Let us look at an example form of digital labour. Apple has according to the Forbes’ 2000 list of the largest transnational companies been the world’s 15th largest company in 2014.<sup>4</sup> Its profits were US\$ 37.0 billion in 2013 and US\$ 39.5 billion in 2014.<sup>5</sup> In 2014, iPhones accounted for 56% of Apple’s net sales, iPads for 17%, Macs for 13%, iTunes, software and services for 10%.<sup>6</sup> According to calculations, the Chinese labour involved in manufacturing an iPhone makes up only 1.8% of the iPhone’s price, Apple’s profits 58.5% (Chan, Pun and Selden 2013, 107) and Apple’s suppliers, such as the Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision that is also known as Foxconn, 14.3%. So the iPhone 6 Plus does not cost US\$ 299 because of labour costs, but rather because Apple on average earns US\$ 175 profits, Foxconn US\$ 43 profits, and the workers assembling the phone in a Foxconn factory in total US\$ 5. The high costs are a consequence of a high profit rate and a high rate of exploitation that are achieved by organising digital labour within an international division. China is “the world assembly hub” (p. 170) in a system of “global labor arbitrage and […] superexploitation” (Foster and McChesney 2012, 172).
According to the CNN Global 500 2012 list,<sup>7</sup> Foxconn is the fifth largest corporate employer in the world. In 2011, Foxconn had enlarged its Chinese workforce to a million, a majority being young migrant workers coming from the countryside (Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, 2011). Foxconn assembles, for example the iPad, iMac, iPhone, the Amazon Kindle, and various consoles (by Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft). When 17 Foxconn workers attempted to commit suicide between January and August 2010 (most of them succeeded), the topic of bad working conditions in the Chinese ICT assemblage industry became widely known. This circumstance was followed up with a number of academic works that show that workers’ everyday reality at Foxconn includes low wages, working long hours, frequent work shift changes, regular working time of over ten hours per day, a lack of breaks, monotonous work, physical harm caused by chemicals such as benzene or solder paste, lack of protective gear and equipment, forced use of students from vocational schools as interns (in agreement with the school boards) that conduct regular assembly work that does not help their studies, prison-like accommodations with 6–22 workers per room, yellow unions that are managed by company officials and whom the workers do not trust, harsh management methods, a lack of breaks, prohibitions that workers move, talk, or stretch their bodies, workers that had to stand during production, punishments, beatings, and harassments by security guards, and disgusting food (Chan 2013; Chan, Pun and Selden 2013; Foster and McChesney 2012, 119–120, 139–140, 173; Fuchs 2014, chapter 7; Pun and Chan 2012; Qiu 2012; Sandoval 2013).
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4 http://www.forbes.com/global2000/list, accessed on 22 December 2014.
5 Apple SEC-Filings, Form 10-K, 2014.
6 Ibid.
7 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/full\_list/, accessed on 29 October 2013.