The Real Price of the iPhone 5

While the iPhone is unveiled with much pomp and pride in the USA, few know or care that it is produced on the backs of millions of underpaid and mistreated workers in China. In fact most of the cell phones and top brand name electronics for Apple and other tech firms are produced by the million worker strong Foxconn. In China, Taiwan and in factories around the world.

So what is the real price of an iPhone?

1)      About 2,000 workers in the China Foxconn factory were recently involved in a mass brawl that had quelled by some $5,000 police

2)      Rampant suicides of factory workers at the Foxconn factory raised more than a few eyebrows and were widely viewed as a reflection of the desperate conditions workers endured in the mass factories.

 

3)  Low wages and poor working conditions of workers in Foxconn factories ensure the demand in the west for iphones and the latest electronic gadgets are met.

 

According to a report, the Foxconn factories are ruled by highly authoritarian management with rigid disciplinary rules. In an environment where employees are treated as simply a number, regular brawls are not unexpected.

Next time you line up for hours to get your hands on the newest Apple invention or upgrade, or the latest X-box or your latest android phone, consider for a moment the hands that made them, the slave like working conditions under which they were made and miniscule wages received by the workers, and consider what you can do to change this.