What's worse is it's not like that the fruits of their hard labor would be more expensive if they were treated better.
Companies like Apple would just need to cut into their ginormous profit margins instead of being able to sit on literally (edit: hundreds of) billions of dollars in cash.
Relevant to that, there's a good talk by Herman Mark Schwartz [0], in which he reports that total offshore holdings of top 15 US firms exceeds $1 T (more than Obama's ARRA stimulus of $830 B). Excludes onshore cash, and Apple's is a significant fraction of this pile. He argues that monopoly IP rights (originally public goods) held by cash-rich firms leads to lack of real investment.
[0] Wealth and Secular Stagnation: The Role of Industrial Organization and Intellectual Property Rights. https://t.co/ZQ5RgHGdFo
I wonder if the additional cost would even be significant to pay workers better and provide reasonable work hours. How much total, time is spent by actual people working on each iPhone in these factories? Is that even a full hour? I understand the hourly rate is less than $10. So how much difference could paying them well possibly make?
The issue on the article seems to be about too many contact workers during rush time which honestly seems reasonable if not inevitable.
OT: American Factory (2019) documentary was a good watch too.
Edit: Vote with your wallet in capitalism; what goes around comes around to bite ...