My phone is not “smart” by any measure of the word. The upper right menu button fell off a few weeks back.  A couple days after that, while I was waiting for a friend in the pouring rain, my phone had a panic attack and started calling random numbers in its phone book.  It wasn’t long before I couldn’t even hang up anymore.

I want an iPhone.  I want a bright, shiny, new iPhone 4S with the distinctive apple logo on the back.  I want my life to become exponentially easier, and I think iPhone could do that.

There’s just one problem: If I buy an iPhone, I’ll destroy my best friend.

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Let me revise:  If I buy an iPhone, I will abet a system that exploits my best friend.

I met Angel in 2005 when I went to work for the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, a small country located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia.  My community liaison was a tall, gangly twenty-year-old responsible for helping me integrate into my new home. Angel lived up to his name in every way. He was bright, adept, and compassionate. We soon became inseparable.

For many years, Angel dreamed of studying abroad.  As they say in Bulgaria, “Dreams are free.”  It’s their realization that is expensive. To complicate matters, Angel is Roma.  Roma face intense discrimination all across Europe, and their unemployment rate is high – between 56 and 80 percent according to the UNHCR (2009).

Faced with few choices, this past July Angel left for the Czech Republic to work for Foxconn.

Foxconn is a behemoth in the world of electronic components. It is also one of the largest producers of iPhones. Alongside Apple, a number of other well-known technology firms use Foxconn to manufacture their merchandise. If you own an electronic device, chances are it contains Foxconn parts.

Foxconn has long endured allegations of misconduct and employee mistreatment.  Workers are apparently subjected to long working hours with little pay.  In 2010, eighteen Foxconn employees in China attempted suicide.  Fourteen were successful.

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Things seemed to go well for Angel in the beginning. When I would call him on Skype, he would tell me that he was working hard.  His colleagues and superiors thought well of him. Yes, he had to work 12 hours (some days, some nights) five or six times a week, but he was young and strong. He only wished he were making more money.

A few weeks later, he confessed that his hand had become immobile. He’d been packing laptops all day and he was having a hard time moving his fingers. His leg was also troubling him. An old running injury had flared up because he was on his feet all day long.  Not long after that, Angel wrote to say that he’d been working 14-hour days.  His kidneys had been troubling him, but he wasn’t sure why.  He was exhausted, and he hadn’t been sleeping well.  He wasn’t sure he could do it anymore, but he was more worried they might let him go.

“They tried to dock my pay,” Angel told me a couple weeks later.  Apparently there had been a snag in the assembly line, and he didn’t have any computers to pack for a few minutes.  He decided to take a rest in a nearby chair.  During that brief moment, a floor lead walked by and caught him sitting down.  She demanded his supervisor punish him by curtailing his salary. To successfully avoid losing hours-worth of pay, Angel told the supervisor that the lead was lying.

As the days passed, Angel and I barely spoke. When I asked him how he was, he responded, “What’s the point in telling you?”  He told me that he didn’t want to depress me and I should focus on school.  Later, he told me he might lose his job because flooding in Thailand has slowed factory operations.

No one forced Angel to leave Bulgaria, and no one is forcing him to stay at Foxconn.  He could leave any time, but he does not want to.  “I want to make money to study!” he says.  “If I return to Bulgaria, I’ll get married and spent my life looking for mushrooms.”  (Picking mushrooms during the summer is a common way for Roma in Angel’s town to make money.)

As previously mentioned, Apple is not the only electronics manufacturer to contract out to Foxconn.  Other electronics companies, such as Dell and HP, and a host of other corporations, routinely do business with firms accused of exploiting their workers.  Apple has taken, perhaps unfairly, a large share in the blame for Foxconn practices.  This is due not only to the enormous profitability of its product line, but to its image as a socially responsible firm.

Apple‘s policy regarding working hours clearly states, “Except in emergency or unusual situations, a workweek shall be restricted to 60 hours, including overtime, and workers shall take at least one day off every seven days.  All overtime shall be voluntary.  Under no circumstances shall workweeks exceed the maximum permitted under applicable laws and regulations.” Czech labor laws stipulate that no one work over 40 hours per week, and an employee cannot be ordered to work more than 8 hours of overtime in a week. In its 2011 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, Apple admits that observance of legal working hours is where it most struggles.  Sixty-eight percent of practices were not in compliance.  Its health and safety numbers are also low – 28% of supplier facilities were not meeting health and safety standards.  While their Supply Responsibility reports are not as comprehensive or specific as Apple’s, Dell cites excessive working hours as a common issue found in their audits.  HP found high non-compliance numbers in labor and ethics management, among others.

After the Chinese worker suicides in 2010, the late Apple executive Steve Jobs’ response was, “We’re all over this,” meaning Apple was looking into it.  In June 2010, the COO and other executives visited a factory in Shenzhen – where many of the suicides took place.  Dell and HP supported the investigation.  Apple insisted that, since their visit, Foxconn has significantly improved working conditions..  Apple has conducted audits in the Czech Republic.  It is unclear whether HP or Dell have done so.  Foxconn is the Czech Republic’s second-largest exporter.

In a recent e-mail, economist Jagdish Bhagwati wrote that the problem is bigger than any conglomerate, even one as large as Foxconn, “Even if Apple were not to produce in China, or through Foxconn, it would be a miniscule action as Apple, buying [numerous] other things in China… would be supporting China’s deplorable record on rights.  The issue is much… bigger than just outsourcing to Foxconn….  I hope [students] will broaden [their] horizons beyond individual firms.”

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About a week ago, I bought an iPhone.  There’s a good possibility it has a host of internal organs from Foxconn.

I was right.  It has made my life easier.

A couple days ago, I got a message from Angel.  He said he had returned to Bulgaria.  I told him I was happy to hear it.  He told me he was not.  No matter my qualms regarding Angel’s employment, he prefers Foxconn to his life in Bulgaria.  Having only worked for five months in the Czech Republic, he did not make enough to attend university abroad.