“Apple Inc. (AAPL) uncovered labor violations in its supply chain, including the use of underage workers and abuses of migrant laborers lured by recruiters to work in factories making its devices,” Adam Satariano and Tim Culpan report for Bloomberg.
“Apple conducted 451 reviews of multiple levels in its supply chain covering facilities where nearly 1.5 million people work, according to its eighth annual internal audit. The company said it’s more aggressively trying to remove the use of so-called conflict minerals and has gotten 95 percent of the facilities to keep work to below 60 hours per week,” Satariano and Culpan report. “Apple said it found 23 workers who were under the age of 16 when hired, a drop from last year when 74 children were found to be employed by one manufacturer. The facilities that employed the children in 2013 didn’t have adequate policies to catch falsified documents, Apple said.”
“Discrimination of women was found at four facilities, which Apple said conducted pregnancy tests,” Satariano and Culpan report. “Apple said it found several instances of workers being tricked into paying excessive fees to recruiters in exchange for a job with its suppliers. The workers, typically from Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, are then forced to work to pay off the debt, a violation of Apple’s policies that limit how much money recruiters can collect.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple confirms suppliers use conflict-free minerals – February 13, 2014
Just wait until the NYT figures this out in a few months and pretends Apple’s report doesn’t exist.
This is excellent for Apple PR, as well as the folks indirectly working for Apple, as opposed to some third party uncovering this usual Asian worker abuse BS.
Only 23 individuals under the age of 16 when hired out of 1.5 million? Just 0.00153% ? That is shockingly low. If true, it clearly demonstrates that Apple has forced its suppliers to solve the “underage worker” problem they *supposedly* once had.
It would surprise me if the major U.S. companies employing people in the U.S. have that low a percentage (that’s less than two people per 100,000 employees!)
And I wish I worked less than 60 hours per week! Well, maybe not. I’m a certified workaholic even at my age.
Where is the same reports from the other manufacturers?
It’s never good prop yourself up by comparing yourself to others but lets take a look at those Samdung suppliers. Someone should demand they look at the suppliers for Dell, MS, HP, Intel, Amazon just to name a few.
Good for Apple and maybe now it’s time to smear a little mud on the competition. Of course they won’t but at least it’s worth a try. Maybe Apple needs to start paying off some of the tech writers and stock analyst like Samdung does.
Completely unfair expectations.