“Two organizations that host online petition drives are claiming credit for Apple’s partnership with the Fair Labor Association to monitor worker conditions in overseas suppliers’ factories, over a month after the company originally announced its plans,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.
“The two websites, Change.org and SumOfUs.org, issued press releases this morning suggesting that petitions they hosted were a motivating force behind Apple’s supplier investigation, despite the fact that both publicity efforts occurred after Apple outlined its latest efforts in policing its supplier accountability policy,” Dilger reports. “Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the executive director of SumOfUs.org, stated in a press release that additional details Apple had just released about its partnership with the FLA ‘came just a few days after consumer advocacy groups,’ including her own and Change.org, collectively ‘delivered over a quarter of a million petition signatures calling on Apple to address abysmal working conditions in its supply chain in time to produce an ethical iPhone 5.'”
Dilger reports, “Participants signing the petitions didn’t actually do anything apart from supplying one of the two websites with their name and contact information, a growing movement known as ‘slacktivism,’ which is defined as participating in ‘feel-good’ measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Fair Labor Association begins inspections of Foxconn at Apple’s request – February 13, 2012
Apple joins Fair Labor Association – January 13, 2012
