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Apple Responds to Labor Accusations
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Aug 18, '06 04:37 AM
from the due-diligence dept.
from the due-diligence dept.
jlaxson writes "Back in June, a number of accusations were leveled at Apple regarding labor practices in its overseas manufacturing and assembly plants. At the time, Apple denied the allegations and said that it would launch an investigation. Today, the results of the investigation were released. From the report: 'We found the supplier to be in compliance in the majority of the areas audited. However, we did find violations to our Code of Conduct, as well as other areas for improvement that we are working with the supplier to address. What follows is a summary of what we've learned, what's already being done in response, and our commitment to future diligence and action.'"
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Apple Responds to Labor Accusations
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How many Apple employees in California...
(Score:2, Interesting)Re:How many Apple employees in California...
(Score:5, Interesting)Working Conditions: Japan Better than USA
(Score:5, Interesting)Prior to 2000, stories about death by overwork were not uncommon in Japan. The Japanese government recently enacted a law that effectively limits the amount of overtime that engineers may be forced to work. A recent article [iht.com] by the "New York Times" refers to the issue of limiting overtime.
Other articles commenting on this matter suggest that the law restricts overtime by requiring companies to pay engineers increased wages for each additional hour beyond 8 hours per day. According to one source [japanlaw.info], each hour of overtime must be paid 125% of standard pay.
Is there any chance that the California government will limit overtime in the same lucrative way (i.e., lucrative for the employees)?
Audits? What they had seen...
(Score:5, Insightful)IMHO, most audits are scheduled and the management knows about it weeks or even months before the audit. This could buy the management "time" to "instruct" everyone about the audit and do some "beautification". This could also be the time "silence" and "hide" some people too. I'm not saying that the manufacturing facility was dishonest during the audit but given the location of the manufacturing facilities (China), I would not be suprised if they turned out to be dishonest. (who wants to lose a client anyway)
But I really hope that the results of the audit are honest and true for the sake of all those people working there. Minor improvements there could greatly help the welfare of the workers.
Re:Audits? What they had seen...
(Score:5, Interesting)(http://whineymacfanboy.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 30, @10:01AM)
On top of that, according to this bbc report [bbc.co.uk], the audit was pretty lax - interviewing just 100 employees from more than 30,000.
Also, we have this report of the audit - but noone knows where the factory is to independantly verify it.
Can we trust Apple? They just denied the initial report - and now it seems there was some violations. Is this report the complete truth?
Re:Audits? What they had seen...
(Score:5, Insightful)I guess people tends to believe that because of human nature. They see that employers even in country like EU, USA,
Also, they know very well that Apple and IBM and other don't go in China in good heart to help local population to develop. They are no ONG, they are business managed by the same sort of people that showed utter disrespect even to their fellow citizen ( ENRON,
Everybody is happy if everything is fine in this plant but that's always good to remind companies like Apple, IBM that "Chinese are cool with their people" argument is not enough if they don't want to make the cover of Fox News. At least if they outsource my job, I want guarantee that people that get it are treated fairly and improve their life with it, so that at least not everything is lost.
Apple's official spokesman said:
(Score:3, Funny)Electronic Industry Code of Conduct
(Score:5, Informative)The current list of companies subscribing to the EICC [eicc.info] includes Apple.
Look carefully at the list. It is revealing. The only systems companies in that list are based in North America, Europe, and Japan. Acer (a Taiwanese systems house) and Samsung (a Korean systems house) are absent from that list. The only Taiwanese company on that list is Foxconn, a component supplier. Doubtless, tough pressure from IBM and other Western companies essentially "forced" Foxconn to comply with the EICC; otherwise, these Western companies would have dumped Foxconn as a supplier of PC connectors.
No one should be surprised over Apple management's commitment to investigating allegations of worker abuse in Apple's supply chain. Apple is committed to the EICC and demands that its suppliers treat their employees well.
If you had presented allegations of worker abuse to either Acer or Samsung, their managers would have arranged for security to throw you out of their offices.
These days, with laptops and desktops becoming indistinguishable commodities, I use corporate social responsiblity as the deciding factor in my purchases. I will also prefer an Apple laptop over an Acer laptop.
Re:Electronic Industry Code of Conduct
(Score:5, Informative)(http://whineymacfanboy.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 30, @10:01AM)
Apple doesn't build laptops - they have them made for them by Asustek (mostly), using cheap asian labour.
Interestingly, Asustek is not on the linked list.
Also...
(Score:2, Informative)(http://www.audio-galaxy.org/)
what??
(Score:1)But I thought the iPod nano was cool and could be traded for 2 grams of coke on the open market??
What am I missing?
Glad to be an American.
(Score:2)A "normal" workweek maxes out at six days and sixty hours? That's nasty. Things like this remind me how lucky I was to be born in the US.
Re:Glad to be an American.
(Score:4, Informative)(http://www.jerrywong.net/)
Funny, 'cos I could've sworn the engineers that worked at my last place of employment regularly did 80h, unpaid OT, and regularly worked weekends too. Glad to see the Chinese "sweatshop" labour beats out good old fixed-salary American employment!
The problem...
(Score:1)Gotta love Apple.
(Score:2)(Last Journal: Wednesday August 30, @09:59PM)
Pretty interesting if you think the site's reputable.
so what?
(Score:1)if any of you guys have ever actually gone over to china, and talked to the factory workers, then you'll realize that their standard of living's very much high than it was before the factories.
they're buying gucci bags and other luxury items (though at a deep discount)....
Re:However?
(Score:4, Insightful)And if copy a song from a friend, you fail to comply with all the laws. That doesn't make you a serial killer. If you read the article, you will see what the code of conduct violations were, and how they were/are being addressed.