By Don Satco
Last year in Silicon Valley at a dinner for top executives, President Obama asked Steve Jobs of Apple, "What will it take to make iPhones in the United States? Why can't that work come home?"
Mr. Jobs with confidence and swagger answered, "Those jobs aren't coming back." Apple's certainty stems from their belief that the enormous scale of overseas factories, combined with the all-important tenacity and industrial skills of foreign workers (i.e., Chinese) eclipses their American equals.
Weeks before the iPhone was due on shelves, Apple redesigned the phone's screen, switching to glass, which required a near complete assembly line renovation. Those new screens arrived at the plant in the dead of night.
Then 8000 workers were pulled out of their company dormitory beds, handed a biscuit and a cup of tea, and led to a workstation where they would spend the next 12 hours fitting the new glass screens into their beveled frames. Ninety-six hours later the plant was churning out 10,000 iPhones a day.
"There's no American plant that can match that," one Apple executive said. "The speed and flexibility is breathtaking." Indeed, it is. All that and workers get less than $17 a day.
At that same plant this month, 300 men and women workers climbed to the roof and threatened to commit suicide over pay and conditions. No...American assembly plants cannot compete with abuse on that scale, at least not yet; but as unions fade under relentless pressure and the authority of occupational health and safety agencies are eroded by conservative philosphies, I'm sure someday you will be able produce iPhones here.
Apple executives say going overseas is their only option if they are to stay competitive. Apple is not alone in their flight to Asia. Hundreds of industries have outsourced everything from electronics manufacture to accounting, banking, insurance, auto manufacturing, and on and on.
There was a time when American companies felt an obligation to its workers, even if that meant taking from the bottom line. Hopelessly out dated in today's business environment. Recently an Apple executive said, “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” Last year, Apple earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Exxon Mobil more than Google more than Goldman Sachs.
Like the antebellum plantation owners, Apple and their ilk bask in the glory of their achievements at the cries and anguish of their slaves, slaves whose only redress is self-destruction. This is your legacy Mr. Jobs, not the accolades of the world as the icon of the entire technology industry. Your legacy is one of gut wrenching desperation and hopelessness in the name of profits.
