“Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook struck back over the fallout from reports of inhumane conditions at the technology giant’s suppliers on Tuesday,” Brent Lang reports for Reuters. “‘Our commitment is very, very simple,’ Cook said at Goldman Sachs’ Technology Conference. ‘We believe every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment free of discrimination where they can earn competitive wages and where they can voice their concerns freely.'”
“He said that companies that work with Apple must honor that commitment in order to keep their contracts,” Lang reports. “Cook acknowledged that problems existed in Apple’s supply chain of foreign manufacturers, but said that the company is working hard to rectify the situation. In particular he cited the reported use of child labor. ‘We think the use of underage labor is abhorrent,’ Cook said. ‘It is extremely rare in our supply chain, but we have worked to eliminate it entirely. Hiring underage labor is a firing offense.'”
Lang reports, “To that end, Cook said that Apple is working hard to identify and eliminate problems and abuses. He said that he and other top managers routinely visit Apple’s factories across the globe and routinely audit their performance. He cited the company’s decision to begin allowing labor inspectors with the Fair Labor Association into its facilities as evidence of Apple’s commitment. ‘No one in our industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple,’ Cook said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple CEO Tim Cook’s presentation at Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference – February 14, 2012
So it is up to Apple to improve work condition and labor rules in China.
What is the Chinese government’s job in the whole labor conditions problem?
just my $0.02
Not to mention all the other high tech companies who use these same Chinese assembly plants. Methinks they are getting a free ride at Apple’s expense.
Do you think Communist China care about its workers’ condition when Red China don’t even value human life?
Yes cos the USA values human life
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/apple-china-seamicro-nbs/?intcid=story_ribbon
Some manufacturing experts (the few I’ve read at least) admit that all Apple’s handheld products, ESPECIALLY the iPhone, are perfect for robotic manufacturing. Hands wouldn’t have to touch the thing except for a couple operations. No, we wouldn’t be hiring 1000’s of laborers like Foxconn, but we would be supplying 100’s of jobs for a high end product factory in robotics, support, software, security, janitorial, construction, energy, and all the community infrastructure that ensues with a high tech factory. Look at any Intel factory.
And it’s a bad thing if Apple improves the standard of labour conditions in its supply chain? If Tim’s as good at enforcing standards in the workplace as he is at inventory control.. the baddies won’t know what hit them!
Has any respected third party verified Tim’s statement? Has no other tech company done more than Apple? I think it’s probably true, but without third party corroboration, this is just an assertion, not a fact.
I would like a respected source to verify this to shut up the haters for once and for all. Anyone got such a thing? Anyone? MDN?
I’m sure if some other tech company was doing (significantly) better, they’d be trumpeting it by now, to get good P.R.
I’m sure there are a few companies that would consider lying about it, but may have wised up after the backlash of phone manufacturers who claimed that their smartphones didn’t have a “grip” problem.
There’s a Reuters report out with the initial impressions of the FLA on the conditions at Foxconn.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-china-apple-idUSTRE81E1FQ20120215
If that doesn’t satisfy you, then you can take my word for it. I’m from China, born there, schooled there, worked there, and had a home there until a year ago. I have a nephew whom I have encouraged to get a job at Foxconn’s new Zhengzhou factory. If he does, I’ll write a report here at MDN. Further, I’ll be there in April, and will swing by the Foxconn plant, as I have to fly into Zhengzhou to get to my father’s ancestral home.
By Cook’s own admission doing the most isn’t doing enough as some of “abhorrent” practices continue. As a consumer of Apple products and investor long on AAPL I’m delighted to see them take a leadership role on this.
While I’m unhappy that the NYTimes took the approach of targeting Apple I think it is fair for the issue to be placed in front of the public. We all know that had they contacted Apple it is unlikely to have helped them. However there have been reports of Apple’s efforts on this.
As to is it Apple or anyone else’s business to push Foxxcon and others to improve conditions in factories abroad the answer is of course.
“Cook said that Apple is working hard to identify and eliminate problems and abuses.”
Let me help you out, Tim. How about manufacturing products in a DEMOCRATIC nation?
The capitalists’ response: “but we must manufacture in communist and highly corrupted third-world countries to achieve our profit goals.”
What BS. There is no reason that 6 billion people on the planet should be living in poverty. While some poverty in the world is truly due to personal sloth, the majority of it is due to this kind of empirical economic servitude, the modern implementation of the colonial plantation. The commanding regime steals the land from the people, the capitalist investor “develops” it to suit his desires, and a bunch of spineless puppet managers offer the only remaining jobs in the area to the displaced people, and usually import more people by hook or crook to keep demand for jobs artificially inflated — offering pitifully low “competitive” wages that are marginally above subsistence level.
These products are sold at the highest prices that first-world consumers will accept, with profit margins that could easily fit a doubling of labor rates with no noticeable impact on the corporate cash hoard. But the prices are high enough that the worker could never afford to justify owning the products he builds. Everybody wins! …except the citizens of the nation who have no real voice in their country, have lost their land, and have no real opportunities for advancement except the sweat-shop economy that his corrupt government and global corportions collude to maintain.
The entrepreneurial economic servant doesn’t have much chance to find freedom somewhere else: first world nations are turning from a welcoming democratic free people to an increasingly paranoid gate-building society dividing itself between two extreme economic classes.
How hypocritical for any American or European enjoying democracy to support corrupt communist regimes instead of supporting fair trade and a legal means of emigration that would at least allow honest workers the opportunity for living wages that not only offer sustinence, but also the chance at education, health, and future prosperity.
Past immigrants to America chose to do this, but the current generation of “job creators”, the economic elites who now hoard the majority of the wealth formerly distributed to the free “middle class”, actively trample these rights & opportunities of not only the undereducated/ungifted/working class citizens of its own nation, but now also of other fledgling countries for one reason and one reason only: GREED.
When you find a Foxconn line worker who uses an Apple product, Tim, please let us know.
When a Foxconn line worker is paid a wage that will allow him to send his child to a first-world college, Tim, let us know.
When you compare the difference in your _bonus_ and the line workers’ _total_ compensation and come up with a moral and ethically reasonable justification to enable such a disparity in human value, Tim, please let us know.
“All the other guys are doing it” and “we’re not the worst offender” doesn’t cut it in 2nd grade, and it doesn’t cut it now. Use Apple’s cash hoard to set a new human rights standard.
@Mike: “Let me help you out, Tim. How about manufacturing products in a DEMOCRATIC nation?”
So you would have everyone unfortunate to be born in a non-democracy suffer economically? How cruel!
You prop up your straw man… “The capitalists’ response: ‘but we must manufacture in communist and highly corrupted third-world countries to achieve our profit goals.’”
…and then you knock it down with: “What BS.” Good one, Mike.
You then stated that, “But the prices are high enough that the worker could never afford to justify owning the products he builds.” And yet, *millions* of Chinese are buying Apple products! I guess they must all be in the overlord class, right?
Then you requested, “When you find a Foxconn line worker who uses an Apple product, Tim, please let us know. When a Foxconn line worker is paid a wage that will allow him to send his child to a first-world college, Tim, let us know.” How many examples should he provide? Is one of each good enough for you? A thousand? Millions? By the way, I’m feeling quite sorry for myself because *I* can’t afford to send my children to first world colleges. It’s so unfair!
Then you said, “When you compare the difference in your _bonus_ and the line workers’ _total_ compensation and come up with a moral and ethically reasonable justification to enable such a disparity in human value, Tim, please let us know.” You’re right, Mike. We should all be the same and get the same. There’s absolutely no reason Kobe Bryant should be earning more than me; I’m human too, dammit!
And finally, we finish with yet another straw man: “‘All the other guys are doing it’ and ‘we’re not the worst offender’ doesn’t cut it in 2nd grade, and it doesn’t cut it now.” Strangely I don’t remember Mr Cook saying or even implying that…
And your final command is, “Use Apple’s cash hoard to set a new human rights standard.” I agree. I hope you’re using your own cash hoard likewise. I expect a report from you next week.
@deasystems:
until the worker in China has a voice in the governance of his nation, then yes, they are suffering economically. The Communist Party is benefiting. The Fortune 500 earnings are doing better than ever. We can point to the great things Apple and others have done to alleviate conditions that used to be even worse than they are today. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that China remains one of the worst records for human rights and corruption, which allows employers to exploit the labor market. If you don’t think western corporations are complicit, you are deluding yourself.
Last year, MSFT supplier KYE assembly plants were investigated by the UK-based National Labour Committee, which found:
– 15-hour shifts
– 34 pence (~ 70 cents US) per hour starting salary
– 86 degree F workroom temperatures
– as many as 1000 workers inside a 105′ x 105′ room
– 14 workers per room in company dormitories, where those who can’t afford to buy mattresses sleep on wooden boards
– significant claims of sexual harrassment against young women workers
– militaristic treatment of workers, including policies which pushed overtime to the point of sleep depravation.
employee interviews included disturbing comments such as “We are like prisoners. It seems like we live only to work – we do not work to live…”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266643/Microsofts-Chinese-workforce-tired-stay-awake.html
This luckily was in a low-toxicity and low-physical-danger assembly plant. Other industries vary in detail, but if it’s not okay for me (an employer) to treat your child (a prospective employee) to these things, what morality is served by ignoring such labor abuses halfway around the world?
in response to your attacks:
– you apparently do not understand that i propose that the economic power of western corporations be used to give workers in communist & dictatorial nations democracy, rather than exploit the labor market in those nations.
– my “straw man” is not made of straw. if you choose to imagine i am making up an unrealistic case, you are remaining willfully ignorant. READ the goddamn human rights investigation reports for yourself if you think human life is so cheap and disposable. How do you think in 2011 the USA can have relatively high unemployment and the Fortune 500 still report the highest earnings ever recorded in history? Because they exploit a labor markets living in non-democratic nations. I believe in FAIR trade, not colonialism under the banner of “free” trade with gated borders. I think there’s room for improvement in labor standards there so that the workers of the world have a level playing field AND rising health & well-being. Tim Cook agrees and is taking very modest steps to improve. Apparently you don’t agree.
– Tim Cook has promised to provide monthly reports of labor conditions. I give him credit for this, and I hope he will do much more to lead the industry toward what the vast majority of the planet would agree on as a decent standard for working conditions. Apple may be ahead of other sweatshops, but it’s still allowing a corrupt government to deny workers decent living conditions, working conditions, and environmental conditions.
– Nobody ever claimed Kobe shouldn’t earn what he does. I’m claiming the _ratio_ of worker to executive pay at the same company (or in same supply chain) should never be allowed to be so excessively disparate as US corporate executives have allowed themselves to be today. Henry Ford set a good example of profit sharing, and no one can claim he didn’ adequately compensate himself or hurt his company’s competitiveness. He created local demand by paying workers enought to actually raise themselves out of poverty. Modern executives are more ruthless in labor exploitation because China allows them to do so legally, and in many cases unknowingly. Out of sight, out of mind. Yes, China is growing a middle class, but only as the corrupt central government planners allow, and wage rases have been swallowed by see-sawing inflation rates that in some areas remains in double digit annual percentages.
– Tim Cook and just about any other executive is on record saying at one time or another that sourcing labor in China was necessary to compete. Don’t pretend this isn’t true, and no, i’m not going to do the research to substantiate my claim. All you need to do is look at trade imbalance and the “made in China” stickers on every product you see in your local store.
– I do, in fact, donate both time and money to human rights causes. I am proud of this. Got a problem with that? Since my company is not publicly traded & does no business overseas & you have no interest in my firm, i owe you no report of any kind. I deliver all reports that are legally required of me to the parties who need them. Apple does the same thing, except it and all its competitors employ economic servitude to some degree to minimize labor costs. It’s no hardship for a corporation to man up and give investors transparent view of operations, especially if you know you’re the best of the industry on non-fiscal measures.