The agony and the ecstasy of Steve Jobs
This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 85 spring 2011
The death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on 6 October 2011 prompted tributes from millions around the world including US President Barack Obama, fellow IT visionaries Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and media baron Rupert Murdoch. Just a few days before, New York based writer and performer Mike Daisey concluded an Australian tour of his one man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, presented at Sydney Opera House as part of 2011 Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
Within hours of Jobs’ death, an estimated 10,000 tweets a second were published on Twitter: “i-sad” tweeted one. According to many, Jobs changed the world and was unanimously praised for his vision, leadership and exceptional ability to find new and better ways of doing things—always thinking of possibilities for making computers accessible, intuitive and fun.
Credited for the innovative IT user experience we have come to expect—from the laptop to the mouse to the touch screen interface to the iPhone and associated technology that today is ubiquitous—Jobs is regarded as having transformed the entire computing movement and the way we connect using technology.
Just a few days before Jobs’ death, New York writer and performer Mike Daisey concluded an Australian tour of his one man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, presented at Sydney Opera House as part of 2011 Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Like many people who use and love Apple products, Daisey’s entire life has been defined by Jobs in a very direct way.
Daisey’s two hour monologue takes the audience on a journey through his own personal love affair with Apple to a recent coming of age in which he discovers the little-known dark side of the company’s supply chain. The show explores the disconnect between the devices we use and the reality of how they are made, particularly when third world supply chains are involved and where international human rights and labour standards are not met.
Daisey starts the show with the excessive rapture of the kind that typically accompanies the unveiling of a new Apple device:
Jobs had the skill to take things that you didn’t even know that you wanted and make you need them. Not only through showmanship alone, but because he understood how we use computers or how we could use them and he was constantly pushing forward the boundaries of what was possible. And he did it with a tremendous amount of panache and drive in an industry that is actually devoid of these things, an industry run by people who are introverted and not good at taking the stage and understanding human impulses. Jobs was so good at that.
Daisey is passionate about the many Apple products that have seduced him over the years and insightful about the career of the exceptionally talented inventor and entrepreneur Steve Jobs.
However, the components of Apple products are almost entirely purchased from suppliers in China and Daisey’s love affair with Apple takes a turn when he goes to Shenzhen and discovers firsthand how Apple gadgets are made and the working conditions of the people who make them.
Despite the enormous volumes of components required to supply worldwide demand for each new Apple device, little is known about the enormous factories on the supply chain. Daisey says this is because of Apple’s long-term policy not to disclose supplier information.
Daisey poses as a businessman in order to enter the factories of some of Apple’s suppliers. He is astonished to discover that components are made not by robots, but by people who work silently on production lines for 14, 15 and 16 hours a day, constructing electronics by hand until after months and years, the joints in the fingers
of their hands disintegrate.
Suicide, child labour, poison and robotic conditions are part of this story. In 2010, twelve employees jumped from the tops of buildings at Foxconn, a major Apple supplier whose vast factories employ as many as thirty thousand factory workers, and Daisey describes the ‘suicide nets’ he saw when he visited the company around this time.
He meets with Chinese environmental NGOs who have gathered evidence that highlights serious environmental and labour rights problems in Apple’s supply chain. As Apple breaks sales records, the NGOs say
Apple’s workers are exposed to toxic chemicals despite a Supplier Code of Conduct that states:
Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in Apple’s supply chain are safe, that workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible. apple.com/supplierresponsibility
The NGOs have documented numerous cases where hazardous waste that is not only toxic to humans and animals, but also pollutes soil and streams, has been produced by Apple suppliers, creating serious harm to workers and local communities in the vicinity of supplier factories. (See January 2011 report The Other Side of Apple at ipe.org.cn)
They say that Apple will not respond to their questions about environmental and labour violations, maintaining instead that the company upholds exceptional corporate responsibility standards. The NGOs call on consumers to demand that Apple improve the environmental management in its supply chain:
… for the sake of the health of the public, the protection of the environment, and so that workers on the production line do not suffer poisoning again and in order to give our children a secure, safe place to live.
Consumer protests against human rights abuses by the global supply chains of brands such as Levi’s and Nike were prominent in the 1990s. Soon after, supply chain management codes of conduct started to emerge and these were embraced by most multinationals.
The role of supply chain management also became integral to corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks. However, despite high level CSR reporting, very little was known about what companies were actually doing to address human rights and environmental concerns. Daisey maintains that this continues to be the case even though the appalling work conditions in southern China are well documented by numerous sources.
In 2001, a decade after the code of conduct development process began, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) began to research how firms managed CSR in global supply chains: what did they do at headquarters and how did this relate to what happened at the supplier level?
After conducting over 300 interviews in 15 countries with visits to many factories over three years, the ILO published a report in 2004: Implementing codes of conduct: How businesses manage social performance in global supply chains (Invanka Mamic, 2004. ilo.org).
The report concluded that at the supply chain level, gaining market share and cutting cost took precedence over complying with codes of conduct and CSR frameworks. For suppliers, implementing a code of conduct was typically seen as a cost without benefit. If they could get away with saying “yes” but doing nothing, they would do nothing. Poor practices were routinely disguised during compliance audits by clients and there was little to incentivise well run factories where good management, sound labour practices and adequate health and safety standards were the norm.
The ILO argued in 2004 that companies sourcing from Asia had to work harder to
protect the human rights of the workers on the supply chain and warned that consumers would not stand for poor labour and environmental practices. But it seems that we have, and Daisey reminds us of the bigger story about how the first world is supplied. He says the fault lies not only with the global brands giving work to suppliers who exploit their workers and contaminate the environment, but also with us, the consumers.
So why does Daisey single out Apple? Because of his devotion to Apple products, his previous reluctance to consider how they are made, and the power and influence of its visionary leader, the extraordinary Steve Jobs. Why, asks Daisey, did Jobs not extend his exceptional leadership talent to turn around exploitative practices and ensure that the rights of workers in Asian supply chains are protected? Why did he turn a blind eye to the poison and pollution that goes with the creation of Apple devices?
Daisey sadly concludes that Jobs failed to apply the vision he originally stood for—and that he gave to his users and to his own staff—to Apple’s supply chain workers. For Daisey, it is a failure of leadership that simple humanitarian measures that could make these workplaces safe are not taken.
In a broader sense, Daisey believes that Jobs could have changed all this, not only for the IT industry, but also for all companies sourcing from Asia. But for some reason, and in contrast to how he so famously forged new paths time and time again, Jobs chose not to take up this challenge. In Daisey’s eyes, somewhere along the line, Jobs lost his way, as many idealists do.
We start out as rebels and pirates and then we go out to change the world. And when we’re not looking we succeed but the world changes us too.
Daisey suggests that Jobs made a calculated decision not to address the conditions on his supply chain—a paradox for a man who was so great. And this is the agony and the ecstacy of Steve Jobs.
In parting, Daisey urges all of us to continue to embrace the genius of Apple design, but also make an effort to understand the circumstances under which these and other devices we all love are made:
If you don’t actually embrace both halves of that then we can’t really begin to understand the true cost of what we make.
He asks us to encourage others to do the same.
latest articles
