Apple’s the best damn thing that’s ever happened to Chinese workers
YES, we all know the complaints. That those Chinese workers assembling the Apple products are paid a pittance, it’s all a shame and the company are capitalist bastards for exploiting the poor so.
Or we could look at the actual facts and decide that Apple’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the denizens of the perfumed east. For it is exactly that Apple and other companies expanding their operations there that is pushing up wages. Which is, I hope we’d all agree, what we’d actually like to happen? That the poor get rich?
Wages in Sichuan and Henan have surged 120 percent in six years because of economic growth, increasing local competition for labor and slower population-growth nationwide.
That’s 120% in only 6 years! And in hte coastal provinces, where this all started, they’ve gone up by about 5 times (yes, 500%!) just since the year 2000. And yes, of course, those numbers are after inflation.
It really is true that this is the greatest and fastest rise in wages enywhere ever. And it’s all driven by more companies coming in looking to hire more workers to make more products.
Far from Apple and the others exploiting this labour it’s making it rich. Best damn thing that’s ever happened to the place.
Posted: 4th, March 2013 | In: Money, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
