The horrendous human costs of your beloved gadgets

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you like your iPhone, do you? And your iPad? And maybe you're even one of those Apple cultists. (I'm not, but I do love my iPod Touch. I go Samsung/Android with my phone.)

Maybe you love all your gadgets. Maybe you think technology has made your life so much better, so much more fun. Hey, I hear you.

But there's a cost to be paid, and not just whatever low, low, ridiculously low price lured you into your local Best Buy. No, there's a human cost. Actually, many human costs. And it's important that you (and I) know about it (and make decisions accordingly):

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. 

And then there's that whole suicide problem. (Yes, a very serious problem. In addition to the suicides themselves, workers at Foxconn, a manufacturer for Apple and others, have threatened mass suicide to protest the horrible working conditions.)

Now, sure, it's easy to pick on Apple and it's huge profits and cash, but it's hardly alone in this. Pretty much every major (and not-so-major) consumer electronics company is implicated.

Will this stop me, or you, or most anyone else from lapping up the latest wonder-gizmo? Maybe not, but, then, what are we to do? Not have these gadgets at all? Please. We need our superphones and tablets and laptops and PCs. I'm on them all the time at home, at work, pretty much everywhere.

But maybe we should at least think twice (or more) about what we're doing, and maybe, if Apple (to take but the most obvious example) is one of the most egregious players in this horrific system, it should pay -- and pay by losing customers, by having customers demand better of it. And perhaps, too, our attention and habits, should we change them in a meaningful way, and the attention this human toll is getting, will turn this into a political issue with governments demanding, and requiring, meaningful change.

Maybe I'm hoping for too much. Actually, I'm sure I am. And I know I'm a hypocrite. Most of us are. But I do know I look at Apple quite a bit differently now, and if making a choice means choosing the less bad of some generally bad options, well, that's something, at least.

Food for thought next time you're playing Angry Birds.