"What's Good for the Goose..."

In a NY Times article today, reporter Charles Duhigg recorded, “What’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.” So said the former Chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety, who advises the US Labor Department, when asked about a recent explosion at an Apple-support factory in China. Using poisonous chemicals to clean parts that go into the iPad, Chinese workers are systematically subjected to bodily harm. If Apple were aware of these problems beforehand and didn't act, the advisor, went on, "that's reprehensible."


Sure, it is reprehensible. But it's also "par for the course" on this global course we are on, where murky borders exist in selling products between countries, where demand is high and time is of the essence. We are now a global economy that wants to be satisfied immediately. We need everything yesterday, whether we are in the US, Argentina, Bali, Shanghai or Athens.


As part of our increasingly globalized economy, interdependence between suppliers and cheap labor is not going away; rather, it is  multiplying at a rate that grows with the bursts in population, higher consumer expectations, increased speed of delivery and quite simply, increased demand. What we do know is "cheap labor" always comes at a price - a big price where worker conditions, safety and health are concerned. This is not something new. Heck, the slaves in Egypt built the Pyramids. The US economy was built on cheap labor and horrid conditions. Let me be clear: I am certainly not trying to be glib or advocating that it is "right" but it is not new and it is a fact of the world in which we live. So, if people immediately read this or the Times article or others that will certainly come out, and their immediate response is to boycott Apple or stop using certain products, that is not really going to change the situation. Are you going to stop dressing, eating, buying from any and all companies that hire foreign labor? Because that's what it would take for a "boycott" approach to make a true impact.


My guess is that Apple, like many of the other companies in this same situation, in all probability has made very clear "their" corporate policies and standards for working conditions to the managers of their overseas factories. In fact, I have no doubt that that is the case. But, as we've seen countless times in exposes on companies in other industries including cloth and clothing manufacturing, the toy industry, on farms and with agricultural products, what is common practice and "standard" procedure for Americans and American businesses is NOT common practice abroad. In point of fact, there is a duplicity in many cultures outside the US to answer "yes" when the real answer should be "no." Not intentionally lying, just finding it more culturally acceptable to tell the person what you think he wants to hear, so as not to embarrass, lose "face" or trouble them with details. Americans have a hard time understanding this; and corporations have a keen way of remaining intentionally "blind" to this for their own benefit.


Let's face it: Apple, like all the other companies, has chosen a path that gives them the lowest cost per good sold so as to boost up their profit numbers. For all the good things that they do, Apple -- like most other companies -- is not willing to sacrifice the bottom line. They COULD decide to course correct and look toward employing many of those twenty-million Americans who are looking for work into factory jobs here. But, really, until some moral and patriotic reasons filter into their economic plans and become paramount to the profit to their shareholders, change will be far from easy.


Worker exploitation will continue to exist as long as we continue on the supply-demand economy as we know it. The answers to change lie in examining ways that we as consumers can bring down our expectations in terms of how quickly we get our products, how diverse the supply-pool needs to be and for companies to re-examine their profitability margins. We also need to understand that not all countries value the cost of human life the way American individuals do.  What's good for the goose  is NOT necessarily good for the gander, as they say.