People around the world mourned the death of Steve Jobs on October 5. Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, is credited with changing the world with stylish and easy-to-use gadgets like the iPhone, iPad and Macintosh computer. Apple built an image of ingenuity that would make life better through its products.
While Jobs and Apple can be credited for these devices, they were and are no friends of the working class around the world. In the past 14 years under Jobs’ leadership, Apple became the world’s largest company, recently surpassing Exxon Mobil. It made so much money that it held over “$76 billion in cash and investments” in a bank in Nevada to avoid California corporate and capital gains taxes (Newsweek, 9/5/11).
How did they make all that money? Pure inventiveness, creativity and will? No, they made it off the backs of the working class. Even though Apple is a U.S. company, it chose to produce the bulk of its products in China, where average wages of workers are extremely low. In 2010, the average salary for a Chinese worker in Shenzen, home city to Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn, is about 900 yuan a month, or about $132 (Bloomberg, 5/28/10). Foxconn is the company that manufactures most of Apple’s products.
Sweatshop-like conditions have permeated these companies. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, workers clocked almost 98 hours per week, standing most of the time. When the iPad was in high demand, workers were only “allowed to take one day off in 13.” If they performed poorly they were humiliated in front of co-workers (www.dailymail.co.uk 5/1/11). Conditions at these plants are so horrendous that workers were committing suicide. Workers at Foxconn were made to sign an agreement that if they killed themselves, their families would not be compensated.
Steve Jobs tried defending Foxconn in early 2011 by proclaiming to investors that the company was not a sweatshop. But in an internal progress report, Apple conceded that workers at 18 facilities were paying such steep hiring fees that they were basically enslaved. At 10 facilities, a total of 91 workers under the age of 16 had been hired (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com, 2/16/11).
This is how Apple and Steve Jobs made their billions. Apple couldn’t set up shop and provide jobs for workers in the U.S. because they needed to go where the labor is cheapest. Workers around the world need to see what the bosses are really like: merciless, ruthless and profit-driven. The working class must remain clear about what these bosses do and how they exploit the working class.