Should you feel guilty about buying your iphone? By: Steve Kovach, 1/31/12, cnn.com
I read the article titled Should you feel guilty about buying your iphone? The article talks about how workers who are under very bad conditions make Apple Products, such as the iphone and ipad, in china. Some of the workers are children, and the factory has its own dormitories where workers live. Apparently, workers work for 12 hour days and get very bad wages. In the video clip, the workers were shown to wear finger gloves to help protect their hands while working with small parts. While the two anchors were talking, it was mentioned that apple makes a 40% profit, which is huge. They also discussed that some workers had actually jumped out of the dormitory windows to get away from their 6-day workweeks.
I did feel bad for the workers after reading this article. Working six days per week is definitely not something I would want to do. As far as 12-hour days go though, I cannot really sympathize. I worked longer days when I worked at a Dunkin Donuts, as well as working construction. Anyone who has ever worked a serious construction job would know that even a couple hours doing that is harder than sitting in a chair and working on electronics. Even in college, most days I wake up at 7AM and go to bed at 12PM, doing solid class work, homework, projects, and studying for the majority of the time. I live in a dormitory just like the workers, and I don’t even get paid for 4 years of work.
Apple gets about 40% of pure profit on their products and is one of the biggest net-share companies. It is no lie that the company has an enormous amount of money, and could fix this problem tomorrow if the president of the company were so inclined. With a minimal amount of money from the company, workers could have better wages and have much better living conditions. The big question of this article is: should you feel guilty about buying an iphone? My answer is no, but I wish there was something I could do to help the problem. The fact is that people will always buy ipods, iphones, and ipads, so a boycott would not have a significant effect. The only real way to solve this problem is for the company to step in, so I am doing no good by worrying or feeling guilty. Other people may have a different opinion, and I respect that, but the only way I can feel guilty is if I can do something about it, and decide against it.
Below is the link to the article.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/31/tech/gaming-gadgets/apple-boycott-commentary/index.html
I too agree that we shouldn't feel guilty about buying an IPHONE. I feel that Apple making a 40% profit is a bit much though. I think that we should however feel guilty about the 12 hour work day that the workers are putting into the production of the IPHONE. A 12 hour work day is a huge amount of time. In addition to the crappy time they work to produce the phone that every American wants they also get horrible wages. Dirt poor horrible wages drastically lower than our minimum wage. I feel that they get the horrible end of the deal here; horrible hours, horrible pay and nothing to show for it at the end of the day but just the satisfaction of making a phone. I am all for the production of phones but the mass production of phones should be done on machines not in factories or sweat shops with people because it is torture with the hours and pay. The detail and quality is great but it is complete torture. That is my belief.
ReplyDeleteI feel like we do feel bad about the workers and their working conditions. But when buying an apple product, almost all of us do not even think about the workers in China. Apple can help by giving money to increase wages and working conditions. But it is not really up to them, it is up to the Chinese. I do not think Apple would even want to help them because that means spending more money for them. They want the cheapest workers so they can buy the products at the cheapest price possible. None of us really feel guilty until we actually physical see how bad the working conditions are. As customers we would not really want them to help out because that means that our prices will go up. I do feel guilty but I hardly think about what they go through. At the end of the day I just want my product in good condition.
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