as just one example.) In other words, you were considered to be an adult by the age of 14, which aligns with what we generally know about human development in terms of you typically develop executive function about age 12 and it takes a couple of years of practice to get meaningfully good at it (though, granted, research suggests additional brain development continues to about age 25).
In the US, it wasn't that many generations back that we routinely had kids in rural areas quit school after the eighth grade to work the fields. That means they were probably around 13 or 14 years old.
My father dropped out of high school when he was sixteen because he was a big guy, it was the midst of The Great Depression and he could "earn a man's wage" because he could work hard like a grown man. His lack of formal education was not stigmatizing at that time. Now the military wants more education, but he had no problem going up in rank and making a good career for himself as a high school drop out.
I've read some pieces some years back that indicate that when first world countries (for lack of a better term) go to third world countries and insist that kids aren't allowed to work, they actively interfere with survival for individuals in that place who are expected to work and do not have a social safety net. When we show up and impose our "high standards" to make us feel morally superior, we do so from a very privileged perspective and don't think about how that interacts with reality on the ground.
There are American teens who work because they are part of a poor family and they need that money to help feed themselves. That happens in the US, yet we think all teenagers in some other country are supposed to have some pampered existence with parents providing for them while they laze around and maybe tend to their schooling.
I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that it's a complicated issue and the headline here and the article aren't treating it with any nuance at all.
To me it seems the definition of "child labor" that we're collectively operating under needs clarification. My general assumption has been that "child labor" in the international industrial context was grade school children (5-12 years old or so) working, often in a compulsory manner.
As someone who worked since the age of 14 (part-time) here in the US to help put food on the table, I don't see an issue with 14+ yr olds working. That was in the late 90's, but I can't imagine there aren't 14yr olds working in the US in all manner of jobs today after school and on weekends. The existence of of such jobs here in the US was the difference between food or going hungry for my family. I have to imagine that in less developed parts of the world this version of "child labor" may actually do more to lift those families out of poverty than eliminating them. Unfortunately, as you said, it's hard to discern what the nature and context of this labor truly is.
"When we show up and impose our "high standards" to make us feel morally superior, we do so from a very privileged perspective and don't think about how that interacts with reality on the ground."
and exploiting the economic situation in those countries.
My son read some book -- he and I can't remember the name of it -- that more or less said "People in less developed countries line up around the block for jobs at multinational corporations because they pay twice as much and beat them half as much...before Westerners learn of the appallingly low pay, have a cow, threaten to vote with their wallet and insist on better treatment for those poor schmucks."
Economic deals are routinely rooted in "It costs less to make it here for some reason. That's the whole appeal." and if you say we can't make those deals, you are more or less saying "We can't do business with those nations and should treat them all like charity cases where we can only send aid out of compassion for how much it sucks to be them while actively denying them the chance to participate in the world economy and improve their situation."
Having been offered that same deal for a number of years as a homeless person, I can assure you that no one provides you a secure middle class life out of the goodness of their hearts and denying someone the opportunity to establish an earned income because of some kind of stated high ideals while also failing to take care of them in the manner to which you believe the entire world ought to be accustomed amounts to a big fat "Fuck you and the horse you road in on. Not my problem. I don't actually care about you. At all. And never will. I just like virtue signaling while being horrible to everyone poorer than me on some bullshit excuse or other."
> Not my problem. I don't actually care about you. At all. And never will. I just like virtue signaling while being horrible to everyone poorer than me on some bullshit excuse or other
I feel it's more like:
"I want to care about you, honestly - but I just saw the price tag and now I don't want to seem like I'm being committal while making awkward conversation and trying to find a way out of here, oh, would you look at the time!"
Groupthink-led virtue-signaling is real, but I feel lots of people are being earnest and well-meaning when they talk big, but are ignorant-of the costs of walking-the-walk.
At some point, looking good and doing good tend to part ways. You know someone's real values by which one they choose at that juncture.
Far too many people double down on the looking good option wile being actively horrible. The degree to which I get downvotes instead of assistance for trying to make my life work when I talk about my firsthand experience is evidence of how common this is and it's gone on a lot of years.
It's gone on long enough that I'm all out of patience for sympathetic explanations about how people mean well. When push comes to shove, far too many of them only want to be seen as good people and don't actually give a damn about anyone but themselves. That's the entire point of spouting nonsense they don't personally back up and walk the walk on.
> I've read some pieces some years back that indicate that when first world countries (for lack of a better term) go to third world countries and insist that kids aren't allowed to work, they actively interfere with survival for individuals in that place who are expected to work and do not have a social safety net. When we show up and impose our "high standards" to make us feel morally superior, we do so from a very privileged perspective and don't think about how that interacts with reality on the ground.
This is an excellent point!
It does seem a bit strange for apple to insist companies only use employees that are a minimum of 16 years old.
I'm aware that school wasn't going that long in OECD countries either. At the same time, the last generation of this population going through for instance just 8 grades of schooling had to experience significantly less freedom, higher chances of poverty and a lower life expectency. Child labor is forbidden for good reasons and it's easy to forget what the exact reasons were if it hasn't occurred in the specific social bubble(s) we frequent.
Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Now I'm not in touch with all the logistics here, but if I were growing up in a country where I had the option of starving or sending my kids off to work I know what I would be choosing. Child labor occurred in my family as little as a generation ago. My mother and her siblings all worked long hours in the field to raise crops with her family. She seems to be thriving after being in a situation the west seems to deem as terrible.
Ideally children don't have to work, ideally no one has to work - I do wonder if South Korea would be as democratic and free today if it weren't for their child labor force as little as 80 years ago though and I do wonder if those children or families would've preferred the alternative to child labor. Presumably they did not, since they volunteered their children to work for low wages.
I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. There are likely clear cases of child abuse that should be abolished - there are abusive cases of employment for all ages that should be abolished. I do wonder if we're too quick to judge child labor as a category in the west, though.
I've seen good child labor, "good" child labor, and I've seen bad child labor. They're different.
Good child labor: When I was in high school, I had a (slightly illegal) job programming. It was awesome! (My employer, as a footnote, didn't want to break laws, and was not exploitative in any way; but circumstances were complex). I'm firmly convinced we'd all be better off if kids started having at least part-time jobs in middle school.
"Good" child labor: Yes, families in very poor countries need kids to work to eat food. Kids work in the fields. It's necessary. In India, I saw kids making stone statues for export. It was how families were able to put food on the table. I wouldn't call it good, but it was definitely better than the alternative (which I also saw). It's a rapidly shrinking portion of the world. People often don't realize how far we've come towards eliminating abject poverty, but it still exists. And with abject poverty, everyone works. It's a solvable problem, and it's being solved, but it has not yet been solved. Work is also often better than no-school in parts of the world where access to education is limited.
Bad child labor: Forced. Slavery. Sweatshops. Etc. Most anything involving a factory.
So, yes, we are too quick to judge. On the other hand, I'm not sure we're too quick to judge Apple.
I grew up delivering newspapers 6 days a week from age 12 or so, walkable distances from my home, 30-90 minute routes depending on my age. I didn't _have_ to, and the money I got from it was available to me as spending money - it wasn't needed to contribute to the household budget or anything.
But also, you've got things like family farms (dwindling in the US but still present), where there's a fine distinction between "chores" and "work to run the farm," and I don't think anyone's going to accuse farmers of exploiting their kids as they ramp up responsibilities as the kids get older.
I'd be interested in hearing why you think we'd be better off with middle school students having jobs. I'm a firm believer that absolutely having to have a job to survive completely wrecks the learning process. Not just for children but even adult students at universities. I had to work to scrape by and my schoolwork, my job, and my mental/physical health suffered because of it. Sure, my situation required it and so I'd be much worse off without doing so but I'd have been even better off if it wasn't a requirement in the first place. That is the future I wish to work towards
Kids in middle schools learn very little. There are studies on this too -- you can skip middle school and lose not very much at all. They're notorious for behavioral problems. It's often a toxic experience.
It's the time when, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, people began helping support families and to have meaning and purpose in life. When I've visited countries when kids do elementary school and then go work the fields, that whole set of behavioral problems and toxicity was avoided. Of course, kids also left school, so I'm not claiming that's a good alternative. But a wealthy nation should be able to provide one:
1) I believe that providing kids with meaningful work starting in middle school would reduce much of that toxicity.
2) I also believe providing kids with work would motivate learning. Right now, kids often ask why they need to know "this," and don't know how to pick majors when they hit college.
To be clear, I don't believe just throwing kids into the grinder, metaphorically speaking, and sending them off to flip burgers at McD's would do any good. Ideally, I'd be thinking of a structured process -- internships and similar where kids have something meaningful to do aligned with their interest. If a 12-year-old is interested in art, they're sent off to do something at an advertising company.
On the other side, when kids leave college, I also wouldn't throw them into a 40-hour (or 70-hour a week) grinder. I'd also try to structure jobs which pay less, but provide for learning and mentorship. Your first few jobs out of college, you should still be taking perhaps 1 class per semester.
As a footnote, I also needed to pay my own way for much of college. My short-term mental/physical health suffered for it, but in the long-term, I'm better off for it. I'm not claiming that's true for everyone (so much of this depends on the specifics of the jobs), but I'm claiming it could be.
I think "child labour" being unnacceptable is a pretty new concept. On one hand "childhood" is, I think, a relatively new concept - at least the idea that you are somehow incapable of doing things once you can walk. Children all across America do minor chores today, but in earlier eras those chores may have been much more physically intense. Children being able to not work is, IMO, just another luxury that specialization has brought to society.
In addition to childhood being a new concept I think it's also a concept that isn't consistently understood globally with some societies seeing eighteen as the margin of adulthood, America seems to view 21 as the common margin of adulthood, and in developing countries that barrier to adulthood is going to be a lot lower - a larger proportion of children will be required to be self-sufficient at a younger age.
That all said - I don't feel any hesitation in forcing companies that deal in western markets to obey western ideas around childhood. Economic hardship isn't easy to solve, but openly allowing companies with the ability to bear the cost to exploit the dissonance around when adulthood happens internationally to further their own profits is something that's very easy to come down hard on.
If Apple, as an example, felt morally compelled to allow child labour to raise families out of poverty they could, alternatively, just dedicate more money to charitably funding social programs in those countries instead... but that's specifically for the case where money is entering a country from outside - domestic child labour is a more complicated issue and I feel like it is significantly more justifiable to ensure that people gain better access to health, safety and good lives.
Medieval peasants worked fewer hours per day than we do now, an average of 160 hours fewer per year (~8%). This is of course averaged over a pretty wide range of circumstances that we’d describe as “peasant”, including poor land owners and literal serfs who owed labor to their lord in exchange for rent.
Most peasants would find our work schedule baffling heavy and consistent. But they would certainly envy our health and relative comfort. So, mixed bag.
I agree that it became more formalized in recent history - but it has existed in a general form for a long time. I would consider labour to be any work done for a wage - exchanging your work for payment from someone else... And that has been going since Sumeria at least - probably a long time prior to any written record we can consult.
That said, the proportion of the population participating in the labour market has changed - right now nearly all adults participate in the labour market in some manner, but subsistence farming as the norm for life wasn't so far back in history.
The reason people are hard-up is not because of the lack of labour, but because of the distribution of surpluses.
There was never a need for child labour anywhere.
It might have been 'needed' in a family because the greater context was screwed up - and so we don't necessarily judge the family, but we will judge the system.
Also - kids cleaning up at the family resto or helping out at the family farm is fine, so long as it's not hardship etc. that's obviously not a big deal. But in Apple Factories, no.
Also, the amount of questionable ethics by anyone doing this stuff overseas, and then to take the high road on Parler, seriously? I've always felt they were very hypocritical about this, they should stay mostly out of the 'justice' campaigning other than in their own direct sphere.
Do you think there's the possibility that families are kept out of severe poverty because their children can be utilized to earn the family money? Do you think lowering the options for families will increase their quality of life?
If you do believe those things I'm certainly not one to say you're wrong. I could imagine a scenario where removing all child labor is beneficial to the whole, but I do think it's a much more simple model to believe that the more options a family has, the better off they are long term.
Of course all of this rests on child labor being a choice for the family and not compulsory, something I don't know the specifics of for every situation.
As a counter point - do you think that Apple, a company with an immense amount of cash in their warchest, could afford to simply pay people in the area more thus removing the necessity for the child labour to occur to support the family?
Economics isn't simple, but Apple is benefiting immensely from the low cost of employment through these subcontractors and we, as apple consumers, are absolutely allowed to judge companies that exploit overseas labour and refuses to pay for local labour - and that extends to employing people we'd consider children.
Companies don't get a "get out of bad PR free" card just because the child exploitation is occurring in a part of the world where it may be considered ethical.
got any examples of child labor leading to prolonged poverty? South Korea had tons of child labor just a generation ago and they quickly became a highly developed nation with maybe among the best healthcare in the world.
Interesting how the decline of child labor in Korea is followed by a booming high tech economy while regions that remain affixed to the practice havent
the rapid growth of wealth being closely (in timeline) associated with a decrease in child labor would suggest that wealth decreases child labor, not that the decrease of child labor increases wealth - as the mechanism for growth via children learning instead of working is a long term strategy.
I worked a paper route growing up, did lawns and opened a store in the morning before school. My first paycheck (was printed on a dot matrix printer and paid in cash) I framed and put on the wall.
Making great money now - and I loved those jobs.
The news here is that apple cut off a subcontractor. It does take time to shift supply chains. I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies. Environment, device longevity, privacy, supply chain issues etc - I'm convinced some of these activists are getting funding from these crap companies because they turn such a blind eye to what is rampant and truly terrible behavior in other supply chains.
> I'm convinced some of these activists are getting funding from these crap companies
Apple is the world's most powerful company. What makes you say that you believe those responding with outrage at the use of child labor at this company means they are 'funded' activists?
> I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies.
And here we're back to that magic word, whataboutism.
The Android Market is largely dominated by Samsung and a bunch of Chinese players (Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, One Plus, etc.). I haven't seen people use a Google phone since forever. Samsung has already left China, and is only involving the Chinese supply chain at an arms' length. The other firms will continue their abhorrent practices anyways.
The point of the article is that Apple, being an American company, constantly extolling about virtuous they are, took a bit too long to shift. Sure, it's justifiable and even inevitable to take that long. But people tend to hold trillion dollar American companies to a much higher standard than they do a bunch of Chinese copycats. Yes, they should hold Google to the same standards too if it happened, but it would be impossible to do anything against the Chinese firms but fart in the wind since they practically don't care enough to change.
The number one way to reduce child labor is to empower (economically) poor, rural families. A lot of child labor is coming from families without resources / reduced education coming from rural to more urban areas.
You are pretty clueless about supply chains. A ton of companies pay lip service to supply chain ethics, but do nothing in reality. To actually drop a significant supply chain supplier is pretty major in this space, even if it takes 3 years to spin up a new supplier with capital build out (necessary at Apple's scale), QC, integration etc.
I'm not saying whataboutism. I am saying this story shows that if you care about ethics, Apple is probably one of the few firms out there willing to make these kind of major decisions.
Apparel - it's all a lie in terms of the ethics pledges.
Kimberly process for diamonds - badly manipulated - so again a lie in large measure.
The list goes on.
I could go on. There's a reason I bought a mad made diamond for my wife.
I am saying that you and these other western whiners seem to have no clue about the rest of the world. And if this is the reason you are going to dump apple - I feel bad for you, and everyone who will be abused to give you the cheap crap you end up buying. Because this story is not a bad story for apple in the global supply chain game. And it's super frustrating to see these endless stories that have become almost a joke.
First of all there's no need to call us names "Western Whiners", "clueless" and all. Second, I'm not Western either. Third, I'm not an Apple user.
With that out of the way, the number one way to empower children is not to send them to factories but to give them an education. Make them part of a system where their basic needs are taken care of (free Healthcare, education, school meals). Your basis of "empower economically" is pointless if their monetary gains come at the cost of social development.
This is a very western mindset - if a family is starving, they will put children to work EVEN IF you are demanding they be educated. Even if that's the law. They in some cases sell their children to even worse outcomes. This has been shown to happen over and over again.
A ton of drug eradication programs have had this fight as well. Their message, don't cultivate - starve. And they wonder why normal people fight them.
But go ahead and keep on parachuting in with your demands on people barely scraping by.
If a family is starving, it's the responsibility of the state to ensure that they do not starve. If the state forces the families to send their kids to factories, then that's a failure of the state. China being China, there's no surprise there.
Nobody is asking for the people themselves to starve, or blaming those forced to work in factories. Every one here is calling out the Chinese government for enabling such an environment where it's either starvation or bust, or Apple for effectively funding that environment. Seems like that's a difference you simply can't grasp, or you disingenuously don't want to.
It's not a Western mindset btw, it's the policy that has been working in a number of countries including most recently Bangladesh and Indonesia.
You really are making clear you have NEVER worked in poverty relief issues or traveled internationally.
It's kind of horrifying. Do you realize that 20%+ of children are so badly nourished they are stunted? The impacts this will have on their entire life and development?
Not everyone country is your well developed western country where the state provides food to everyone.
This is kind of scary to see on HN - programmers should really travel more (I'm a dual citizen with pretty extensive travel AND WORK in much much poorer areas).
"Apple for effectively funding that [starvation or bust] environment".
Heads up. Apple is one of the FEW western companies to actually cut off chinese suppliers for violating supply chain codes ($ lost, not just lipservice). I have no idea what you are talking about in terms of apple funding child exploitation. You are probably buying chinese made goods including those made with essentially forced labor. Do you not understand the situation in these countries? That US and European countries CONTINUE to sign new trade deals despite horrific labor and other abuses?
In all likelihood Apple factories, and even the factories of third party suppliers working for them, are probably one the least likely (not most) factories in china to be employing child labor as a result of apples efforts.
What this argument misses is that the supplier should be paying its adult employees living wages that are sufficient to pay for the upbringing of the employees’ families. This is especially true when the customer is the richest company in the world that likes to engage in virtue signaling on various other topics.
> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values.
The ones being judged here are Apple and other corporations exploiting children for profit. Not at all comparable to children helping out on a family farm / small business.
I've shared some of your thoughts in the past and still today. Indeed, there can be situations where generating a source of income (e.g. for sustenance) in the short-medium term is more valuable than generating knowledge that pays off in the medium-long term. I think the assessment should always be focused on whether it is a net benefit to the child.
Yet I do believe these where child labour is a net benefit are increasingly rare and in some countries simply not present anymore at scale, leaving no justification child labour. The situation in 2021 is in that sense very different from say 1940s Korea.
For one, primary and secondary education has been seen to be an enormous net-positive to society and has very large returns on dollars spent, which would apply to the opportunity cost (not being able to work) as well. As such, while I agree that child labour can be useful as a source of income (which is a primary source of wellbeing) in isolation, it's not necessarily a net gain (particularly in the long-run) for the child or for society if child labour takes the place of education, which it often does.
Even many poor countries today have high levels of universal primary and largely secondary school education available, and while issues like poverty and hunger obviously are very real, the directly life-threatening issues like famine at scale (e.g. in a country like India or China) are quite rare nowadays. As such, I think it makes more sense in a country like India or China (the country in question where the supplier was located) that children primarily go to school and enjoy being kids, despite poverty.
Note that child labour is not 'labour by a child'. e.g. in a country like the Netherlands, kids aged 13 are allowed to work. But it cannot be their primary occupancy, then it would be defined as child labour. That'd imply that work takes priority over school and children being children, and that's not necessary (e.g. for sustenance) or acceptable in most countries (such as India or China).
I see only a few exceptions, e.g. kids doing farmwork in rural Mali to provide much needed income for sustenance in an environment where school isn't available or affordable, may make sense. That's not to say child labour shouldn't be eradicated in Mali, but rather that banning child labour is perhaps a solution that should come only after problems of sustenance are resolved, and may not be a useful policy measure today. Of course it goes without saying many other forms of child labour (war recruits, sex, dangerous labour, hard labour) etc make no sense under any circumstance. Also situations in which there is child labour without pay (quite common too), it is clearly exploiting of a child without any net benefit to the child).
Exactly - Disney Channel in general is still filled with child actors. Perhaps the acceptance of child stars is because we idolize actors and envy them when they grow up to live their lives in multi-million dollar mansions in LA.
> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable?
Just like slavery was. Slaves always had the option to kill themselves, but instead the slavery system allowed them to live and have families and feed them.
In that light, you comment comes out as extremely callous.
Do you deem there to be a difference since presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work? Again, I don't believe child labor is ideal, but I do wonder if there's really a comparison to slavery, which was entirely compulsory.
I think there are some pretty significant parallels between slavery and child labour. IMO children aren't capable decision makers so a better place to begin the parallel might be comparing child labour to the abuse of those with mental disabilities or the elderly. The parents may or may not have their child's best interest at heart but they certainly have an outsized force of opinion when it comes to the child's actions.
I think[1] that for slavery to exist in society there has to be a really strong psychological justification for the slavery on the part of the owners and that that rubs off on the owned - slave revolts were pretty immediately effective when they happened in the south but relatively rare and I think this is due an acceptance on slaves' parts that they were powerless to change their situation.
If that view is effected then I think that children would be in a similar sort of situation as slaves - but I think abuse of the elderly or mentally disabled is a much clearer parallel to draw.
That all said - I don't think that's the side of this issue that's problematic. I don't actually have a problem with children working when the economic situation requires it - I have a problem with companies that could improve that situation to remove the need to have child labour instead exploiting the situation to make more money.
If a family was farming in complete isolation from the rest of the world and barely scraping by then I'd find it perfectly acceptable for the children to help with maintaining the farm as they are able - since the difference is between survival and death.
1. Heavy into opinion territory here so I wanted to clarify that none of this is intended to offend.
hmm, thanks for the reply, I'm not sure I fully grasp the parallels of parents acting in the best interest of their family and abusing elderly or the disabled, but I can appreciate a perspective that finds child labor to be a net loss for society, personally I think it all hinges on cultural norms as happiness isn't determined by having the most freedom or money or choices, but rather seems to be tied to some sense of being pro-social and being capable of achieving goals. I believe there are cultures which can foster a strong sense of pro-social family building through child labor and thus it can be beneficial in that context.
> presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work
Please, stop. Don't you realize you are making it worse? Still, it is funny to see you defend child labor as a cultural value, just to save Apple's face. Not sure Apple would appreciate your efforts, though.
I'm sorry to see you disagree with me so strongly that you're unwilling to have a conversation. I hope you'll consider respecting your peers enough in the future to engage in conversation rather than dismissing their opinions.
We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that is not won from the toil and sweat of slaves.
We all knowingly do business, directly, or indirectly with slave owners and child labor pimps.
Every electronics manufacturer knows well that it's cobalt comes from child slavery.
It's unusual because Apple makes a lot of comments about equality, prosperity and equality of opportunity. Especially in the context of recent BLM activism, their activities in these areas look especially hypocritical. It also makes their activism look hypocritical by their willingness to commit business with people doing slavery.
You're totally right about cobalt. About every other company being the same. But that just makes it hypocritical for them too.
While not unusual, it's still reprehensible. No matter how you try and justify it imo.
Let me then phrase it thus: this article puts it as if this be some revelation.
Everyone would know that Apple surely deals with companies it knows use slavery and child labor, because Apple produces batteries and there's no other way.
It is as if one præsent it as a revelation that Apple consumes fossil fuels, despite claiming to be environmentally aware.
Do all battery producing companies use child Labour? I highly doubt it. Apple might have had a hard time moving away, but they're Apple - they create billionaires within their supply chain. Foxconn wouldn't be so without Apple, and in turn a ton of Chinese suppliers wouldn't be so without Foxconn.
Yet Apple decided to play the same game as the rest of the mobile phone market, instead of using its heft to make sure suppliers adhered to its high standards.
Cobalt is a few steps removed from the mobile assembly stage. This was Apple knowing fully well about parts made by child labour that were directly being assembled into MacBooks. There simply is no excuse, whichever way you want to spin it and claim whataboutisms.
Apple has direct control over being able to switch between parts suppliers - its an executive decision taken by Apple management. On the other hand, Apple can only instruct its manufacturer to not buy Cobalt from places exploiting child labor, even if they try as much to monitor their supply chain, since Cobalt is bought and sold on the open market.
> We all know Qatar's FIFA 2020 accommodations are built on the backs of slaves; we all know that rarely a mobile phone sees a battery that is not won from the toil and sweat of slaves.
> We all knowingly do business, directly, or indirectly with slave owners and child labor pimps.
> Every electronics manufacturer knows well that it's cobalt comes from child slavery.
What seems interesting to me is: what are the leverage points that capitalist firms have, here, that make it easy for them to control the working class and attempt to get away with child labor? Where does the power they have over us reside?
1) I believe it's the alienation created by mean-of-exchange currency. While we use money in our day to day lives to buy goods and services, capitalist firms use complex software called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, that closely tracks the actual scarcity of all material resources used in their production processes.
2) Capitalist firms' use of trade secrets and patents (trade secrets often consist of vital negative research that lays out for us to see what has already been tried) to lock up our shared inheritance: the scientific commons, which unlocks inventions and tools that bring joy to many people's lives (who doesn't like the latest laptop computers or smartphones, or [insert technology of choice]). Unfortunately, the end goal, as Peter Thiel gave away, is always to achieve a monopoly position - which results in massive power imbalances, extreme labor exploitation and widespread environmental destruction. Exactly the kind of power imbalance we can see today between the bourgeois class in the global north, and the humans in the global south who face incredible poverty.
So, what is the most promising path or future that I see forwards?
1)
a) An exciting and novel distributed application framework, called holochain, allows for fully distributed apps that use peer validation, like Bittorrent's DHT, and are thus version controlled self-healing networks that can be used for all sorts of networked social applications.
b) Valueflo.ws and hREA (both led by Mikorizal, with early co-development with Sensorica), builds on holochain's novelty, and allows an underused accounting method, called Resources Events Agents (REA) accounting, to flip today's dominant ERP system on it's head, and instead allows for a radically participative system, which they call a Network Resource Planning (NRP) system. [1]
2) The knock on effect of (1) is that it could makes today's alienating means-of-exchange money redundant. This could in turn allow us to see today's scarce capitalist appropriated knowledge for what it is: an artificially constrained intellectual commons. In other words: since digital information has a zero marginal cost reproduction, any limits to copying are contrived and are there to keep privileged people in, and working class people out. By using a Network Resource Planning system to make visible all the material flows in a community/village/city, we can democratically decide what we use these resources for - instead of relying on corporate central planning behind closed doors [2]. We can then be free to use a decentralized/distributed Github system (e.g. Git-SSB or Radicle.xyz) to turn the intellectual property system inside out. To have it be a system for building all of society open source/free, completely out in the open and transparent, and celebrating new contributions; and not for giving out state-sanctioned monopolies (the so-called Intellectual Property systems).
Bottom line: humans copying each other is not theft. Our systems makes it seem so, yet it allows the capitalist elite to do exactly that by receiving privileged access to all the knowledge that has been privatized by capitalist firms [3]. Our current systems have us literally throw away functional components, because as a whole the products are single use black-box proprietary tools, that take away our freedom to continually grow.
Imagine if everything was modular? Could we become a solarpunk, DIY, modular and low-energy-tech, society? A society where we share information freely, and where we can radically change our fate in regards to climate change.
Meh, The Information is a massively overrated and overpriced news source that often misses out on basic industry news and has embarrassingly juvenile coverage of org charts, and acts more like a thinly veiled mouthpiece for its founder and her husband to appear like they have newsworthy opinions when in reality no serious journalist would publish what they write. I’d trust BI 1000-fold for a story like this.
With all these eyes on Apple, what do we know about Asus or Acer or even further down the alphabet? For some components we may only have a very few suppliers
The entire hardware industry is dependent on human or environmental exploitation to acquire materials for batteries and chips.
Cobalt and Tantalum are mined by child slaves in the Congo, smuggled to Rwanda and Zambia, then branded as "ethical". Rare earth refineries destroyed Baotou lake in China, rendering surrounding villages destitute, and threatened to contaminate the groundwater that sustains a huge portion of the Chinese population.
If you look into other materials that electronics depend on you'll see similar problems.
Electronics? Didn’t I just read about how the price of coffee is about to spike in the west due to some legislation that will make it harder for them to use slave labor?
I hate to say it because my life is so comfortable but it might just be that comfortable life that is causing the astronomical suffering.
You're absolutely right, unfettered capitalism is at the root of all this. I just wanted to point out that technology is not exempt, seeing as SV-style idealists seem to think technology will solve the world's problems.
Yet less than a week to cut ties with Parler. If this had been as public as the capital riots I'm sure they would have moved quickly. That said I can't imagine the effort in moving production on their scale.
Edit: After the onslaught of down votes I thought I'd better clarify. Apple is only moving away from this supplier because of the damage it does to their brand. They are not motivated to act ethically as they would have moved a lot faster if that had been the case.
Simply having money shouldn't, per se, be used as a reason to assume guilt. This is not a good way to get to a more civilized world where living right and working hard leads to the good life and all that.
(Yes, I'm aware we have some serious issues in the US with not adequately equitably distributing wealth. A policy of "hang 'em high because they are rich!" doesn't fix that.)
I disagree, well technically I agree that having money shouldn't equate guilt - but Apple makes a lot of money and chose to make some more money by partnering with a supplier that was using child labour. They didn't start that partnership with that understanding but they did continue it and they certainly have the means to drop that supplier in favor of a supplier that didn't use child labour... changing suppliers is expensive in terms of having a steady supply line and in terms of having a cheap supply line - delaying dropping them for a month or two while you line up some alternate manufacturer because of up-stream dependencies is probably acceptable but they had the money to fix this pretty quickly - certainly more quickly than three years down the road.
His point is that they have enough of a kitty to cut ties rightaway, then eat their losses for a while due to supply chain disruption. They took it slow, running out their existing contracts without breaking them unilaterally (which would have come at some minor cost) and hoping that no one found out.
Supply chains at Apple’s scale take at least 3 years to set up and scale up. I’m surprised it didn’t take longer for them to fully disintegrate that supplier.
A supplier using child labor shouldn't be a "ok, let's gradually work this out" kind of issue. It should be a "immediately cut all ties to them" kind of issue. If it will disrupt a supply chain and hurt profits, so be it. Seems like a small price to pay compared to using child labor.
They will continue to behave this way until the damage to their profits is higher than the damage from a supply chain interruption. To quote fight club:
> Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
It will never happen because most people don't actually care that much about children being a part of the supply chain for their favorite products. Given the choice between a new iPhone and an alternative product that doesn't depend on child labor, most people would pick the iPhone.
Replace “iPhone” with “cheaper products”. Most Amazon products are Chinese imports that most definitely are sourced from manufacturers with little/no care for forced labor in their supply chain. The media singles Apple out because they’re big enough to force their suppliers to change, but still can’t switch on a dime.
I would think it's perfectly fair for you, as that child to seek out labour.
But I also think it'd be perfectly fair if some sort of social safety net resulted in an orphanage where you could eat if you were starving - but that safety net would need to be paid by taxes on income that Apple isn't paying to their employees.
For Apple to not do business there because a bunch of entitled Americans yell at them over exploiting child labour... which, granted, isn't the best outcome for the locale in the short term but would result in the government making itself more acceptable as a overseas labour pool to US corporations.
I know this is probably sarcasm but the U.S. ideology is that the child should think “man I can’t wait for the United States to stage a coup in my government that brings capitalism and U.S. financial military aid to my country”.
> Child labor is common on tobacco farms in the United States, where children are exposed to nicotine, toxic pesticides, and other dangers. Child tobacco workers often get sick with vomiting, nausea, headaches, and dizziness while working, all symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning. Many work 50 to 60 hours a week without overtime pay, often in extreme heat. They may be exposed to pesticides that are known neurotoxins. Many also use dangerous tools and machinery, lift heavy loads, and climb to perilous heights to hang tobacco for drying. The largest tobacco companies in the world purchase tobacco grown in the US to make popular cigarette brands like Marlboro, Newport, Camel, Pall Mall and others. These companies can’t legally sell cigarettes to children, but they are profiting from child labor. US law also fails these children, by allowing them to work at much younger ages, for longer hours, and under more hazardous conditions than children working in all other sectors. Children as young as 12 can work legally on tobacco farms and at even younger ages on small farms.
I think it's acceptable to accidentally pick a bad supplier but when they learned of this three years ago they should've immediately cut ties. Oh, it's super expensive to change suppliers but own the mistake and pay the short term costs of being forced to rework supply lines while recognizing that inefficiency as the cost of skimping on your research on the supplier.
I would be absolutely unsurprised if someone instrumental in setting up this partnership still got a bonus after this was discovered due to the low cost of producing the part.
It’s doubtful that any large bureaucracy can execute that decision quickly, though I do agree 3 years is way too long. I’d put 3 months as hard minimum even assuming every internal decision process went as smoothly as possible, and 6 months as a more realistic amount.
Just legal validation alone would take weeks even under emergency round-the-clock conditions. It’s the same with most open and shut zero-tolerance style firings as well, for all but the most fungible roles.
This largely has nothing to do with how grievous the transgression is or how sincerely the management wants to do the right thing. It has to do with red tape that is designed from first principles to permit zero exceptions or special cases that can cut through it quickly.
It would require refactoring not just Apple’s red tape infrastructure but the entire concept across virtually all of corporate America to optimize for speed of firing vendors based on child exploitation.
It’s like choosing an O(n^2) algorithm, baking it in as a load-bearing centerpiece, then being upset something doesn’t happen in O(1).
I don't find it that sad honestly. Corporations don't exist to be charitable organizations - it'd be nice if they were a bit less cutthroat in chasing profits but there always have and will always be people who abuse norms to get an edge over others. Encoding a norm into law makes it more just by making the norm clearer to those who might have grown up elsewhere and cements a punishment.
Can you explain this more. If it takes them 3 years to scale up, does it now mean all the vendors are locked in for that period. If a vendor starts failing quality checks will they still take 3 years to disintegrate them? If not then why would violation of their own labor standards take 3 years to remove them?
FWIW, except forced labor, I am against child labor standards since it usurps the wisdom of the parents without providing for that child. No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them. The alternative to working in a apple supplier factory might be working in a more hazardous factory or construction site.
> does it now mean all the vendors are locked in for that period?
Probably contractually, yes. For large scale manufacturing there are agreements and purchases that look ahead years in advance. Parts and labor are allocated. If you have quality control issues at any point (which is common), you fix them.
> No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them.
As anyone who has grown up in a country where child labor was normal will tell you, this is patently false. If it is the norm in the country in question, everyone does it and it is expected. Children who do not work and their families are in many cases ostracized.
Then of course there are jobs and jobs, and a certain type of parent might vie for a job for their child that is less backbreaking than the average. But not working at all is frowned upon.
Source: lived experience in Soviet Union.
> No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them.
Okay, I was a child when my father (who could very much afford to feed our family) set up my first paid (cash, completely under-the-table) computer-related gigs. I would say parents often would want children to work if the work was something that would aid the child’s development and future prospects, even if not necessary for immediate support.
What that looks like for a middle class family in a first world information economy and what it looks like for a poorer family in a less developed country is likely to be very different.
But its worth noting that child labor standards are historically adopted to force up wages for adult laborers, so that child labor is not necessary for employed parents to be able to feed their children. So while I don’t agree that “no parent, no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them” is true, I do think there are dead-end, body-ruining factory jobs for which that is true, and those are exactly the jobs into which that horrible choice is forced on parents by the economic conditions created by the absence of child labor standards.
Clearly I was not talking about gigs in the local supermarket or computer related gigs in the first world. My father also put me to work and we were upper middle class. This was purely for character building and experience and life skills. Those are not the gigs which land a 14 year old working in an iPhone factory in China.
I think you are agreeing and disagreeing at the same time ;)
Outside of the other concerns people have raised, it is important to remember even if all parents are making the right choice for their kids, it isn't always (and in many cases, isn't) the parent making this decision. For example, another case where Apple has gotten outed, they were actively aware of the forced child labor by the schools: https://www.channelnews.com.au/apple-admits-to-using-child-l...
And if you believe the children, they also weren't really being paid and had no choice to participate in these "internships".
The concerns people have raised are fairly pedantic namely working in developed or semi-developed economies. That is the not the topic under discussion - 8-12 hour shift in iPhone factories is the topic under discussion.
My dad who grew up in a fairly prosperous family of humble origin in the third world worked through from age 10 to age 18 in the family concern. It is what everyone did.
Parents make plenty of awful decisions for their kids. They beat them, rape them, and more. Why is there an assumption that they’re doing the “better alternative” by putting them to work?
If American companies condone child labor, then they’re encouraging it.
While still meeting delivery targets? Even if budget weren't a concern, how do you scale up new employees that quickly?
I'm NOT condoning the behavior. This is disgusting. Still, "the supplier would (within a few hours) stop using child labour" is completely unrealistic.
Apple should have cut ties immediately even if it meant a breach of contract or shortage of inventory.
They should have but they made the bet they could slowly transition to another supplier with no impact to profits by getting out without anyone finding out.
I'm also betting their hit to profits will be less even after this revelation, than if they cut ties with the supplier and run short on inventory.
I wouldn't be surprised if that cold calculation came into play as well.
You'd think they call that supplier and the supplier tries to convince them they've stopped using child labour.
For some reason I was looking at pictures of textile equipment recently. Some of that equipment is built so that it's only accessible to growing children or adults with growth disorders. That's structural bias to such a degree that it is in fact literal. The requirement of child labor is literally built into the factory. I have no way of knowing if that's true for this factory, but if they're capitalistic at all then accessibility for (local) above-average humans is an opportunity cost that would have been eliminated in the name of efficiency. And if that worked so well why not try it again on the next assembly line, only goosed a little harder?
In any case, there is no "overnight" because you have to train new people for a high throughput task. But would you even believe them once they did?
For the west that's such a basic boundary at this point that if someone goes past it, it's because their ethical model is so different from yours that you can't reason about whether they've actually done what you've asked, or they've employed a new coping mechanism to seem 'normal'. Like just rearranging the factory so that your section has all the people over 16, which means the other building is now almost entirely children (making the situation more dangerous, not less). Or the children work second shift when you won't be around to audit, which is both dangerous and more unhealthy.
They didn't get your objection to begin with. Their response is likely to resemble the sort of thing a sociopath would do: identify your discomfort and arrange for it never to be triggered, rather than truth and reconciliation.
> Apple discovered additional workers as young as 14 years old during an audit just three months later.
While this may sound terrible, it's not that uncommon in less developed countries. I had my first job when I was 15 and that was one of the most exciting moments. I'm pretty sure those 14 years old are as excited as 15 years old me–eager to work and make money. It would be a breaking news if a supplier were to _force_ children to work, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case here. Those kids do want to work and they are proud to be doing work for Apple.
I had my first job folding and delivering flyers when I was 13 and back then already asked why it was not child labor to no satisfactory response.
I later came to realize that the reason it is not child labor is simply because it's not something associated therewith, had I earned my money making sneakers, something no more or less laborious, it would be called so.
Laws are rarely the function of what something factually is, as that would be far too boring and sensible and actually fix problems; they are invariably based on what particular segment of society the activity is associated with, of course: — thus all the clean man's hard drugs such as alcohol and tobacco are completely legal.
I was listening to a talk a while ago by one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil, and he said they ran into a problem in (iirc - this was a while ago) a European country where they were told they had to stop performing one off their acts, because the performers were too young and so were considered child workers.
As you point out, we seem to be OK with child actors and child paper routes and child you tubers, for some reason.
I’ll go ahead and say it -compulsory education is up to age 15 in China and “Apple discovered additional workers as young as 14 years old during an audit”.
It’s not worth closing the supplier down immediately for this. I also expect they have adults with families to support in the workforce.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this story has little traction in the mainstream, has a limited impact on anything Apple does or how the market perceives them. The real story we've been witnessing for decades now is how little people care about labor rights abuses (particularly if they happen overseas). This isn't the first time child labor has been linked to Apple and I'd be really surprised if it's the last. The headline should read "Consumers of Apple Products Knew About Labor Abuses for Years and Still Buy Their Products". Thats essentially why it took three years to cut ties--because no one cares (above social media finger waving).
This was discovered through the supplier transparency reports that Apple provides. Apple tells suppliers what they expect, and then when they audit the supplier they report the findings and work with supplier to clean up their act.
In this case the the supplier violated child labor policies in what looks like 2 successive audits 3 months apart.
The Information is taking the position that Apple should have immediately dropped the supplier instead of continuing with them. It is written in a way that sounds like the supplier was out of compliance for three years, but we are not told. It should be in the transparency reports.
I bet if this supplier had started churning out broken or otherwise lower quality parts, Apple would have forced them to sort it out in fewer than three years.
I am very curious what Apple employees think about all the slave labor and child labor accusations. Do you think its fake news from haters? Is it all exaggerated? Is it some sort of misunderstanding? Is is just unsubstantiated rumors? Is it all ok with you? Are you scared to even question things? Tell us so we too may share in your understanding.
There have been substantial reporting of similar circumstances involving Apple for close to a decade, if not longer:
httpss://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/25/apple-child-labour-supply
Is it possible, right now, to do business that requires such a complex supply chain without encountering significant labor issues of this sort? By which I mean, are there Western firms with more robust labor laws that could fill these needs?
are there Western firms with more robust labor laws that could fill these needs?
Currently, probably not. But if companies were willing to give up a tiny sliver of profits, the market would quickly fill that void. The problem is the mantra of "maximizing" shareholder profit at all costs. Even the cost of human life and dignity.
/Apple stockholder whose votes are drowned out by the institutional investors.
I think another good question is: What percentage of raw materials does Intel import from China? For Intel chips made in the U.S., how much of the resources used to make the chips are extracted with US-based labor (since that's generally the most acceptable standard for ensuring slavery isn't used during production)?
Assuming the imported materials are rare earths, then it would probably be the vast majority of their imports from China. Rare earths are another area where the rest of the world has ceded a critical strategic bottleneck to an adversarial regime.
I'm surprised to see so many top level comments defending Apple for knowingly using child labor. I don't know what it says about us, but it's nothing good.
> I'm surprised to see so many top level comments defending Apple for knowingly using child labor. I don't know what it says about us, but it's nothing good.
You're not alone, I think it's terrifying.
What seems worse to me is that some in this thread are suggesting that child labor isn't so bad because: "I had a paper round as a kid".
Capitalists have successfully alienated us from the production processes in the global south, and from each other.
Indians, the Chinese, Bangladeshi and many others in the global south - have now been fully disinherited and re-'other-ed' in the modern era. It should be referred to by it's proper name: neo-colonialism/imperialism.
I am worried that some have so much grandiosity from being told they're awesome at school (and that they are special and one of the only ones good enough to do it - when in reality today's capitalism privatizes and monopolizes knowledge in the form of trade secrets and patent, allowing capitalist firms to 'own' ideas and inventions), that they don't even realize when a job someone else does (because of their privileged higher up position in the capitalist hierarchy) is physically impossible (working 12-14 hour days [2]).
Historically, ages 12 to 14 were traditional coming of age birthdays. (I think this is where we get the Jewish bar mitzvah, as just one example.) In other words, you were considered to be an adult by the age of 14, which aligns with what we generally know about human development in terms of you typically develop executive function about age 12 and it takes a couple of years of practice to get meaningfully good at it (though, granted, research suggests additional brain development continues to about age 25).
In the US, it wasn't that many generations back that we routinely had kids in rural areas quit school after the eighth grade to work the fields. That means they were probably around 13 or 14 years old.
My father dropped out of high school when he was sixteen because he was a big guy, it was the midst of The Great Depression and he could "earn a man's wage" because he could work hard like a grown man. His lack of formal education was not stigmatizing at that time. Now the military wants more education, but he had no problem going up in rank and making a good career for himself as a high school drop out.
I've read some pieces some years back that indicate that when first world countries (for lack of a better term) go to third world countries and insist that kids aren't allowed to work, they actively interfere with survival for individuals in that place who are expected to work and do not have a social safety net. When we show up and impose our "high standards" to make us feel morally superior, we do so from a very privileged perspective and don't think about how that interacts with reality on the ground.
There are American teens who work because they are part of a poor family and they need that money to help feed themselves. That happens in the US, yet we think all teenagers in some other country are supposed to have some pampered existence with parents providing for them while they laze around and maybe tend to their schooling.
I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that it's a complicated issue and the headline here and the article aren't treating it with any nuance at all.