This week I heard a presentation at the Royal Society of Arts
by Constraining Consumption author Chandran Nair. What we do in the West over the next 40 years doesn’t really matter, argues Nair, because by 2050 there’ll be 5.5 billion Asians and only 750,ooo Westerners. It’s a pure numbers game and thus the “planet’s future will be determined by what happens in Asia”.
In Nair’s dystopian vision of the future, Asian governments will have to become even more totalitarian so as to impose the draconian measures necessary to prevent their populations from consuming as we do in the West. Imagine if 3 billion people in China and India all wanted to buy a car, there just aren’t enough resources available to make them. So, it’s totalitarian rule or total bust? Helluva choice isn’t it?
What it means is that Asia must find another way forward i.e. not the Western way. Not only must it constrain consumption but it must also create employment at all costs. Factories will have to remain labour intensive and not be drawn into introducing machines to do the work. Imagine, if you will, a permanent state of Industrial Revolution.
Which brings me to two recent publications from Apple.
First the good news. Apple’s quarterly financial reports for 2011 show revenues up by 83% as the number of iPhones sold has more than doubled from a year ago. All together now - “Woo hoo!”
Second the even better news. Apple’s Supplier Responsibility report for Q1 2011 shows that Apple are working hard with the Asian suppliers of those same iPhones to ensure that they ‘provide safe working conditions [and] treat workers with dignity and respect.” You’ve got to just love those guys at Apple, don’t you?
Get into the detail of the second report and you’ll see that in particular, they’ve turned their attention to the infamous Foxconn factory in China where tragically, 16 young men and women took their own lives over one month in May 2010. Every one of them jumped to their deaths from a factory or dormitory window.
So what exactly are the world’s most profitable company doing to solve this awful problem in their supply chain? Well the report tells us - Apple are working with Foxconn on ‘several fronts’ but first and foremost they are ‘attaching large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides’.
Yes that’s right. The dignified and respectful solution to your impulsive suicide attempt is to be caught in a large net in full view of your co-workers. After which, you’ll presumably be lowered safely to the ground and encouraged to go kill yourself off the premises - or at least a safe distance from Apple’s reputation.
What the report does not go into is what might be driving these youngsters to such desperate measures in the first place. When I interviewed Foxconn workers outside the factory gates in Sept 2010, the answer to that question was clear - working on a production line where you are required to perform the same mindless task up to 10,000 times per day, every day, 7 days a week DOES YOUR HEAD IN! Eventually 16 young Chinese workers just couldn’t take it any more and literally ran for the nearest exit. Many more told me that it had crossed their minds more than once.
Chandran Nair told the assembled crowd this week that he was surprised how well his work had been received by the wider business community. I’m not. This is exactly the kind of intellectual ammunition that Asian leaders and businessmen (like Foxconn’s Terry Gou) lap up to justify maintaining a twin track path to economic development. Now they can continue to add to their untold personal wealth and at the same time argue that it’s in the planet’s best interests. Because if you buy into Nair’s argument, then you accept as inevitable the need to continue to exploit a labour intensive workforce in Asia as Apple/Foxconn does.
It is not right that what we do in the West, has or will have no bearing. As long as an Asian workforce is making products for Western consumption, then we in the West have a responsibility to support their demands for as much freedom as we enjoy and that should include working in a factory without need for nets.
