Slashdot Mirror
Apple Enforces "Supplier Code of Conduct" After Child Labor Discovery
reporter writes "Since 2006, Apple has regularly audited its manufacturing partners to ensure that they conform to Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct (ASCC), which essentially codifies Western ethical standards with regard to the environment, labor, business conduct, etc. Core violations of ASCC 'include abuse, underage employment, involuntary labor, falsification of audit materials, threats to worker safety, intimidation or retaliation against workers in the audit and serious threats to the environment. Apple said it requires facilities it has found to have a core violation to address the situation immediately and institute a system that insures compliance. Additionally, the facility is placed on probation and later re-audited.' Apple checks 102 facilities, most of which are located in Asia, and these facilities employ 133,000 workers. The most recent audit of Apple's partners revealed 17 violations of ASCC. The violations include hiring workers who were as young as 15 years of age, incorrectly disposing of hazardous waste, and falsifying records. In Apple's recently released Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report (PDF), they condemned the violations and threatened to terminate their business with facilities that did not change their ways."
i thought they couldnt get any lower
The kids get free black turtlenecks to wear after 10 years of employment. Sounds good to me.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's amazing that the mainstream public can be this economically retarded, but it isn't very surprising given that their education is controlled by the government - the very entity that benefits from these sorts of regulations.
Individuals, including children, choose to work in "sweatshops" because that is better than other alternatives available to them: backbreaking subsistence agriculture, crime, prostitution, etc. Simply outlawing free market in labor will not make schools, hospitals, and personal wealth rain from the sky! Free market economies are able to go from child labor and sweatshops to banks and skyscrapers in just a couple of generations, while the "well-intentioned" socialist cesspools remain poor except for the handouts of others (often too through government force).
Hiring 15 year olds is illegal? Quick, someone tell the authorities about McDonalds!
That is, does one expect them to actually follow the rules? No. The ASCC is a whitewash given that it has no real ability to exact meaningful punishments.
Those are about 133,000 jobs on the wrong side of the US and Western Europe - where they might actually respect the law for once.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In these countries, many families struggle to put food on the table. By allowing their children who are able to work go to work in the factories, these families are better able to care for each other.
These are dangerous smelting factories or weapons manufacturing plants. They are electronics assembly lines. Lines which could essentially be replaced by robotics except that humans are cheaper. No kid is in danger of having his arm sliced off.
Enforcing Western-style regulations in Western countries makes sense, but in poor countries, having an extra set of hands working besides mom and dad is a real boon.
I can't believe I'm reading about Apple, of all companies, enforcing regulations like these overseas. It's more White Man's Burden than Protect The Children. But really, when you think about it, those two concepts are essentially the same, and it reeks of condescension.
The problem is that the countries that still have it as a problem also have a government-business relationship that is "too friendly". Those factories could willfully ignore law and kill their critics.
Just because it may be their only practical choice does not invalidate that it is a bad one. Rewarding those businesses for pursuing that government policy is not going to make it any better.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Exactly. It's real easy to tell others how to live when you don't have to deal with their issues - or stand in their shoes.
It's real easy to tell someone to get a decent pair of shoes when you can afford it and it's especially insulting when you don't offer the other person to buy a decent pair of shoes for them.
Different cultures have different ages where they need to become self-sufficient, or become responsible to help out with the family income. This whole 18 or 21 year old "western" ideal of adulthood is destructive to our own development in many ways, and should not be forced onto other countries with drastically different ways that the people grow up.
If they want western ethics then get suppliers in countries that have laws and in general follow those rules.
Unless they are incompetent, they expect them to break Apples rules and are OK with this since they will also supply them with cheap labor.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
From page 13 of the summary report:
[quote]During most of our audits, suppliers stated that Apple was the only company that had ever audited their facility for supplier responsibility.[/quote]
IOW, other companies don't give a shit about abusive labor practices from their suppliers. They might pay lip service but no one's really doing any audits to actually check. Apple, OTOH, is going out there and digging around to make sure their suppliers are in compliance with labor and environmental standards.
New low? This is leadership in defining a more responsible way to do business.
Not supporting such government-business relationships is not condescending at all. In a way, it is doing them a favor by providing the right incentives to end it by cutting outside support.
They aren't going to use robotics if those extra set of hands keeps them from political pursuits. That is, political pursuits that bring an already unstable country to a ill-timed(for them, well-timed for the US) regime collapse.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Whenever I hear underage employment I always wonder is it really all that bad?
In countries that practice it they have children starving on the streets, so no matter how bad the conditions are relative to how we would want the conditions to be I am sure the children would rather work for cents a day then to starve to death on the streets.
Now I am sure in many cases it is doing the children a favor to stop underage employment, but I always wonder how many children have starved to death because of Western ethics.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
hard drives, ram, cpu too?
I'm sure they are up to it as well
...a bad choice is not made any better if you have no alternatives.
The age wouldn't be an issue if critics didn't end up dying, and those who worked there didn't resemble the output end of a meat grinder. That's not condescending at all to ask that critics be allowed to live, and those whom work there have some actual choice in the matter.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
for not sensationalizing this story. Many other news sites have titles such as "Apple admits to using child labour" or "Child abuse under Apple's watch". Pathetic attempts to grab eyeballs when in reality Apple is the only organization (that I have heard of) that actually audits its manufacturing partners in a proactive manner.
These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled ipod workers. They're essential. Essential girls. Their fingers polish the insides of ipod metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 8GB ipod casing? You tell me. You tell me!
"In general," Apple said in the report, "annual audits of final assembly manufacturers show continued performance improvements and better working conditions."
Or translated into English, "it used to be we didn't care, but now we have announced once a year inspections, we find that each time they get better at hiding violations from us".
I wonder what the Toyota scandal will do with all of this however. They are paying the price for random outsourcing to safe some bucks and it is costing them a fortune and decades of good will as the most reliable cheap car maker are shot to hell. (And yes I am aware that the problems occurred in the US, but that is a low wage country compared to Japan.)
When you outsource everything, what is left of your company? And once you put in place all those checks to make sure people half way across the world are working as you want them, how much have you actually saved?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Using moderation to stifle the free exchange of ideas is exactly the type of thing I would expect from an anarcho-socialist like you.
Use your ability to argue, don't depend on others to win debates for you.
That's anarcho-socialist-fascist.
Geeeze you really need to learn you're polico-name-calling-insults!
South Korea is a notable example of this, because it's right next to North Korea, which shares the same culture and history, up to 1950. Then the country was split in two and each half adopted a different economic orientation. Look at the results today.
So Apple is to give a new code of conduct for it's suppliers, I too have a code of conduct, "Don't buy Apple products." I think mine trumps Apple's code of conduct, whatever their PR department says.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is all nice of Apple, but why not giving 133,000 jobs to Americans that need them.
I am happy a 15 years old is not going to be exploited in China, but I would be happier seeing Apple being a true American corporate and not a hypocrite firm that outsources jobs overseas
In its annual supplier report, Apple has admitted that its Chinese factories have employed children to build its gadgets. "Ones with a particularly refined sense of aesthetics."
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor. Young geniuses sat in their Aerons and levitated components into place with the powers of the mind, burning the famed Apple logo into the back of the assembled device with but a glance of terrifying but controlled power. Some lunches, with only an hour's break, would involve wines of less than ten years' vintage.
Competitors were outraged. "We are shocked, shocked to hear of Apple's ruthless exploitation of the chilll-drennn," said Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. "But then, what do you expect when they actually ask their suppliers about this stuff. Don't ask, don't tell! That's what made the 360 great!"
Apple's Chinese manufacturing facilities were the site of controversy last year when one young worker at Foxconn, who had teleported an iPhone home overnight, was found to have committed suicide by leaping from the top of the building, first breaking his own neck, and tearing out all his own fingernails on the way down. He was found with Apple logos carved into his back, obviously also self-inflicted. "A tragedy," said the report.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
With the mac pro costing about $1000-$1100 more then a pc with a much better video card and more ram IT SHOULD BE MADE IN THE USA!
Apple laptops also are over priced $1500 for a 13" screen and on board video? $1700 for 15" and on board video is just as bad! with price like that they should be made in usa to at lest make the price not look as bad as it does now.
and the mini at $800 also shows it as well.
The imac also show it as well $1500 for core 2 and 256 vram?
I hope apple does not only use the build in i3 / i5 video in there low end systems to save even more at the same price.
I love cracking jokes about children being forced to make our crap and defending sweatshop labour as much as the next guy, but some of the comments on this story have my stomach turning. If the choice is between having families out of work and having them work for little money, then fine; run the factories. But that is a very selective framing of this issue and is utterly uninformative. The developed world (not "the West", which is a meaningless term) and our corporations interact with the third world in an extremely complex way which the above scenario completely oversimplifies.
Between extremes of us taking advantage of cheap labour, and us setting the scene for that cheap labour to exist, we are far closer to the latter option. See the progress of the IMF and the World Bank for examples.
I know the rebuttal: Well, how would you feel about paying 10x as much for your electronics !11!!1 But even if costs would escalate that high - and they wouldn't because employing our own workers instead would have loads of offsetting, positive effects for our economies and increasing salaries for impoverished workers by a factor of 10 only increases total costs by a portion of that - I'm more comfortable with that than saying that some people's lives are essentially worthless because of where they're born. And I suspect that if consumers were forced to really consider how their dollars 'supported' poor economies, maybe if all stores had to show in-store videos of their factories chugging along, then paying a little more for a higher quality product and higher quality lives wouldn't seem so bad.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Do any of the other manufacturers of consumer electronics do this kind of audit?
SteveB.
at least mac pro's use xeon chips. Most "workstations" from HP and Dell use lowend cpus. I expect xeon or opteron chips in workstations or at least an i7. I don't think you considered the CPUs. I agree the RAM and video cards are a joke.
IT SHOULD BE MADE IN THE USA!.
I agree. The product would cost more and the quality would be worse... BUT IT WOULD BE MADE IN THE USA!
My "workstation" doesn't require a needlessly expensive CPU. It actually works out much better overall that way.
My $600 machine does a whole lot more than Apple's $600 machine that way.
For what Apple charges, they could build their machines in the US or Europe.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Did they not get caught doing this same crap, and sing the same tune a few years back?
I seem to remember this from 2 or 3 years ago... same tune... do it again and we won't do business with you.
Apple is full of hot air... who will make their Chinese overpriced computers for them if they don't use these suppliers?
Stuff like this: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/06/71138
Ya.. Apple is really going to do something about it this time for sure... mmhmmm.....
"they condemned the violations and threatened to terminate their business with facilities that did not change their ways.
In other words, no change at all. Just enough press coverage and feigned outrage to cover themselves and shift the blame if required to do so at a later date. But nobody got fired. Nor did any contract get canceled.
I am shocked, (shocked!) to discover capitalists exploiting people for their own profits! Shocked I tell you!
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
Catcalls:
Um, if you outsource your business to the 3rd world you know from the start your workers will not be treated like kings.
Kudos:
Apple HAS *some* standards and DID something about it. You can't say that about too many businesses, especially IT businesses, these days.
Apple "condemned" and "threatened". Big deal. Wake me up when they actually fire someone.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I don't think apple would have a problem with documented 16-year-olds working 2-8 hours a week while they were doing well at school. This has to do with kids working full time or more, particularly if under terrible working conditions. In terms of safe disposal, it has other implications with terrible health effects for certain destitute communities. (Google it.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Almost everything you eat, wear or buy comes from overseas, where child labor, or slave labor conditions exist.
Slavery has never been eliminated, only renamed and exported where we wouldn't have to look at it, or more importantly, pay for it.
Apple suddenly realizing this is like suddenly noticing that the sky is blue. All the rest is PR kaka.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No, it's because the middle class would rather pay $30 for a DVD player instead of $300.
Using cheap labor allows you to make cheaper products which sell more. It's as simple as that.
Henry Ford did not agree. He insisted on paying enough so his workers could afford to buy the cars they built.
Unfortunately, this simple market economics does not work when there are foreign governments that have no interest in letting their own people prosper too much. By keeping their currency artificially low and import tariffs high, they allow their export products to have lower prices at the expense of costlier imports.
In the long run, this policy is totally insane for the country. I wonder where China would be today if their people could buy the products they export. Only one thing I'm sure of, it would not be the Communist party in power.
I wish there was a -1 Idiot mod.
-- Linux user #369862
15 year old "kids" working is child labour?
I also worked in the school holidays at that age.
Anyone even considered that they may already have finished school?
Depending on the school-system (entering at age 5 and having 8-9 years of school) they may well be lucky to get a job straight after school.
... or read the book "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.
This goes much further than hiring a 15 year old. Here's a couple of excerpts:
"The minimum age for employment or work shall be 15 years of age, the minimum age for employment in that
country, or the age for completing compulsory education in that country, whichever is higher." - It is the local standards enforced.
"Except in emergency or unusual situations, a workweek shall be restricted to 60 hours,
including overtime, and workers shall take at least one day off every seven-days. All overtime
shall be voluntary."
It goes on an on to specify things like safety guards on equipment, safety clothing, drinking water, toilets, etc. Things I've had even at my worst job.
Here's a generic description: "A sweatshop is a workplace where workers are subjected to extreme exploitation, including the lack of a living wages or benefits, poor and dangerous working conditions, and harsh and unnecessary discipline, such as verbal and physical abuse. Sweatshop workers are paid less than their daily expenses, thus they are never able to save any money to invest in their futures. They are trapped in a never-ending cycle (Embar, pars. 2-5)." and "Children between the ages of 10 to 16 are working up to 14 hours a day in factories in Shenzhen. It was also recorded that girls work in awful conditions for 13 to 14 hours a day from 7 a.m.- 10 p.m. with two one-hour breaks. "
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor.
Yes, and after the kids were thrown out of the factory, they went back to spending all day in a rice paddy with water up to their waist in both in winter and in summer, working sun-up to sunset.
15 years old is not too young to work, as long as the work is voluntary.
I got my first real job working at a gas station when I was 14 , but before that I was mowing lawns, shoveling snow, putting up hay, digging ditches, and probably a dozen other truly backbreaking activities. I did all of this because I wanted things that I couldn't afford if I didn't work. Things like a guitar and amplifier. Then later a car and gasoline. It would have sucked if I couldn't have worked when I was a kid.
What about Korea?
South Korea has historically retarded the entry of younger peoples into the workforce via an emphasis on compulsory education.
If anything, South Korea is would be one of the better examples for why widespread child labor is not a necessary stage for rapid industrial development. In 1955, South Korea had a per capita GDP lower than that of most African nations. 55 years later, it is among the largest economies in the world and one that is knowledge based, at that.
All without a significant child labor as a path out of poverty phase.
But the rice! Each grain! Exquisite!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
lets see (grins evil overlord) how can we get the populace as stupid and ignorant as possible
YES
we'll stop them using a computer all together
THATS right you too can join in and be STUPID
that would clear up the confusion about what solves child labor:
http://mises.org/media/1160
Tip: it is not government, law, or regulations that eliminates child labor. Only an increase in the quality of life can increase the quality of life (dur) enough so kids don't have to work, and can invest their time to a more profitable future. Whatever is forced upon a people by their government or slavemasters alike cannot better their options, but will only hinder them from their original path.
What everyone here that says they're against child labor is not child labor, but slave labor. Children being forced to work is not child labor, it is slave labor just as if the child was an adult.
Before the industrial revolution, children were already working in subsistence farming, they only shifted to factory work, and times became better afterwards not due to government forbidding people to work hard, but by the raised standards of living that ensued from industrialization.
If you want a rule of thumb to follow, it is: force = bad, voluntary = good.
...manufacture their junk in their home country and largest market if they want to enforce US standards? Oh wait, they don't want to meet us pay standards, just appear that they give a crap.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
by... employing people in countries that do violate these standards. Apple, the solution is simple.. Employ more Americans.
Fact of the matter is it does not matter WHAT Apple prints or says or whatever. Many will simply ignore whatever they see as true or not depending on if it supports or contradicts their idea of what reality actually is.
The Trolls on all sides eat this stuff up.
According to a recent Globalpost article (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/100225/silicon-sweatshops-apple), at least 62 workers are sick from toxic chemical exposure while handling hexane, which is used to clean the TFT screens used in Apple (and Nokia) products.
If Apple makes efforts to circumvent the Westerners' ethical problem of child labor, shouldn't they make hundredfold efforts to ensure that proper safety precautions are used in these factories?
I would all rather that the children and their parents eat dirt and live in cardboard huts instead of contributing to their family's welfare. Sickening.