Give Apple Workers a Voice in their Future!

[Omaha Steve]

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/give-apple-workers-a-voice-in-their-future/

Posted on March 23, 2012 by paulgarver

A most unusual joint statement by two major international labor organizations and 3 NGOs demands that Apple respect the rights of Chinese assembly workers to collective bargaining over wages and working conditions. The statement is signed by the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), GoodElectronics, MakeITFair, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), and SumOfUs. pdf file here

23 March 2012

By joining the Fair Labor Association, Apple has embarked on its latest program of auditing its suppliers, ostensibly to investigate and remedy the appalling abuses in its supply chain that have been well documented and widely reported. While Apple claims that it is finally taking the issue seriously, its top-down auditing approach can never be a long-term solution to the systematic violations of labour rights that are occurring every day in the manufacture of electronic products. Indeed, Apple promised in 2006 that auditing would protect the rights of workers in its global supply chain, with results that are all too apparent.

The FLA will likely publish next week some of the results of its audits at Foxconn and the organization will no doubt report that labor rights violations are taking place at these factories. Since violations at Foxconn have been well documented by independent investigators, and in many cases admitted by Apple itself, the FLA could hardly claim that all is well. We also have no doubt that the FLA’s report will be coupled with another round of promises from Apple and Foxconn that they will finally clean up their act. The question, however, is not whether there are severe labor rights problems in Apple’s supply chain. This has been obvious for years. And the question is not whether Apple will promise, again, to fix these problems. They surely will. The question is whether anything will actually change.

Because once the audits are over and FLA has gone home, the workers in the factories will again be left to deal, as best they can, with the brutal labour conditions that are imposed on them. Any hope that conditions for workers will improve rests not on the work of auditors, but on the ability of workers themselves to monitor whether their labour rights are being respected and to push for remedies when they are not.

FULL story at link.

[Pholus]

1. But that interferes with Apple's right to PROFIT!

And that is just not logical.

Sorry, the usual suspects are not picking this up so I thought I'd start for them.