Ralph Nader, a five-time failed U.S. presidential candidate, has written an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Here it is, verbatim:

Dear Mr. Cook,

“Designed by Apple in California” has a nicer ring to it than “Assembled by workers paid about a dollar per hour, working 11­-hour shifts, and sleeping eight to a room in the Jabil Circuit corporate dormitories in Wuxi, China.” But, no matter how you spin it on the iPhone packaging, you continue to turn away from the horrid working conditions and miserly pay at your Chinese factories. Just last month, while you displayed ­­ through a two hour event on the ins­and­outs of tiny iPhone 6 and Apple Watch design breakthroughs how capable your company is of solving problems it cares to solve, China Labor Watch and Green America revealed in their newest report, “Two Years of Broken Promises” how you have failed to apply even a modicum of the problem­solving focus you bring for product design to the “serious health and safety, environmental, and human rights violations” at Chinese factories assembling the iPhone.

“That’s the price of affordable phones,” says the corporatist argument. This could be the case, if Apple was just barely profitable. But, as revealed in a recent letter responding to Carl Icahn’s call for more stock buybacks (you respond to billionaire’s pleas much more often than workers’ pleas), Apple is planning to have repurchased $130 billion of its own shares by the end of next year. In short, Apple is so profitable, that it does not know what to do with $130 billion except buy back stock from its shareholders to maybe boost its share price.

There are many alternate ways could have spent its surplus profits. For example, what if Apple decided to invest that excess $130 billion in dignified working conditions and living wages, instead of unproductively using their surplus to buy stocks back from the wealthy? Estimates differ, but according to Chinese labor watchdogs, factory workers in Apple’s supply chain make average salaries of, estimating at the high end, about $500 per month for about 80 hours of work per week. Doubling monthly salaries and cutting hours in half ­­ reforms that would make great strides towards having Chinese factories meet modern, dignified standards of a living wage from a 40­hour work week ­­ would cost ~$1500 per month (~$18,000 per year) for each factory worker. To have achieved these reforms for the 300,000 Foxconn workers who assembled the iPhone 5s would have cost Apple about $5.4 billion annually.

If instead of buying back stock, Apple had used its excess $130 billion to endow a foundation to achieve these reforms, it would have paid out at a conservative five percent interest $6.5 billion annually, enough to double wages and ensure a 40­-hour workweek for hundreds of thousands of iPhone workers, while leaving a $1.1 billion surplus as an annual budget for ensuring top­notch health, safety and environmental standards at Apple factories. The technology company that leads the way in profits and product design could, without changing anything but the amount of excess, unproductive money it uses to repurchase stock from wealthy shareholders, could also lead the way in dignified working conditions, hours and wages. Finally, some of Apple’s Chinese factory workers may become able to buy the iPhones they manufacture.

This goes to show that tolerating poverty wages is not the price we pay for affordable phones. Rather, poverty wages and harmful conditions are a consequence of tolerating outrageous stock buybacks. You had a choice for the $130 billion: living wages for workers or stock buybacks for millionaires? You chose buybacks. Here’s a challenge for the present and future use of surplus profits: why not let the customers decide? Just as they have consumer interests in thinner iPhones and sleeker MacBooks, they also have humane interests in more dignified working conditions and more liveable wages for the workers that make their products. And you, more than any other CEO, have the technological ability to poll your customers about who Chinese workers or millionaire shareholders should receive Apple’s excess money.

Are you scared that they might Think Different™ about this issue than Carl Icahn?

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

MacDailyNews Take: A few points: • The vast majority of AAPL shareholders are not “millionaires.” To claim otherwise is demagoguery, which is, of course, Ralph Nader’s stock-in-trade. • Apple doesn’t have any Chinese factories, hence these are not “Apple’s Chinese factory workers.” • Why would non-Apple companies have any claim whatsoever to Apple’s money over actual Apple stakeholders? • Apple Inc. is a business, not a charity. • Apple has done more to raise conditions and pay for Chinese factory workers than any other company on earth. • Ralph Nader is an illogical kook. His open letter should be placed directly into Tim Cook’s circular file. For more info, Apple Inc.’s Supplier responsibility website is: www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

Related articles:

Fair Labor Association delivers its findings on Apple supplier facilities – August 15, 2014

Green America ‘pleased’ with Apple’s first steps in banning chemicals; urges Apple to go further – August 14, 2014

Apple bans use of 2 hazardous chemicals in iPhone assembly – August 13, 2014

Greenpeace praises Apple for reducing use of conflict minerals – February 13, 2014

Apple confirms suppliers use conflict-free minerals – February 13, 2014

Fair Labor Association sees progress at major Apple supplier Foxconn – December 12, 2013

Apple: 99% of supply chain workers now working under 60 hours per week – March 7, 2013

Foxconn aims to boost China worker participation in its union – February 4, 2013

Conditions at Apple suppliers’ factories in China improving – December 27, 2012

Apple now tracking working hours of over one million supply chain employees – December 19, 2012

Foxconn makes 284 changes including trimming hours, boosting safety following FLA audits – August 21, 2012

Liar Mike Daisey blasts Mossberg, Swisher over Tim Cook interview – May 31, 2012

Foxconn workers talk about jobs, working conditions assembling iPhones and iPads – May 5, 2012

Apple Foxconn petition maker Mark Shields a D.C.-based professional activist – May 3, 2012

Marketplace goes inside Foxconn, posts exclusive look at how an iPad is made (with video) – April 12, 2012

Liar Mike Daisey dumped as Cornish College commencement speaker, will not receive honorary degree – April 9, 2012

Apple supplier Foxconn cuts working hours; workers worry, question why – March 30, 2012

Fair Labor Association releases Foxconn report; looks to correct overtime, safety issues – March 29, 2012

Change.org petition calls for Change.org to retract petition against Apple; says based on Mike Daisey’s lies – March 21, 2012

Foxconn won’t take legal action against ‘This American Life’ after retraction of Mike Daisey lies – March 19, 2012

Foxconn glad Mike Daisey’s lies exposed; says media hasn’t gone far enough in reporting truth – March 19, 2012

Apple and the Daisey affair: Why did the company keep its silence, when it knew a year ago what we know now? – March 18, 2012

Apple firestorm leads Mike Daisey to change his ‘agony and ecstasy of Steve Jobs’ show – March 17, 2012

‘This American Life’ retracts story, says it can’t vouch for the truth of Mike Daisey’s monologue about Apple in China – March 16, 2012

Foxconn: The fire that wasn’t – March 15, 2012

Apple supplier Foxconn again lifts pay for China workers; 16-25 percent increase – February 17, 2012

FLA President: Foxconn factories ‘first-class; way, way above average’ – February 15, 2012

‘Slacktivism’ groups claim credit for Apple supplier audits over a month after Apple originally announced its plans – February 14, 2012

Thousands line up for iPhone assembly jobs at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou, China plant – January 30, 2012

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012

Apple audit led by COO Tim Cook prompted improvements at Foxconn – February 14, 2011

Media blows it: Foxconn employees face significantly lower suicide risk – May 28, 2010