Apple audit exposes serious labor law violations(China)

[RamboLiberal]

Source: MSNBC/AP

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. said it found more than a dozen serious violations of labor laws or Apple's own rules at its suppliers that needed immediate correction.

The findings were outlined in a company report on audits of 102 supplier facilities conducted in 2009. That was a year in which questions about the practices of one of Apple's suppliers came into focus after the suicide of a Chinese worker who held a sensitive job handling iPhones.

-----

Apple said it found 17 "core" violations, the most serious type.

Those included three cases of underage workers being hired; eight instances of workers paying "recruitment" fees that were above the legal limits in those countries; three cases in which suppliers used non-certified vendors to dispose of hazardous waste; and three others in which the companies gave false records during the audits.

In the cases involving underage workers, Apple said three facilities had hired a total of 11 workers who were 15 years old in countries where the minimum employment age is 16. Apple noted that the workers were no longer underage or weren't working for the facilities anymore when the audits were undertaken.




Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35648595/ns/business-world_business/

[Brickbat]

1. Seems to me building in a country that is not China would solve some of these problems.

I could be TOTALLY OFF BASE, though. Hmmmmm.

[boppers]

3. What country doesn't have people who violate labor laws?

Is there one?

[WriteDown]

2. Anyone hear that popping? nt

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, RamboLiberal.

[onehandle]

5. Good for them. There are few companies that would investigate their overseas vendors.

Apple has the Greenest computers and is pursuing more progressive business habits all the time.

[WriteDown]

7. How green is my iPhone?

Took them until 2009 to consider an audit? Man, the true believers are out in force. Let's wait and see what is done to correct any of this.

[boppers]

10. Reading the article helps inform responses.

They've been auditing regularly for four years now.

It started here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5079590.stm

....back in 2006.

[WriteDown]

11. Sounds like a nice little shop of horrors.

"...workers received as little as £27 a month, doing 15-hour shifts making the iconic mp3 player.

Employees at the factory lived in dormitories housing 100 people and outsiders were banned, the paper said."

I am still anxious to see what changes are made. Had this been a Zune factory, we would already be past 100 posts.

[Touchdown]

17. It is a Zune factory... and nobody says shit about M$.

Foxconn International...

Makes...
Nintendo Wii
Sony Playstation 2 and 3
Sony Playstation Portable
Intel Motherboards
Various computers for Dell & HP
Microsoft XBox 360
Motorola Cellphones
Amazon Kindle
Cisco Equipment
Zoostorm Motherboards
Microsoft Zune
GeForce Graphics Cards
Palm Pilots


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

[WriteDown]

24. They make the Zune in this particular factory?

They must be busy! That doesn't sound likely.

[Touchdown]

25. Look at the list. They make it.

It doesn't have to sound likely. It's a fact!

[WriteDown]

27. In THIS factory?

:rofl:

[Touchdown]

30. Yes.

[WriteDown]

31. Sure.

:eyes:

[Touchdown]

32. This very factory

[WriteDown]

34. Amazing that Foxconn has done so well with a single factory...

I admire their efficiency.

[Touchdown]

35. I never said they had a single factory.

I said that the Zune is made in the same factory as the iPod, iPhone, new iPad... among other things.
You really don't think an iPod and a Zune are vastly different devices, do you?

[WriteDown]

37. I have yet to see any evidence that they are made in the same factory...

Please post link.

[Touchdown]

41. Why is the factory so important to you/

The company responsible for these violations is Foxconn. Foxconn makes the Zune as well as iPod. If you are going to blame Apple for the chinese government violating human rights, then you should also be blaming Foxconn, no matter they be in Schenzen, or Warsaw (which they have a factory there too).

Shenzhen Built the 1st gen Zune. The HD is built in it's own new factory in Dao Min.

http://www.zunescene.com/zune-factory/

[WriteDown]

43. So it ISN'T this factory?

You sure changed your story quickly. Thanks.

[Touchdown]

44. Not any more, I said. They still made Zunes well into 2008.

Why is this factory so important to you? M$ is not auditing it's chinese factories, yet you blame Apple for doing just that.

[WriteDown]

50. MS wasn't the focus of a blistering report in 2006 on it's labor practices...

Should it also be very vigilant on its labor practices? Of course.

[Touchdown]

56. That's because the report was written when the iPod was the most famous

product they made. And... it went viral by the Apple haters quick to blame a company they hate and ignore the Xbox or Playstation2 sitting on their shelves, that were made at the same place.

"Should it also be very vigilant on its labor practices? Of course." - But they aren't. Apple is.

[WriteDown]

57. So this is all Apple haters fault?

:rofl:

[Touchdown]

58. You like to make shit up a lot, don't you.

You know that's not what I said. I say what I mean. I don't require your silly reinterpretations.

The story is famous because it went viral by people looking to stain Apple, and ignored the other companies who used that factory as well, just like tort reform lovers latched onto the Stella case to prove frivolous lawsuits... nevermind that the woman's vagina got 3rd degree burns in 7 seconds from McDonalds' 180F degree coffee.

[WriteDown]

59. I would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you Apple haters!

:rofl:

[jmowreader]

61. I love the Liebeck case, you know that?

The last time I did this I was in an orientation session, and the instructor was talking about the legal system. He was talking about all the lawsuits that can be filed against truckers, and mentioned Liebeck as an example of a frivolous one. So...I mentioned a few of the facts in that case, like the third-degree burns, the coffee being 20 degrees hotter than anyone else's on the same street, that the plaintiff was just seeking her medical bills paid for and the jury sent a "message" by awarding her two days' McDonalds' coffee revenues (yes that's right, lurking freepers, McDonald's at the time was making $1.35 million A DAY on coffee sales alone--and this was in the era when restaurant coffee came one way, as a cup of hazardous black liquid), that a cup of McDonald's coffee at that restaurant, as served, was unfit for human consumption, and all the OTHER people who got burned by Mickey D's boiling oil, and he got this weird look on his face..."who would sell coffee like that?"

[DissedByBush]

64. The Foxconn "factory" is basically a city

Workers are expected to live there which is why you see the amenities.

The less they go off the installation the easier to regularly do over 60 hour work weeks.

Foxconn pretty much owns the area too.

Their security is practically the police.

Rather, the police don't much question what their security does.

[jmowreader]

60. This is Foxconn, not Rolls-Royce

They have benches. Each bench has as many people as there are parts on the PC board for whatever they're making. The bench leader hands an unpopulated card to the first worker, whose job is to glue one part in one very specific location. He or she then hands it off to the second person in line who glues another part on, and over and over until the card is populated and put in a bin. After enough are made, they're taken to a soldering machine. At another bench, a group of people is putting the product together the same way the first table did--one item per worker. At a third bench, another group is packaging and palletizing them, and they're finally packed into 20-foot containers for ocean shipment. Multiply that by a thousand benches--imagine a building twice the size of an American big box store full of people doing this--and you've got an idea of how they could pull this off.

Contract manufacturing, man. It's the way of the world.

[Happy Hippy]

8. I agree....

I don't think this is an example of a bad company that doesn't give a rat's patootie. It takes a lot of courage to launch an internal audit like this - for what you may find could severely impact your reputation.

Good job Apple. I love my iPhone.

[jmowreader]

16. A truly "progressive" move would be to reopen the US and Irish plants

OTOH, someone like Michael Dell would hear the Chinese have no bread and ask why they couldn't find their way to the supermarket like anyone who's out of bread would do.

[WriteDown]

28. Bingo...

Notice that Apple is in no rush to move their production anywhere.

[Touchdown]

47. I bet you'd shit your pants if they did.

:eyes:

[WriteDown]

55. They need to go one step further..

and then unionize. Alas, that won't happen anytime soon :(.

[xchrom]

6. Gasp! Labour violations in china?!11 who'd a thunk it? Nt

[MUAD_DIB]

9. There'sa few Apple bashers here; even though the article

states that Apple was leading the investigation.

[WriteDown]

12. If only they had been quick enough to save this guy...

"Apple has been pressured before to answer questions about its suppliers' practices.

Last July, a 25-year-old Chinese worker whose job involved shipping iPhone prototypes to Apple killed himself by jumping from the 12th floor of his apartment building amid an investigation into a missing iPhone. The worker, Sun Danyong, worked for the Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese manufacturer that has long been one of Apple's key suppliers."

[MUAD_DIB]

15. Is Apple superhuman?

The worker, Sun Danyong, worked for the Foxconn Technology Group...


Now did you bother to read what you posted?

[Touchdown]

18. Yah, Steve Jobs caught the red eye and murdered the man himself.

If your outrage about Apple were truly about chinese labor practices, and Apple using them, then that would be one thing, but it's obvious you hate Apple anyhow. Your very words ooze contempt. It's a fucking computer company, not a girl that dumped you.

[MUAD_DIB]

20. The reactionaries that populate DU leave me wondering if

they are sincere in their knee-jerkedness or is they are just pretenders looking for a pissing contest.

[Touchdown]

21. It's the fanboy projection thing.

Accusations of Apple cultism always indicate an irrational hatred for the company, it's products and it's users. So with the natural yin-yang thing, obsessive haters must be battling obsessive lovers. It's all mental.

People who like their computers are not cult members, no matter how many times it's repeated. You'd think MS was Amway the way they throw spurious shit around.

[WriteDown]

26. I have an iPhone genius...

Love it, but not a fan of the monopoly that is worshiped. As a poster in the past pointed out, can you imagine if MS had an "app approval process." Redmond would be a crater.

[boppers]

40. MS has such an "app approval process".

http://www.google.com/search?q=Certified+for+Windows+Vista

Is it a crater, yet? They've been doing the "approval" and "certification" crap for as long as they've existed, using their market share to influence hardware and software vendors.

[WriteDown]

42. Wow, that is like Apples to Armadillos....

That is just indication that the computer is capable of running Windows. It is not that MS is telling certain manufacturers that they are unable to run the OS. In the case of the software, amazingly, even programs that are not certified are capable of running on Windows. They just don't get Windows gold star. Can I install google voice or opera on my iPhone? If not, why?

[Touchdown]

45. You can't because of AT&T.

I know. I work for them.

[WriteDown]

46. I can't use Opera because of AT&T....

Fiends!

[Touchdown]

48. Google voice.

Opera, because of Flash. flash=memory hog & battery drain.

Google Voice because AT&T has carrier exclusivity rights on iPhones.

[WriteDown]

49. Opera Mini does not run any Flash....

I believe it's about to be submitted again to Apple. It's supposed to be 6 times faster than Safari. I wonder what will happen. Obviously, MS should also have the ability to reject apps from operating on their OS. Afterall, iTunes duplicates a lot of functions of WMP 11. :)

You may want to look into what happened to Podcaster.

[boppers]

51. You *can* run anything you want on the phone.

Just like you *can* run anything you want on a X86 PC. You just have to know how...
http://www.google.com/search?q=jailbreak+iPhone

[WriteDown]

53. Yeah, you "can" do that...

but you are technically voiding your warranty if they catch you. I have a few friends that you have done this and it is truly awesome. The things you can do once you free the phone from Apple control are unbelievable.

[WriteDown]

23. Be honest. If this was MS, this would have surpassed 100 posts by now. nt

[Touchdown]

29. I am honest. This is the 6th DU thread in a week bashing ONLY APPLE for

the deeds of a Chinese manufacturer (who manufactures most every consumer electronics you can think of), who operates in a Communist country that has an abysmal human rights record. But... that seems to be all Apple's fault.

[WriteDown]

33. You need to look up any Bill Gates or MS thread posted in LBN....

The negative post count will dwarf anything you've seen.

[Touchdown]

36. I just got off a circumcision thread in GD last weekend.

I'm sure it dwarfs anything about Gates or M$... Unless Gates is advocating circumcision in Africa... which he is.

[WriteDown]

38. Next time try a vaccine thread. nt

[boppers]

52. Please combine your vaccine and circumcision campaigns, Mr. Gates!

Both (arguably, or, at least, generate arguments...) reduce disease, and will make the most epic DU thread, EVAH!

[WriteDown]

54. And hold the press conference in an Olive Garden. nt

[Socal31]

13. Apple's new slogan:

"We charge you 300% market value, and pay our workers 10% market value."

[Touchdown]

19. So child labor is a-ok if you get a good price, right?

I guarantee that children made your cheap computer too.

[lxlxlxl]

14. 11 workers...who were 15 instead of 16

Kudo's to Apple for publishing this. Hope they are not covering anything else up.

Wonder if anyone replying is actually reading the numbers. 11 people is not that bad actually.

[alfredo]

22. We don't know if the child lied about his age, or there

was corruption. If it was the child, then management is off the hook to some degree. They should have been more diligent and should face some form of discipline. the corrupt should be put on the street.

[DissedByBush]

63. Out of over 100,000 workers

Not bad enforcement from overseas.

That Apple investigates, enforces and publishes on its own is GREAT!

Any other companies do this?

Or do they wait for an investigative reporter to find out, make it public and shame them into doing something about it?

[scottsoperson]

39. china is into pure capitalism

scott

[femrap]

62. Like Apple didn't know that

China is a totalitarian state with a human rights record of crap and no worker rights.

Why do you think Apple moved to China? Larger profits. They used to be in Taiwan...a Democracy.

Apple is like all the rest. They just pointed this out before some Human Rights Organization did.