Great post by Dan at China Law Blog about what might constitute a living wage in China. It’s a response to a CNN Op/Ed by a labor rights activist, which is mostly the usual screed against Apple and Foxconn.

Dan had questions with the following:

And if Apple genuinely “cared about every worker,” it would pay every worker a living wage — enough for workers to achieve a minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future. Today, barely 1% of the retail price of an Ipad goes to the workers who make it; 33% goes to Apple’s profits. Apple’s profits are so high, and its global labor costs so low, that it could triple the wages of its 700,000 manufacturing workers and help them achieve a living wage (just a few dollars an hour in China), and still make $40 billion a year. A wage increase of 16% to 25% at Foxconn, announced today as Apple’s public relations blitz reaches a crescendo, doesn’t come close.

I also wonder what this guy considers a living wage in China, but I’d like to take this a step further. Consider this language in particular:

. . . minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future.

This sounds great and quite reasonable, but of course the writer has no idea what “minimally decent” means in China, in Shenzhen or anywhere else. He doesn’t know what it takes to support a family here, and I guarantee that the complex matters of health, education and housing expenditures and their related effects on savings are matters that he did not research prior to writing the Op/Ed.

And there’s a second problem, with this language:

Today, barely 1% of the retail price of an Ipad goes to the workers who make it; 33% goes to Apple’s profits.

One hears this fairly often from labor activists. I’ve never been able to figure out the logic here. Why would anyone expect a close relationship between profits and wages? This is a (sort of) free market, and employers will generally pay as little as possible so as to maximize their profits. That’s what companies are established to do, after all, and for many companies, they actually have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much profit as they can.

Moreover, if labor law is sub-par or not well enforced, a lot of companies will do whatever they can to screw over their workers — all in the name of competition, of course. I thought everyone knew that.

Sorry to burst this guy’s bubble, and I’m not trying to be an asshole about it, but I’ve always found the expectation that profitable companies would shower their workers with benefits to be a pipe dream. Sounds lovely, but proponents of this are living in a fantasy world. Look, unless we want to go down the road of the workers controlling the means of production, then . . . well, maybe not.

OK, so I’m being a bit tough here on someone who, I assume, is a well-meaning labor rights activist trying to help workers. As a Pinko-Commie sympathizer myself, I applaud that effort.

But using squishy language and referencing undefined concepts do not help persuade readers. If you ask me, and since this is my blog, I’m going to assume that you are, if we want employers to pay a living wage, the government should mandate it through good minimum wage laws. If you want workers to be treated humanely, work on a collective solution.

I know that this is a challenge in a country like China, but I still think that minimal societal standards as reflected in law is the way to go in the long run. This activist complains about the recent Foxconn wage hikes as being too little, too late, but at least in China wages (government mandated and otherwise) are going up! (Compare that to what’s going on in the West these days.)

Which reminds me. I hope these labor activists are also working hard on behalf of workers in places like the U.S., where the minimum wage is nowhere near sufficient to support a family.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: labor, labor conditions, labor law, minimum wage