ABC's Nightline offered viewers a rare glimpse inside the Foxconn plants that produce Apple products Tuesday night.
Apple has faced increased criticism concerning the working conditions within its factories. Fair-labor and human-rights groups have petitioned Apple to change its policies. And much of the credit for that goes to monologuist Mike Daisey.
In early January, the radio program This American Life aired an episode titled "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory." The episode took a closer look at the issue, based on an excerpt from Daisey's one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In the show, Daisey, a lifelong Apple fan, describes traveling to China to see the conditions of the Foxconn factory for himself.
Mashable spoke with Daisey this afternoon about his thoughts on the Nightline report, the open-sourcing of his play and his new approach to using technology.
About Nightline
As Daisey made clear on his personal blog, he believes the Nightline story itself was an "inherently positive" development because it is bringing greater attention to a very important subject. Still, Daisey does have a few issues with the report.
The first issue is one of bias. As Nightline acknowledged in the segment, ABC News is owned by the Disney Corporation and its CEO, Bob Iger, is a member of Apple's Board of Directors. Moreover, the Steve Jobs Trust is Disney's largest shareholder. (In the interests of full disclosure, Mashable has a syndication partnership with ABC News.)
While Daisey wasn't implying that ABC News or Nightline breached journalistic ethics in creating the report — and he specifically reiterated that — he does question why the news organization was granted access to the story in the first place.
Meanwhile, Daisey has major problems with how the Fair Labor Association (FLA) is performing its audits on Apple factories. Daisey says he has been unable to find anyone associated with any labor organization who would go on the record to say that the audit is being performed in a "correct" or "typical" way.
The FLA denies that it is doing anything to whitewash the results of its audit, but Daisey is skeptical. Ultimately, he believes that real change will not be achieved until true NGOs that are not associated with corporations or governments can start setting the standards and overseeing these labor audits. Beyond that, the corporations themselves will need to be willing to make changes, even if it means giving up profit margins.
Why Just Apple?
Of course, Apple isn't the only company that uses Chinese suppliers and factories to make its products. Foxconn is the world's largest maker of electronic components. The company's major customers include not just Apple but Amazon, Sony, IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Samsung, Panasonic, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, Vizio, Nokia and Intel.
I asked Daisey about the focus on Apple and whether focusing on just one company obscured the issue.
As the most valuable technology company, "Apple is the biggest fish," he responded. "Since the biggest fish was caught, of course it's going to be the primary target."
Moreover, Daisey believes that Apple holds more responsibility than many others.
Labor and factory conditions, he says, "are an industry-wide problem but [they] are also Apple-specific." By that, he means that because of how tightly Apple controls its supply chain — a fact that has been a point of honor for the company — and because its profit margins are so much higher than the industry average, Apple is a bigger part of the problem.
To support his claim, Daisey cited a Bloomberg report that compares Apple's profit margins to those of Foxconn. Over the last five years, Bloomberg's data shows that Apple's margin has more than doubled — while those at one of Foxconn's Taiwanese plants have shrunk.
Open-Sourcing a Monologue
As a "monologuist," Daisey does not work from a script. For This American Life, Daisey adapted his show to fit for radio. Still, the nature of the topic and the public interest in his work convinced him to put together a narrative and outline that others can access, disseminate and use.
Earlier this week Daisey did just that by releasing The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs in an open-source format that anyone can download.
In the first 24 hours, Daisey says the script has been downloaded about 27,000 times. That's an incredible number in and of itself, but it's especially compelling because the audience has been largely comprised of artists, playwrights and others involved in the theater.
Daisey will continue to perform his show across the country but now others can create their own interpretations and presentations as well. Daisey hopes that by opening up his art, more can be done with it.
I asked Daisey about a filmed version of his play and he told me that it's something he's actively thinking about. The production and staging details need to be worked out, but it's certainly something Daisey wants to pursue.
Learning to Enjoy Technology
I asked Daisey if he would continue to buy Apple products. The truth is, he doesn't know. Right now Daisey is using the same equipment he used when he visited China three years ago. Once the prototypical early adopter, Daisey has changed his mindset and now continues to use technology as long as it works. "I find I enjoy my tools more," Daisey said, about leaving the realm of the cutting-edge always-on alpha user.
Still, at some point, his phone will break. Will he get an iPhone? As an informed consumer, Daisey says he'll evaluate his options — he might even buy used equipment — and as a realist he hasn't committed to no longer buying Apple devices. Still, all of this work is clearly weighing on him.
Daisey holds out a bit of hope that by the time he needs to upgrade, the audits and regulations taking place in factories will have left them much better off.
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