Apple has built its business sales side by respecting its customers -- putting customers at the top of all product decisions. Yet, Apple has built its products by putting factory employees at the bottom of all manufacturing decisions. They failed to remember the lesson of Ford's "five dollars a day, five days a week".
Apple built a huge cash pile by building low and selling high. After touching all potential customer who could afford and had opportunity to use Apple products, Apple essentially relies upon repeat customers. Apple ignored the need to grow the customer base, starting with the leadership of ensuring that their employees can afford their products.
Hey Apple, spend much of that pile of cash on what you should have been doing: Market to your employees. After all, they suffered to build those unbalanced profits.
Apple sits on $137 billion -- that's $137,100,000,000 -- in cash while paying the people who build Apple products less than $20 per day.
Picture this: In Apple headquarters, there are people who know that they are piling up huge profits year-after-year and also know that they are forcing other people to work in deadly conditions, for ungodly hours, for poverty pay.
Apple's cash pile exceeds the annual revenue of Hewlett-Packard and more than the Gross National Product of the nation of Viet Nam.
Apple cash grew by $39 billion between 1st quarter 2012 and 1st quarter 2013. That's an increase of $39,500,000,000 in just one year.
Apple brags that 200,000 factory employees have taken free classes, even some college-level classes, since 2008, fully paid by Apple.
But, Apple still sits on nearly $200,000 for each of those 200,000 factory employees. That's more than 10 years of pay for these people.
Apple's 1-year cash increase of $39.5 billion could have fully funded a 4-year college degree at America's most expensive universities (or a 4-year college degree and 4-year medical degree if they went to state universities) for each of those 200,000 factory workers.
Apple's $1,000,000,000 advertising budget in 2012 could have more-than-doubled the salary of those 200,000 factory workers.
Apple asked the Washington D.C.-based Fair Labor Association to visit its plants abroad and report on factory work conditions. In March 2012, investigators from the Fair Labor Association reported that Apple factory work conditions are bad ... very bad.
At Apple's vendor Foxconn's factories, workers were subjected to 60-hour work weeks without overtime pay and 70-hour weeks during November-December. The legal maximum work week in China is 49 hours per week and the Chinese government, rightly, announced that it has begun cracking down on these abuses.
How would we feel when shopping for and opening those new iPhone and iPad boxes during the Christmas holiday season if we knew that, while we are celebrating the "Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Man" spirit, the people who are building those iPhones are working non-stop for 12-hours per day, for less than $20 per day, 6 days per week?
The i-Phones and i-Pads that you pay hundreds of dollars each are made by factory employees paid less than $20 per day.
How does that make you feel? How does this compare to the Apple brand? Or, the Apple TV commercials with a young, hip, 21st century guy or its famous "1984" commercial?
What's my point? Am I just panning Apple? No. Please, read on.
Apple has built its business, or at least built its products, on the near slave labor conditions and pay of people who have no alternative.
Apple's and Apple's vendors' factory employees are sacrificing in China, Bangledesh, Indonesia, Viet Nam and other developing nations for a better future for for their children and grand children ... like our parents and grandparents did for us.
This should hit home. We the children and grandchildren of immigrant employees of sweatshop have the opportunity -- and obligation -- to do for the Apple factory employees what we wish someone could have done for our parents and grandparents: Improve work conditions and pay.
History repeats itself in cycles; this is one of them.
Globalization in developing nations now is what American immigrants suffered during our industrial revolution's Guilded Age ... that led to fair labor laws in U.S. by Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. The deplorable factory conditions nearly led to armed revolution in the U.S. ... really ... that's how Americans felt about experiencing it.
Such deplorable factory work conditions and pay has been at the heart of Americans' angst over outsourcing to developing nations. It repeats the American experience on a global stage. Manufacturers make big profits at the onerous cost of fellow human beings' lives.
Manufacturers, successful giants like Apple, have the opportunity to reduce the negative feelings about outsourcing to developing nations and demonstrate that the hard work at lower wages and conditions do not have to be. And this only would cost Apple a fraction of its annual increases in extra cash from the success of those factory employees efforts.
You see, it's smart business.
Apple has reached the pinnacle of the American success story: From garage to gargantuan through products and services that change lives for the better ... and a brand that has defined a cultural personality.
Apple's brand, brought to life in that hip fellow in their TV commercials, is not consistent with the deplorable factory conditions and pay of Apples behavior in reality. We would be more likely expect that behavior from the "suit" fellqw in their TV commercials. Right?
Apple should walk the walk, live its brand, do in the dark what it does in the light.
Apple should apply its brand across the company, all the way to the factory floor. Make the TV ad man the same as the factor floor man.
Apple should treat its employees as well as it famously satisfies its customers.
And, Apple has the money to do it.
By Steven J. Reichenstein
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