When Apple launched the iPhone 5 last year, it was the most aggressive launch Apple had ever attempted, requiring entire armies of workers to aggressively line-manufacture their most advanced, difficult-to-make iPhone yet. But what was it like to be one of those workers? Businessweek has published a fantastic, haunting investigative report on one Nepalese worker, who almost starved to death after his stint as an iPhone tester.
You really should read the piece for yourself, but here’s the background. In 2012, one of Apple’s suppliers, Flextronics International, was so pressed for workers that it had to draw on Nepal’s network of shady subagents to find workers for them.
These subagents actually charge workers to find them a job, and in the case of Bibek Dhong, the worker Businessweek’s piece follows, when the iPhone 5 work was over, Dhong fell upon some hard times.
Having wired home much of their money in anticipation of following close behind, many started running out of cash. Then they ran low on food. The first to go hungry were among a group of younger men who had relied on a local restaurant outside the hostel to give them a meal a day on credit. The owner cut them off when he found out they’d lost their jobs, Dhong says. Hunger soon spread to almost everyone. At night Dhong could hear some of his compatriots shouting and screaming out the windows of their high-rise towers. One man Dhong knew seemed to be going stir-crazy, muttering and shouting to himself as he paced the hostel grounds.
It’s really worth reading for yourself. Apple may be setting an industry standard for its workers, but it’s still a very, very hard life that leads you to build iPhones for a living.
Source: Businesweek
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
3 responses to “Starving To Death On An iPhone Assembly Line”
Apple (and other large tech companies) do not have ANYTHING to do with over seas hiring. It’s all done 3rd party. Is it so things like this can happen and they’re protected? Maybe. Is it because it’s easier for a third party to hire in countries where Apple doesn’t have a foot hold? Probably. It all leads back to how the US needs to tax / tariff heavily companies that take their work outside of the country. It puts them back under proper regulation and brings American jobs home.
Another hit Wh*re article. A guy starts work at a foreign factory, sends all his money home and after the short build up cycle, is let go. Then he has no money, uses credit until it runs out. Maybe he worked for Dell, HP, Flextronics, any of a number of crappy companies. What has this got to do with Apple?? It does make it sound like Apple is responsible for the troubles of the world. You know, like Exxon where they hire cheap captains who run their ship aground and spill millions of gallons of oil and then try to get off with out fixing the problem….. Oh wait.. that was an oil company who gets millions of dollars on govt tax give-aways….
Apple. Make a great product, make tons of money, get treated like a crappy company cause they do not pay out enough money to politicians and others. Yep. sounds right to me.
I was about to say the same things.
Key point in this article is not where he worked, but that HE SENT HIS MONEY TO SOMEONE ELSE. Apple is not to blame for other folks bad money management