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Independent Audit Finds Foxconn Violates Chinese Work Rules
doston writes "The first independent audit of Apple's supply chain found excessive working hours and health and safety issues at its largest manufacturer, piling more pressure on the technology giant. This investigation targeted Hon Hai Precision Industry which is known as Foxconn. The company says they will try to stop their overtime criminality by July, 2013. Will the public ever sour on Apple devices in light of the constant media attention on supplier working conditions?"
No, because they'd need to sour on all electronics to avoid Foxxcon's (and its ilk's) moral taint.
It's not an Apple problem, it's an industry problem, and Apple does better than most at identifying and correcting these conditions.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Anyone going to apply the same pressure to ALL the other computer/phone companies that use the same facilities? I know Slashdot has a extreme anti-Apple bias, but does it blind you to the obvious? The computer you're using right now has parts that were made by Foxconn.
So the company known for its ability to immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, ... and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day is now going to take 487 days (or 1 year, 4 months) to make this change?
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
China has work rules!?
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
How is apple overcharging their customers? They sell their products for a certain price and customers choose to buy it over similar competing products. Apple's gross margin last quarter was 44%, Samsung's was 32%, so yeah, apple charges a larger premium, but if the customer is willing to pay that price Apple can and should charge as much as they want.
I see you don't understand the nuance of the supply chain. The reason that iPhones and so on (and other devices like Xboxes, HP computers, Playstations, Android phones and other things made in that same factory as the iPhone) are not made in the US isn't really a wage issue, it's a worker numbers issue, as well as a logistics problem. All the pieces that make a product are made nearby (or a great many of them are), so moving the assembly to the other side of the world creates huge issues unless there is a very specific reason that makes it economically viable (like in Brazil, where enormous import taxes have made it favourable to build an assembly line inside the country). There are some instances where a component is made in a different place and then shipped (for example, Samsung's Texas facility that is making ARM chips for Apple), but generally minimising the need to ship components around *really* cuts the cost of assembly (far more than the cost of paying hypothetical US factory worker wages, of which there aren't nearly enough to staff an operation of that size anyway).
They use China because it is cost effective to do so - they have a strong manufacturing base, a large and upwardly-mobile workforce (since they are going through their industrial revolution right now), a growing middle class and a solid infrastructure. The claim that they're using China to dodge environmental regulations is laughable - one of the first companies to limit the amount of expanded polystyrene used, the use of low-lead solder, the removal of PVC from cabling and plastics... and all this before Greenpeace "shamed them" into "making changes" (ie, just telling people what they were doing).
Putting Apple in the "Big Evil Corporation" list over something like this is just enormously naive. Globalisation is not going away, nor are Apple the only ones doing it (nor are they the "worst offenders" by an extremely long distance). This doesn't give them a free pass - they need to demand better conditions and so on (and they are doing so), but the world is not the black and white super simple "everyone is either a Jedi or a Sith" Star Wars fantasy.
What a loaded article. It sounds like Foxconn's working conditions are actually much better than most companies in China...
Attack of the Apple apologists. What it actually shows is that Apple in fact has done little to correct the widely publicized working condition problems in its supply chain. Whether these problems exist in China or anywhere else is immaterial: Apple is the beneficiary of these oppressive labour practices in any case. Now Apple is faced with trimming its fat margins as opposed to its usual strategy of hammering its suppliers in underdeveloped economies in order to maintain its precious stock price. As it should have done in the first place, but reality distortion is Apple's entrenched culture. In the best case Apple begins to purge that ethical and moral rot along with some of the other less admirable legacy of its late founder. But the proof is action, not spin, and so far we have just seen spin from Apple.
And bear in mind that the Fair Labour Association is on the payroll of Apple and other perps. In other words, the primary purpose of the FLA is to "accredit" the supply chain on behalf of the corps that pay its bills. What is the real truth that would be revealed by a truly independent watchdog?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
What, exactly, is your point?
Apple gets singled out due to its extraordinary profile and profitability. That is inevitable and entirely legitimate. The fact that Foxconn also happens to be central to the supply chain of practically everything with a power cord only highlights the vast scope of the issue. Our electronics are the product of exploitation, abuse and the systematic avoidance of regulatory scrutiny, and it is high time for that to end.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'm sure the millions of extremely poor subsistence farmers in China who have an unstable food supply, outdated housing and plumbing, and no healthcare are super appreciative that nice white folks like yourself know what's best for them and prevent Apple from exploiting them with a job that pays several dollars per hour and provides comfortable shelter and plentiful food.
Will the public ever sour on Apple devices in light of the constant media attention on supplier working conditions?
You mean, kind of like how in the 90s, people stopped buying from a company with a certain swoosh on their shoes?
Oh wait, that didn't happen, and Nike's dividend has grown from $0.03 to $0.30. That, despite having relatively well organized protest groups, including groups at over 40 universities. Protests and media attention aren't going to do much. There is zero financial motivation for Apple to make more than a token, symbolic move to improve working conditions. That is enough to appease the minds of their customers. Anything else they do is bonus.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>>>Every computer, laptop, and Smartphone you own was either manufactured by Foxconn
No actually my Commodore was manufactured in the USA.
Oh you mean CURRENT products..... well yes that's probably true. My windows computer is 10 years old but probably does have some Foxconn parts inside it. HOWEVER apple is supposed to be better than the other manufacturers. They are supposed to be the "good" alternative for us hipsters.
And they really aren't. Their OS is better but not their hardware.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I wonder which company asked FLA to perform an independent audit at Foxconn. That wouldn't be Apple. That couldn't possibly be Apple. Guess what: It was Apple.
Interesting choice of words, "overtime criminality". So people are working 60 hours a week and get paid for overtime. So what are things like in IT in the USA? I hear there are people working 60 hours a week as well, and not getting paid for overtime. In the games industry, there are people working 80 hours. In the medical profession, 80 hours seems to be the average in the USA (at least according to Wikipedia).
Turns out you can have your electronics made elsewhere. China is not the only place. They are the cheapest, but when you start paying for higher quality goods, they can be made in other places, often ones with not only better worker conditions but higher quality controls. For example my receiver is made in Japan. The lower end models are made in China but the high end stuff is made in Japan (it is a Japanese company). My speakers were built in Ohio (with the drivers themselves made in Denmark) or the UK (with UK drivers) depending on which ones you are talking about. My TV is less high end, but it was still built in Mexico.
Well guess what? Apple charges high end prices. Don't try and say they don't, their massive profits, massive amount of money in the bank is evidence they do. They can afford to move their production somewhere else if they want. It would mean less profits though.
I'm not saying they need to, I'm not playing morals here. I'm saying that this bullshit of "Oh they can't do anything!" is just that: bullshit. They charge the kind of prices they can produce their shit elsewhere and have the kind of money that they could set up their own production lines presuming they couldn't find anyone who could meet their needs.
However it would mean trading off some profits.
So if I do something illegal and it would cost me time and/or money to just to stop being illegal then I don't need to stop! I guess I should start stealing stuff because if I stopped I would lose money compared to when I didn't steal!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
You gotta go down and join the union
You got to join it by yourself
Ain't nobody here can join it for you
You gotta go down and join the union by yourself
Working in the factories would kill a dog
Working on the belt line killed your soul
Working in the limestone and cement quarries withered your lungs
Working in the cotton mills shot your legs and feet all to hell
And working in the steel mills burned up your spirit
Like a gnat that lit in the melting pot
But out of this whole mixing bowl of hell and high water
The working folk have marched against Billy clubs,
Against machine guns
And they sang their way through the whole dirty mess
Woody Guthrie
What's mildly amusing about this is that some of those worker complaints we heard about were the worker's demand for more overtime.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My phone is made in Taiwan. I don't know who HTC uses, maybe internal, but it is of Taiwanese origin, not Chinese. My computer does have some Chinese parts in it, namely the powersupply and motherboard, however neither are produced by Foxconn. Not saying the companies that made them (CWT and MSI) are any better, but there you go.
The rest of the components are different countries. My CPU was fabbed by Intel in Chandler, Arizona and packaged by Intel in Costa Rica. My RAM was made by Micron (under their Crucial brand) in the US. Not sure where the chips on it came from, they have plants in the US, Europe, Japan, Israel, Malaysia and so on (none in China yet). My SSDs were made by Western Digital in the US, my HDDs by Western Digital in Malaysia.
None of this is because I'm trying to avoid China or anything, just pointing out that a computer is much more international than you might think. Some components you have no choice on country. Any 32nm Intel CPU was fabbed in the US, since that's where they only 32nm fabs are. They can be packaged in a few places though. Any powersupply was made in China, they have the only people who do, like Seasonic and CWT (only a few companies actually make PSUs, the rest just spec them to order). RAM you can get all over.
If you decide Foxconn is a company you don't approve of, you can avoid them, though it'll likely take some doing.
However I think a big problem people have is that Apple charges premium prices but uses cut rate manufacturing. You can't say they don't charge a premium, how do you suppose they maintain those massive profit margins?
Often when you get premium priced goods, you get better manufacturing too. For example I like Denon receivers. Their cheaper stuff is all made in China. Fair enough. However their higher end units are made in Japan. I suspect part of it is to maintain better quality control, and part of it is just because Denon is Japanese and their Japanese market may care about that.
They're basically saying "We know we're committing crimes and we plan to continue to do it until July 2013
Spin can go a lot of different ways.
From the article:
The FLA found few safety violations, noting that the company had already dealt with problems like blocked fire exits and defective protective gear.
The FLA found that many workers at the Foxconn factories want to work even more overtime, so they can make more money. Foxconn told the FLA that it will raise hourly salaries to compensate workers for the reduced hours.
Heerden said that it's common to find workers in developing countries looking for more overtime, rather than less.
"They're often single, they're young, and there's not much to do, so frankly they'd just rather work and save," he said.
The auditors examined one years' worth of payroll and time records at each factory, conducted interviews with some workers and had 35,000 of them fill out anonymous surveys.
Apple has started tracking the working hours of half a million workers in its supply chain, and said that 89 percent of them worked 60 hours or less in February, even though the company was ramping up production of the new iPad. Workers averaged 48 hours per week.
That point is pure bullshit. The US sustained a large manufacturing sector for decades, and it in turn sustained an expansive middle class. The reason for that is unions. Once the unions began to crumble, the manufacturing became outsourced, or the jobs paid less, and the middle class started to crumble. US households now work twice as many hours per week to make what they once did just forty years ago.
The idea that we can't have nice things unless they are made by slave labor, or that the Chinese that make our nice things should be happy with their oppressive conditions, is just bullshit. Apple, for their part, is sitting on nearly 100 billion dollars cash, and could do a lot to improve the quality of life for the people who make their products. The current situation is exactly why we, and the Chinese, need stronger unions.
Yes, "But Timmy's doing it too!" is never a valid excuse.
The other reason Apple gets singled out is because of their singular ability to change things if they had the will to do so - manufacturer’s will bend over backwards for an Apple contract in a way that they won't do for any other company.
Sounds like the same kind of arguments used to support slavery in this country.
Excessive hours? It's all part of the Apple culture: 90 Hours A Week And Loving It
You're right that apple gets singled out due to it's extraordinary profitability. But the reason they're singled out is, you'd think a company with a profit margin like that could let the workers live like humans, wouldn't you?
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Of course the idea is bullshit. The reality isn't, however. A person could, for example, settle for older computers that weren't made in East Asia under slavish conditions to improve profit margins. Unfortunately, you'd most likely be looking at fairly antique hardware.
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No, the only people who believe that are the people the pro-business far right has managed to trick.
The right answer is it's actually nobody's fault; the simple fact is the US had a booming manufacturing sector for decades because there was very little competition, with possible competitors either communist, third world, or first world but recovering from WW2.
Honestly, I think the outsourcing would have happened regardless. Unions just happened to have accelerated this process via a positive feedback loop. But to be fair about, I wouldn't put the blame squarely on the Unions. They didn't start the process by their mere existence. Of course, they certainly wouldn't have stopped it either.
Finger pointing aside, the reality of globalism is that it exposes one absolute fact about the Western world. We (and thus our currency) is over valued in the market. Our fucked up Federal Gov decided to run up massive debt thinking our GDP would be sustained enough to pull us out of it. It's not. We are losing jobs AND are left holding the bag. Not good.
Basically, we're going to have to wait for the rest of able-bodied world to become expensive before it's no longer cost effective to outsource. Who know how long that will take.
Life is not for the lazy.
I think the point is, that this question at the end of TFS, "Will the public ever sour on Apple devices in light of the constant media attention on supplier working conditions?" is simply flamebait. Nobody's disputing that Foxconn's working conditions are problematic, in light of this audit. Foxconn manufactures devices for far more companies that just Apple. So why single out Apple devices as things "the public should sour on?" Should they buy Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola, or Nokia devices manufactured by Foxconn instead? Or should we sour on ALL of those devices, refuse to buy them, and engage in a little neo-luddism?
And if we do the latter, do you really think the million or so people out of work at Foxconn would *thank us* for sending them back to working as subsistence farmers in third world poverty?
As distasteful as Foxconn's working conditions may be to your delicate sensibilities, they represent a vast improvement in the average chinese worker's living conditions. That doesn't mean there won't be room for improvement, but you're kidding yourself if you think they take (and continue to work) these jobs unwillingly.
the American middle class manufacturing sector fell was because of unions not because the unions fell but because they got greedy. Unions became inflexible and businesses said FUCK IT
Of course, it's never quite this simple but if anyone was paying attention the last 3-years they would have seen lots of proof of this point. Living in Wisconsin we had some real big names in manufacturing prove this very point. Kohler (Kohler, WI), Harley Davidson (Milwaukee, WI), Mercury Marine (Fond du Lac, WI), Miller Brewing (Milwaukee, WI), and Thomas Industries (Sheboygan, WI) all went through tooth-and-nail fights with their unions just to get concessions to sustain their manufacturing. And it's not even "overseas", it's other states.
Thomas Industries left Sheboygan after many decades (Thomas is a division of Gardner Denver) to right-to-work Louisiana. When Miller and Coors went to combine, there was a huge fight to keep Miller in Milwaukee, a historical landmark. Mercury Marine pretty much had their bags packed to leave to another right-to-work state (Oklahoma) before the workers revolted against union leadership and held their own vote to accept concessions (after the city of FdL got the company to reconsider with an added sales tax benefit).
Kohler union leaders almost saw most of their plumbing jobs shift to Kohler's other plants across the US, Mexico, and China. I live in the are and worked for Kohler as well as have/had family work as accountants for them. There's this mentality that these works are down-trodden while making $26/hour doing unskilled labour. More when they have mandatory overtime. After you add in benefits, it's closer to $50/hour total (estimated numbers from the accountant). Is it any wonder why a company would be attractive to $1/hour labour? Yet, these "evil" companies are willing to keep these good paying jobs in the US if they accept to pay more for things like benefits so the company pays $40/hour instead of $50 in benefits. And $40/hour puts you in upper-middle class range.
I could go on, but it's obvious. Manufacturing is surviving in the US but that's usually in cases with no unions or unions who where not hostile to their employer. Unions had an important part in history, but it's become just another corrupt political origination that adds inefficiency. There's all kinds of laws protecting works from abuse employers: unemployment, lawsuits for every kind of discrimination (to the point that we more often talk about frivolous lawsuits), OSHA for worker safety, etc. Workers to stand together and "unionize" against such employers was needed long ago. You use to loose an arm in a work accident and get fired for not being able to do your job anymore. Who thinks that can happen in the US without a billion dollar lawsuit?
The desire for a reasonable slice of the pie shouldn't be referred to as greed, especially in light of what's on the opposing side of the equation.
The labor unions fought for "more" from management and the "ownership society" (in the vernacular of the neoconservative right wing) because it was there and could have been shared, easily, for the betterment of all concerned. The high tech mfg isn't the auto-industry, which failed because it refused to deal with reality and build better cars. Audi and BMW, which don't mfg ANY low-end cars, and do business in Germany, one of those SOCIALIST states, are profitable and competitive. And Apple amassed 100 BILLION fucking $'s while leading their industry in innovation and price.
Don't give me this crap about the greed of the unions. Management and government together have 'arranged' globalization and the migration of U.S. mfg as well as anything else they can 'outsource' because it fed stock options, bank accounts of the already wealthy and an entire propaganda industry which supports politicians' placement in Washington.
You should really take a look at what's happened to 'our' economy, starting with Ron Raygun, as the financial sector's bite of GDP doubled and the rest of the economy shrank shrank proportionately. It's called stagnation, and the only reason the stats don't look worse is because our illustrious 4th estate doesn't bother to report on how 'oafishoil' measures have been manipulated over time to make it seem like all remains well in the garden, as long as we tend to the roots and wait for the next season of growth.
Gotta watch Being There again.
Yeah, but look at what unions are fighting for now and what workers are going on strike for. People are striking for a living wage and to be able to take their kids to a doctor and not be financially ruined by doing so. American workers are quick becoming third world workers thanks to a corporate monolith that is reducing the global work force to the lowest common denominator. I too would fight tooth and nail too to be able to get a high enough wage to only have to work one job and have both a roof and not starve (or have my family starve.) Look at Walmart, a company that trades heavily in China, and pays its worker so little that their health plan is Federal and State Health Care plans for people below the poverty line and these folks get food stamps. Americans subsidize Walmart's bottom line by paying their employees their basic benefits. What part of that isn't obscene?
Americans are desperate. We've been taking a beating so long, we'll settle for just not standing in food lines or having to ask for food stamps. That's not a rampant sign of unions out of control. Corporations have pushed the American worker to the edge of extinction. If we lack an infrastructure for production its not because we lack skilled labor. Its because American Corporations abandoned American for higher profit margins and bigger bonuses for their Boards of Directors. The United States has been in economic free-fall for most of 3 decades. American corporations have been cannibalizing America making trillions as they siphon off the flood of wealth leaving our country. How long before America has been bled dry. From what I can see, not long.
Global Corporations are now predicated on the fallacy that they can do unlimited social, moral and environmental damage without ever having to pay the price. This doesn't seem crazy only because they've gotten away with it up until now. There is a carrying capacity, and human economies are quick reaching that barrier. There is no indication that those who steer our economies will address the insanity of their behavior until they succeed in crashing the world. Therefore it is up to men and women of vision and conscience to say enough. It is time to re-engineer society, humanity and global enterprise.
If you haven't seen it already, here's the ABC News clip of the Foxconn factory to get a glimpse inside.
Wo do have the power to steer Apple: don't buy Apple.
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I think the outsourcing would have happened regardless. Unions just happened to have accelerated this process via a positive feedback loop.
Well perhaps you can explain why that didn't happen in Germany, which has far stronger unions than USA? Germany remains a manufacturing powerhouse and is only getting stronger. Of course they play to their own strengths. In Europe at least, the market for German products is strong because they are well engineered and accurately made. You want a decent coffee grinder? Trust me, German grinders are amazingly much better than the next best thing. How about a knife? A car? A camera lens? Etc, etc, etc.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I believe the AC's point is more speaks to the OP's question of the public souring on Apple.. I, for one, am tired of Apple being held to a higher standard than Amazon, Dell, HP & Sony. The fact that Apple is also the one paying for the independant audit shows that Apple's actuallydoing more than the aformentioned companies as well. Why, therefore, should the company doing the most already face the most criticism? It may just be a new thing for the apple-haters to rail on, methinks. I've seen a lot of rational people come to absolutely ridiculous conclusions on this issue because "Apple makes more profits"
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To be fair, part of the problem is that priorities are also extremely f**ked up. Many have piled on tons of debt to live in a house they can't afford, drive an expensive car that's twice what they require, and watch a home-theatre that they don't need.
As an acquaintance of mine said: it's a bit irritating and confusing to be stuck in a grocery line behind the girl who's paying in food stamps while chatting on her iphone...
People need to wake up and fix their priorities. As long as having an iphone, big-screen, and monster-truck are priorities, people will not focus on the issues of savings, corruption, violation-of-rights and other such things that need change before the situation can be bettered.
The suicide rate in these places is shocking.
You lost all credibility right there. There's plenty to criticize about Apple, the suicide rate at a contractor's factories is not one of them.
The Foxconn worker suicide rate (1.5 per 100,000 at its worst, in 2010) is lower than the general Chinese population (22.23 per 100,000).
It is lower than New York (6 per 100,000), which itself is over half the national average (11 per 100,000).
It is lower than US soldiers soldiers (20 per 100,000 as of 2008), which was already an 80% jump over the rate in 2004.
It is lower than suicide rates at both MIT and Harvard (10.2 and 7.4 per 100,000, respectively, from a 2001 report). That's right, MIT and Harvard students are PAYING to be there, and their suicide rate is higher than Foxconn workers.
What are you doing about those shocking numbers? Who are you holding to account and starting online petitions to boycott?
The only thing shocking about the suicide rate of Foxconn workers is that people like you keep thinking it bolsters your argument. Hint: it does the exact opposite, if only you'd thought to analyze it for one minute.
FYI, HTC and Nokia are both Foxconn customers.
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