Apple Phenomenon “Sweatshops have built up economies and industry all around the world. Throughout recent history there have been isolated events in which the issue of sweatshops and labor standards has taken centre stage in the media and government, states Amanda Wilson.” Sweatshops have evolved immensely over the past decades. The 19th Century and the 20th Century were not run by the apparel industry; such as now in the 21st. The consumption of clothing and material things has made sweatshops what they are today.
In the article “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an Ipad” Charles Duhigg and David Barboza illustrate the life of a sweatshop employee and the hardships that evolve by using logos, imagery and a narrative. Throughout this article the authors portray what life would be like for Apple workers and the growth of the company. They articulate things like, “In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing (paragraph 5).” Due to their innovation Apple has resulted in cheap and more efficient labor. This has caused much turmoil and dilemma among workers. Chinese employees are demanded to work, “excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms (paragraph 7).” People are often required to work long days in physically and mentally harsh conditions for extremely low wages.
All over the essay the authors mention Chinas growing rate and the amount of injured employees in China’s sweatshop conditions. “Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens (paragraph 8)”, and within seven months last year there were two explosions, multiple people were killed and “77 were injured (paragraph 8)”. This illustrates the greed of the company and how Apple sacrifices their workers in order to make a larger profit. Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, announces “Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.”
Duhigg and Barboza utilize imagery in painting a mental image of the unworkable working conditions faced by all Apple factory workers. They state “in Shenzhen, China, where iPods were manufactured, and reported on workers’ long hours, push-ups meted out as punishment and crowded dorms (paragraph 20).” Which indicated the story of a man named Lai Xiaodong and his
