The new tech slaves of Brazil?

I sat down in my local café at the weekend and picked up the Folha de São Paulo newspaper. They featured a frontpage splash about a Foxconn manufacturing plant in China and how it looked more like a military base than a factory producing iPads and other Apple products.

Foxconn has been under the microscope in Brazil since their recent proposal to invest $12bn in manufacturing facilities here. The subtext of the newspaper story is that Brazilians really don’t want that kind of manufacturing done here – slavery ended in Brazil in 1888.

However, anyone working in the technology industry will know about the reputation of Foxconn. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has gone to great lengths to defend Foxconn as a responsible contractor after a series of suicides at manufacturing plants in China.

Foxconn and Apple have spent a great deal of time explaining that they are not modern slave-drivers, but what should Brazilians think as Foxconn prepares to enter Brazil?

It is a fact that a company like Apple would not maintain a relationship with Foxconn if they did not believe that employees are treated fairly. More than a decade ago the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein published her seminal book ‘No Logo’ which shone a light on manufacturers exploiting cheap labor in Asia. The backlash against manufacturers – particularly sportswear manufacturers – that grew from Klein’s book means that it is difficult for any manufacturer to engage with lower cost environments in the same way today.

Working conditions – and expectations – in China are not the same as those in the USA, Europe, or even Brazil. Manufacturing workers in Brazil largely have the protection of labor unions so pay is fair and employees are treated fairly – on the whole. It would not be possible for Foxconn to import Chinese labor practices – such as migrant labor living in dormitories at the factory – to Brazil, so it seems sensationalistic for local newspapers to be writing about Foxconn in a horrified tone.

As a European, I wouldn’t personally want a job based on the conditions that Foxconn in China considers to be normal. But, like Steve Jobs, I can see that in the Chinese market they are offering jobs and a regular income to people who may well have migrated in search of work. People faced with poverty at home wouldn’t complain so much about work conditions in the factory, but is that morally right?

Where you draw the line on abuse is difficult to agree on. Some believe that the rights enjoyed by European workers should be afforded to everyone across the world. Why then do Americans only ever get a fraction of the vacation time away from work that Europeans enjoy – is that also an abuse of employees? Why should Americans or Europeans even feel it is their right to comment on labor in China?

Steve Jobs is ultimately the arbiter in this case. While a company as revered as Apple considers that Foxconn is a company they can do business with, dissenting voices will be just noise.

Foxconn, welcome to Brazil.

Photo by Wendell licensed under Creative Commons