To be honest, Apple will simply blame Wistron suspend them. In the end these folks here will loose their jobs, and Apple will simply switch manufacturing suppliers.
The problem is the big corps have zero accountability when operating in developing nations. On the flip side, developing nations are desperate to attract big firms in order to bring profits in.
For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.
>For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.
but why? If you hired a contractor to renovate your house, and it turned out that they were committing wage theft against their workers, should you be fined?
Slightly different issue, but in the US if you hire a contractor to renovate your house and they are not insured and following workman's comp rules, you will very likely be sued if one of their employees hurts him/herself on your property. Some people hire cheap contractors without realizing this. Any time you hire a contractor make sure they are licensed, bonded, and insured before they set foot on your property.
You can also be held liable for your contractor not paying the sub contractors. The sub contractors can take out a lien against your property to be paid. This is more akin to what Apple is getting away with by sub contracting to suppliers in the developing world.
The contractor example is a broken analogy. Apple’s manufacturing experience is as deep as any firm in the world and their ability to audit manufacturers is much different from your ability to audit a contractor.
They will rise and fall to the level of accountability that the public is willing to hold them too.
Yes, it's common practice to perform due diligence and regular audits on your manufacturing chains, especially ones that yearly get news articles about how many of your workers commit suicide.
Why would they audit if they're not held accountable? This starts to become chicken and egg, it sounds like. Perhaps best to just pick the party that should be responsible and then move forward.
The problem is that Apple would have to establish its own private Ministry of Labour to meet this level of accountability, telling everyone exactly what their labor standards need to be and deputizing investigators to go poke around in response to any accusations. I don't think Apple should have that level of power over other companies, especially if we don't think they have a strong ethical commitment to the cause of workers' rights!
Lots of companies already audit their production chains, precisely in response of public pressure on the subject. Nike and football manufacturers are the most famous examples; also coffee, chocolate, and banana producers. This sort of thing, while not perfect, brought massive improvements in working condition in poor countries over the last 30 years.
Chocolate, coffee, and banana producers are in a different context. If you want to stop child labor on the chocolate farms, there's currently no choice but to have Nestle and Hershey do it, because the governments in Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire either can't or won't enforce their own laws on the topic.
The various Asian governments involved into tech production chains know what goes down in each and every factory. They know workers exploitation is massive, and they don’t care.
They already effectively have this level of power, though--they choose instead to not use it. If they want to be freed from the responsibility of ethically deploying the power they have collected for themselves, they need to be made smaller.
Their only power in this situation is to choose who to do business with. They can’t fine the company or revoke business licenses, as a Minstry of labor could do.
Also, are you suggesting that the actual Indian government has no responsibility?
"Behave ethically or we don't work with you" is within Apple's power. Choosing not to exert it is choosing to endorse the alternative.
> Also, are you suggesting that the actual Indian government has no responsibility?
Of...course not?
But Apple wants to be a world-spanning power, they get to be treated like one. If they don't? There's a line once misapplied to government, about being shrunk 'til it can be drowned in the bathtub, that we can apply to all of these somehow-too-big-to-expect-moral-behavior-of corporations.
“Behave ethically or we don't work with you" is Apple’s power”
I agree with this. Presumably it’s what Apple is going to do in this case.
What would you suggest they do if they can’t find a more ethical alternative to Wistron?
“Apple wants to be a world-spanning power.”
Does it? Or does it just want to keep making computers and software? It’s not obvious what Apple’s size has to do with Wistron breaking their contract.
Ah - but that’s funny isn’t it? Some countries actually require local manufacturing as a condition for market access. So they don’t exactly have a free hand here. And Wistron is a fairly well known name and should have been a reliable partner in this enterprise with Apple.
They tried that, but the Indian government put tarrifs on their products and prohibited them from opening stores to induce them to use local contractors.
In support of your comment, why can't apple have a few DIRECT EMPLOYEES at each major supplier factory full time to monitor the working conditions and terms adherence on a day to day basis ?
I just fundamentally disagree with this conception of power. The fact that you could in principle force someone to do what you'd like doesn't mean that you should.
It wouldn't be "forcing" with threat of imprisonment and Apple given the power of police, judge, jury and imprisoner such as a government has; it could be written into the terms of the contract - "we will buy from you, if your product is up to our specifications, and its manufacture is up to our specifications, and that the manufacture is done on ethical terms described in clause B, and the contract depends upon us being able to send auditors to all premises involved in our component supply chain and talk to all employees so involved at any time".
If there is no company willing to agree to a contract like that, Apple would only be able to force them by offering more money until it was worth their while.
It's no more /force/ than employers have over employees - do what we say or lose your income. Which is not exactly a level of force I like all the time, but if you agree with contracts and employment in general then adding "and treat your workers well and let us see it" doesn't seem like a hill to take a stand of fundamental opposition on.
I'm replying to "forcing is wrong!" with "it wouldn't need to be forced, X wouldn't be force".
You're replying with "well they didn't keep their supply chain ethical". We know that, that's why this thread exists on HN. You don't address whether doing so would involve force, or is impossible, you're just saying "ah but they tried and failed" - and it's not even clear if they did try as much as they could, or if they tried a bit and could try a lot harder if they wanted or were held to it.
“well they didn't keep their supply chain ethical”
No - I’m saying that didn’t keep their supply chain ‘ethical’. Perhaps nothing could have done.
"ah but they tried and failed"
Weird that you put this in quote marks as if it’s something I said. It’s not. You might be saying that, but I am not.
Contracts aren’t magic. It’s not a ‘failure’ when someone breaks one. What a contract would do is give Apple the legal mechanism to switch to another supplier despite having agreed to pay Wistron to make iPhones.
The contract only means something if one of the parties doesn’t do what is expected.
Contracts can include penalties like late fees, having such penalties apply to poor worker conditions is well within their negotiating power for a new contract.
It's within their negotiating power, and Apple appears to have negotiated such terms, since they say they're investigating potential violations of their supplier agreement. What the original commenter wanted, and what I don't think we should be encouraging companies to do, was intrusive audits to prevent the violations from happening in the first place.
> They already effectively have this level of power, though--they choose instead to not use it. If they want to be freed from the responsibility of ethically deploying the power they have collected for themselves, they need to be made smaller.
This comment is confusing. The first half sounds pro-corporate ("corporations should self regulate themselves!"), but the second half you want large corporations to be broken up. Which one is it? Do you want a future where corporations rule over everything or not?
I emphatically do not want a future where corporations rule over everything. (If the "awww, poor widdle Apple, having expectations put upon them" was not sufficiently clear, I apologize.)
I am saying that, when the rubber hits the road, Apple has the ability to impose their will on their subcontractors when it comes to human rights and worker treatment (which, I stress for the wait-wait-but-for crowd so desperate for reasons to excuse large companies from having to act like citizens of the world, is a distinctly different use of power than self-enriching commercial ones, so save the handwringing). If they don't want to be held to account for doing so ethically and proactively, they must be made--significantly--smaller until that expectation can be reasonably removed.
That doesn't elide the role of the state--it recognizes that, to our general detriment, we have allowed corporations to grow to the point where they are not practically regulatable by any given state due to their extranational operations. And that we should break them with hammers until they are.
>Apple has the ability to impose their will on their subcontractors when it comes to human rights and worker treatment (which, I stress for the wait-wait-but-for crowd so desperate for reasons to excuse large companies from having to act like citizens of the world, is a distinctly different use of power than self-enriching commercial ones, so save the handwringing).
The problem here is that you want corporations to use their powers do The Right Thing™, but ignore what happens if they make a mistake. Sure, we want amazon to crack down on counterfeits, but then we hear of stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24914501. Or worse yet, when The Right Thing™ is in the eye of the beholder, see: conservatives thinking that facebook/youtube is censoring them, and liberals thinking they're not doing enough.
>That doesn't elide the role of the state--it recognizes that, to our general detriment, we have allowed corporations to grow to the point where they are not practically regulatable by any given state due to their extranational operations.
But is that the case here? Winston is operating a factory in india and is therefore subject to indian labor laws.
Winston is certainly subject to Indian labor laws. Apple should be responsible for the selection of them and the failure of those companies to do the right thing in business with them, too.
If you have to use a stick to align business with decency, use it liberally. Such is the burdensome life of a multinational company with more global pull than some companies.
I'm just not sure what it means to say that they effectively have this level of power. They could in principle use their market dominance to bully smaller companies into doing what they want, but that's generally considered to be unacceptable behavior - "monopolistic", it's called in many contexts. Should Microsoft impose strict labor requirements on everyone who uses Excel?
I don't know about should you be fined, but anecdotally, I believe you will be responsible. At least that's what I see in our RWA (Indian for HOA) in Bangalore: if we hire a contractor, we have to make sure all the right stuff is mentioned in the contract about labourer safety. I never cross-checked this, and I don't know the law in this case, but it seems to be a thing. And IMHO, it's a good thing if the law requires it.
It's not obvious to me that a supply chain department would be interviewing random line workers of suppliers to make sure they're being paid the advertised wages.
The reason they don't is because they don't want to find out things like this. There's no reason a company as rich as apple _can't_ do such interviews...
I don't know what the right solution is for forcing Apple's hand in treating the workers this far down the line better -- though I firmly believe the richest company in the world owes it to everyone involved with it (i.e. the people making the phones themselves) to ensure they're treated better.
That said, the house/contractor analogy shows more than anything else that while analogies can illuminate the subject matter, they're imperfect: I don't believe there's one meaningful set of laws that can govern the typical homeowner hiring out renovation and the richest company in the world hiring low-paid workers through an intermediary that ostensibly gives it some legal protection and distance.
These workers claim to be paid pennies on the dollar. It's not like that kind of scam isn't hard to fix. Either the supplier corrects the situation or Apple ditches them.
It's not like the workers are getting a fair shake anyway.
No apple will still be treated like a star of the show, with the local government rolling down the red carpet for them. Because apple brings the local area "high tech" jobs, electronics manufacturing. Apple controls the tech, has the management experience, has the worldwide market and brand name. As the local people in the developing world, it would almost feel as a blessing from these companies if they decide to build a factory in their town. So local people and government would bend forward and backwards to win their business. And you never want to piss these companies off, because they might just bring their business elsewhere. There is no shortage of places to do these manufacturing in India or Asia. A pattern I learned from apple and the likes of Foxconn's during the early days of their manufacturing in China.
Recently india government created tax reductions favorable land prices for electronics manufacturers. Wondering if this plant used any of these incentives. That would be a shame, billion dollar companies used developing world tax payer's money and then failed to pay them stated wages.
Tiktok' sin for what it got from India was it's born Chinese. There was no actual evidence in wrongdoing on tiktok' part, no innocent until proven guilty. No chance to explain and address concerns if there was any. It's all about political pressure on China to retreat from the LOC at the india china border.
They can’t switch the manufacturing location if they want to continue to sell in India at a reasonable price which they definitely do. That’s the benefit of a protectionist economy though it has a myriad other downsides.
Apple don’t employ them. I mean I’d like Apple to be held accountable for not auditing their suppliers. However, they don’t have any legal obligation to the workers.
I guess the question then is should they have a legal obligation to the workers. Western companies make a big show of complying with regulations and higher standards of worker safety only to contract that work out to the lowest bidder, where in many cases that bid could not possibly be offered if they were actually treating their workers in the way the western company claims they are.
A recent example of this is exemplified in the practice of shipbreaking. Sellers can tell based on price exactly which type of shipbreaking yard their ship will end up[1], but will attempt to claim ignorance by using a series of middlemen to extract the most value, sending ships to places where people are forced to work in subhuman conditions[2].
True, they might not have a legal obligation, but the court of public opinion should have way more influence on something like this. With their billions, they should have the means for oversight enforcement and inspections (including inspecting these companies financials since they're getting millions).
Unfortunately ... who's going to stop buying Apple products over things like this? Not many who don't already dislike Apple to begin with. It wouldn't make a dent.
> Couldn’t Apple put it in the contract if they wanted?
It is probably in there. We are dealing with a party who broke their word to their employees. I see no reason to assume they aren’t similarly dishonest with their customers.
This is kind of what fair trade certification tries to address.
The issue is that a company like Apple will require in the contract certain things like wage minimum or environmental requirements, but the winning bid will be below the amount required to actually fulfill those requirements.
It’s not even that the manufacturer set out to ignore Apple’s requirements, but what happens is that these bids have zero margin of error built in. So once something unexpected happens(lower order volume, initial inaccurate estimation, tax or regulatory changes, etc) these companies are faced with a choice. If they cannot renegotiate the contract they are forced to either reduce salaries, cut environmental and quality corners, or run at a loss and go out of business.
The very nature of this type of third party bidding for a few large and powerful customers is that you are almost guaranteed a high percentage of labor and environmental violations because the companies will eventually be forced to chose between that and insolvency.
The problem is the big corps have zero accountability when operating in developing nations. On the flip side, developing nations are desperate to attract big firms in order to bring profits in.
For a country the size of India, though they definitely can demand that Apple pay a hefty fine or face even more tariffs. If they can't guarantee workers pay, they deserve to be treated exactly like TikTok was.