“Apple has launched an investigation into its supply chain after a workers’ rights group alleged that one of its suppliers was illegally employing students in China to make Apple Watches,” Yuan Yang reports for Financial Times.
“The Silicon Valley giant opened the probe last week, after Sacom, a Hong Kong-based human rights group, alleged that Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese Apple supplier, has been illegally employing students to assemble Apple Watches in the Chinese city of Chongqing,” Yang reports. “Sacom said it had interviewed 28 high school students at the Quanta Computer factory in Chongqing this summer. The students said they were sent to the factory by their teachers for ‘internships,’ but performed the same jobs as other assembly line workers and often worked overtime and night shifts, both of which are illegal for student interns under Chinese law.”
“The alleged abuses echo the labour violations uncovered last year in Apple’s iPhone supply chain at its Foxconn Zhengzhou factory, where both Apple and Foxconn acknowledged that student interns had illegally worked overtime,” Yang reports. “The two companies said at the time that they would end the practice of student interns working extra hours.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Keeping these suppliers in ine is obviously like herding cats.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s iPhone X reportedly assembled by illegal student labor to catch up after production delays – November 21, 2017
As far as Apple watch assembly goes, how come student interns do the same job as regular workers who are better trained and more familiar as it is their source of livelihood? There will be quality issues if new people (and students are that) are made to do just assembly jobs.
Quantum is probably paid per watch produced, so they have an inducement to hold down labor costs
MDN should show a picture of Cook with his blindfold on. We all know how comprehensive his investigations are.
Let’s assume the report is true and accurate until Cook proves otherwise. ( Of course he won’t, he’ll just use his cash pile to issue more feelgood PR). All while outsourcing almost all Apple production to Asia, Apple portrays itself as superior to other US electronics firms while using the exact same manufacturing base, following the same unscrupulous labor methods. It claims it monitors these subsuppliers but what incentive does Apple have to do a great job and ensure western democracy level of labor standards? Apple got rich by specifically avoiding western financial and labor rules.
It is very hard to reconcile how MDN and certain MAGA fanboys here praise all things Apple while failing to call them to account for putting Americans out of work. Apple and its subsuppliers are so greedy they won’t even pay prevailing wages, they now use students too. The MAGA boyz badmouth companies like Intel and Microsoft while giving Apple a free pass for screwing its US and Asian labor base.
You really should read Apple’s annual supplier responsibility report before going and making so many unsupported assumptions.
Students are mostly unskilled workers. They need to gain more experience in order to work for such companies. Apple saves on its own consumers. Many students use the custom research paper writing service https://papersowl.com/research-papers to have more time to work. This is the only way out for them. I believe that the US government should pay attention to this problem.