The Human Cost of Tech: Lessons From Foxconn

In the past few weeks, the tech community has been engaging in dialogue over recent suicides at the Foxconn electronic factories in China and Taiwan. Many popular products are assembled in these factories. In particular, many Apple products, like the iPad and presumably the just announced iPhone 4G are assembled by the corporation.

In light of these events, Apple recently audited Foxconn to get to the bottom of this disturbing trend, and now Apple users are rightfully feeling uncomfortable. The comments left for various stories about Foxconn around the web highlight major themes that merit further examination. These comments include: “Steve Jobs should supplement worker pay”, to “Apple products should be boycotted until further notice,” and “what’s the big deal – don’t most people hate their jobs?” Here are three practical ideas to takeaway from all the talk about Foxconn.

1. It is not about money, but working conditions. We are talking about jobs, but money is not the deciding factor in life or death here. The conditions at the factory include: extensive overtime, militaristic discipline, and poor housing conditions. An improve in wages does not get at quality of life in this case. A recent animated lecture sponsored by The RSA is circulating around the blogosphere called, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” Simply stated, economists found that people are not as easily manipulated as previously thought, and increased monetary incentive does not necessarily correlate with better performance. But this issue is even more nuanced than performance, which is already incredibly high at the factory. It is a matter of comfort, decent experience, happiness – and not feeling imprisoned in their work environment.
2. This structure is in place (and needs to be dismantled) all over the world. The tech community is one that has a strong DIY ethos. The desire to fix things and craft solutions for problems extends from developers to makers, so there is a strong impulse to reach a fast conclusion to the problems at Foxconn. But at the opposite end of the privileged position of the inventor is the assembler – often a person of color, usually with low-education, and almost always poor. This is the case in the factories of Shenzhen, China as well as private prisons in the United States, too. The truth is, corporations want unskilled labor to drive profits and there are segments of the populations perpetually at the lowest rungs of society who are available to be at their disposal. In the same way Angela Davis spoke about the prison-industrial complex stateside, we often “forget” about workers like the poor Chinese who are relegated to working in environments like Foxconn, and we frequently do not imagine the actual problems they have and do not invest the capital to figure out ways to make these issues visible.
3. Ultimately, the Chinese government is in control. For all the talk about Steve Jobs being “all over it,” helping to boost workers pay, or otherwise providing the solution to Foxconn’s morale problem, it is not Apple’s burden. Apple chose to do its manufacturing at Foxconn, and if they wanted to, they could choose to manufacture somewhere else. But the problem with factories in China would remain unchanged. So as it stands, the “magic” needs to come from within China itself. In an article called, “The Roots of China’s Miracle,” Dr. Yasheng Huang, professor of Management at the M.I.T. Sloane School describes the five year economic policy programme currently in place by President Hu Jintao. In part, Jintao is seeking out solutions for China’s “high-technology future in the countryside,” the place where Foxconn attracts most of its workers. The president’s Harmonious Society initiative seeks to address the multitude of conditions that impair people’s conditions to live, work, and play in China. Huang suggests the end to rural stagnation is through low-tech enterprises and projects to empower those in rural communities – his message to China is recycled from decades old activism in the country: if you want to do something different than what the farmers want, assume you are in the wrong. Can developers and makers get with that?

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