Apple did a
report about its suppliers. I don't know if this would be shocking to anyone, except that its Apple. Apple fans are like a religion, even w/some sense of righteousness, so this stuck out to me.
Fraudulent suppliers, therefore, have compelling incentives to locate in nations and regions in which they can commit fraud with impunity. The best way to evaluate the fraudulent CEOs’ view as to the risk of prosecution for their frauds is to observe whether they take cheap means of hiding their frauds. When the CEOs do not even bother to avoid creating a paper trail documenting their frauds one knows that they view the risk of prosecution as trivial. Nations that are corrupt, have weak rule of law, weak or non-existent unions, poor protections for workers, a reserve army of the impoverished, and have few resources devoted to prosecuting elite white-collar crime provide an ideal criminogenic environment for firms engaged in anti-employee control fraud. The ubiquitous nature of anti-employee control fraud (and tax fraud) in many nations explains why U.S. industries have been so eager to “outsource” U.S. jobs to fraud-friendly nations. Companies like Apple also discovered long ago that Americans often made poor senior managers in these nations because they objected to defrauding workers. Not a problem – there are plenty of managers from other nations that have no such ethical restraints. Foreign suppliers run by Asian managers are increasingly dominant.
A couple things tie in to ongoing discussions, for instance:
The article does not make this point explicitly, but these firms conduct these tests in order to unlawfully coerce their pregnant employees to have undesired abortions in order to obtain and keep their jobs.
But I wonder how cheap our electronics would be if they weren't built by such suppliers? I'm sure people would be pissed about rising prices moreso than better working conditions for others.
Bad ethics increasingly drive good ethics out of the markets and manufacturing jobs out of the U.S. and into more fraud-friendly nations.