Can Apple pivot from Chinese “sweatshops” to more humane manufacturing?

Question

I'm an Apple guy: iPhone, iMac, Apple TV, etc. It's all very convenient for me.But I feel guilty after reading all of the articles about Apple's manufacturing facilities. The stress, low-wages, even suicides. I know this isn't unprecedented (eg. Nike), but specifically relating to Apple, do they have a way out of this process in the foreseeable future? If their spend on labor goes up, will it really impact their stock/shareholders in the long run?Are there any solutions?

nabla9 · Accepted Answer

Apple has been actively moving away from China for a several years now, namely Vietnam, India, and Thailand. The reason is both geopolitical risk and increasing wages in China.
Btw. Unnecessarily horrible working conditions are an issue that should be fixed.
Low-wage is not a bad thing in itself. People from China and India escape malnutrition from countryside to cities, then landfill scavenging into sweatshops. Low-pay and hard work is escape for them and wages increase very gradually until it's cheaper to assemble electronics in some poorer countries.

gregjor · Answer

Stress, low wages, even suicides happen in American workplaces too. I lived in Thailand for a few years, saw the sweatshops (garments, backpacks), I know what they pay. It didn't look like great work, but it also seems to differ from the cubicle farms I used to slog off to every morning only in degree, not in kind.
People on HN with good educations and jobs in advanced economies complain all the time about stress, burnout, the personal toll of the job, feeling unappreciated, disposable, and underpaid. I'm not saying we should just accept what goes on in developing-world sweatshops so we can have cheap running shoes and iPhones, but the problem of oppressive workplaces seems more pervasive and baked-in to global capitalism.
> Are there any solutions?
Not that we can address as individuals, no. Wages and working conditions will improve in China and elsewhere, just like people in Britain and America no longer have so many horrible sweatshops and factories full of low-paid and interchangeable workers (compared to 75 or 150 years ago). Read Dickens for example -- every industrial economy so far has gone through that phase. Then eventually the Chinese can sit in cubicles getting ordered around by an AI, while under strict surveillance, getting paid more to keep their consumer economy rolling, stressed and miserable just like Americans.