A boycott may be effective to improve working conditions. The difference between a US factory and a foxcon factory is not a binary thing: surely, nobody would a

A boycott may be effective to improve working conditions. The difference between a US factory and a foxcon factory is not a binary thing: surely, nobody would argue that increasing the wages of those workers of say 0.0001 % will make their situation worse. Would 0.01 % ? etc… How much would it cost Apple to make sure they can use alcohol instead instead of n-hexane ? So while it is indeed not feasable to have working conditions similar to the West from day one, it certainly is to improve their conditions. If it ends up costing less to Apple than the PR issue of not to, Apple will do it. Also, the article that was everywhere last week showed how the advantage of Chinese factories was not just low wages, but a capacity to get a new production line in no time. This pust those factories at an advantage, and gives them a large bargaining power. I would not be surprised that this kind of advantages will actually be used as a bargaining chip by some chinese local gvt to force Apple to contribute to working conditions improvements. Because Apple cannot produce ipods tomorrow in Vietnam.