The cover story in the Wired magazine this month, certainly made me sit up and take notice. Not that poor labor conditions for the manufacture of iPhones was new, the fact that the cult magazine gave it cover story status was something.
You can read it here:
1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?
People will not stop buying iPhones or numerous other products, they may not boycott Apple and other companies, but hopefully they will take notice. There is a great cost to our conveniences that somebody else far away, in another part of the world, is paying for.
Of course, many believe that 17 is a small number. But that there is a number at all is worrying.
In consequence of the rationalisation of the work-process the human qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker appear increasingly as mere sources of error when contrasted with these abstract special laws functioning according to rational predictions. Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of this process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already pre-existing and self-sufficient, it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not.
ReplyDeleteMarx. On alienation of workforce.