Apple has recently come under fire after a report from BusinessInsider hinted that popular Apple products like the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch were partly built using child labor at wages as low as $0.70 per hour.
Apple exec says they shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers
This brings back an interesting question, why doesn’t Apple make its products here in the US like it used to. MSNBC believes it has the answer and quotes a dinner in California last year where President Barack Obama asked Steven P. Jobs what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Mr. Jobs’ reply was unambiguous: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” It wasn’t basically that labor was cheap in China but also that overseas factories offered “flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts.”
Chinese factories offer more speed and flexibility than US based operations
An Apple executive explained exactly what they meant using a scenario where at one point the Cupertino-based company decided to revamp the iPhone’s display weeks before it was set to hit shelves. Here is how the overseas factory reacted to the new challenge:
“A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.”
