First a large enough group has to agree that something is a problem. Then they have to agree there is a solution. Let’s look at the problem of labor abuse in China. First, does everyone agree that it’s a problem? There are a significant number of people that think it’s fine or even a good thing. Some people think that everyone should be willing to sacrifice or be sacrificed for the greater good of the economy.
Okay so we manage to convince the shitheads that humans, even humans in China stuck assembling iPhones, have rights. What’s the solution? Not buy iPhones? Pay more? All out war against an oppressive regime? Countless other solutions exist, and until there’s agreement there, unlikely any of them will take hold.
The apathy is engineered, and can be easily furthered by injecting more disagreement on possible solutions by the people that were never really convinced slavery is bad.
From the owners point of view, if they didn’t make the servers liable they’d just let their friends eat free all the time. So they just make this illegal policy and bet on not getting caught because most employees, especially back before 2010 or so, weren’t aware the practice was illegal. Fuck that owner and fuck that manager too for not supporting OP.