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Apple has been slammed for its poor treatment of Chinese workers in the past, with claims of slave like labour practices and legitimate abuse from management stretching back years. Today though it seems conditions aren't much better, with a report coming out from BBC's Panorama investigation that found workers falling asleep at production lines and the facilities, and that nearby housing that workers are forced to use, breach all sorts of labour practices.
This isn't an Apple facility, but one operated by Thai firm Pegatron, which provides Apple with labourers and manufacturing facilities. However, while Apple can't be blamed directly, it has been working with Pegatron for many years, despite its repeated labour violations – including the use of underage workers.
While Apple has denied the conclusion of the report that Apple is engaging in illegal labour practices by dealing with Pegatron, an undercover investigator working for the programme was forced to work 18 days in a row without break, while another had 16 hour long shifts.
Apple said in a statement: “We are aware of no other company doing as much as Apple to ensure fair and safe working conditions.” However it did admit that more work could be done to improve conditions at some of its facilities.
Apple has been called out on its seeming disinterest in Chinese worker safety before, after many people in 2010 though 2012 committed suicide at Foxconn manufacturing plants due to stress and lack of pay. Despite this Apple continued and continues to work with the manufacturer in many stages of production.
It did however move some of its manufacturing to Pentagron facilities. However, labour practices there are hardly better. Employees are supposed to have voluntary overtime, but undercover investigators were regularly given no say in the matter. They're also forced to live on site, often living in small communal dorms with up to a dozen people in a single room.
Apple claims to have a system in place that back-pays any workers found to be living in conditions like that, but that doesn't seem to have had much effect.
Health and safety forms are filled in exactly how the factory operators demand
Further down the supply line, in areas where raw materials are manufactured for smartphones, Panorama found children as young as 12 digging in tin mines in unsafe conditions. Many didn't even have tools, being forced to dig the tin from the dirt with their bare hands.
In Apple's defence however, it doesn't buy straight from the mines, but from the local smelters, which receive a lot of tin from a lot of sources.
The Panorama programme entitled, Apple's Broken Promises, can be watched on BBC iPlayer here.
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KitGuru Says: While Apple can't necessarily be blamed for the actions of its suppliers, it needs to take immediate action to stop working with these companies when it happens. The fact that it continues to support them shows very little interest in really protecting those that help make its products.
…But any pretentious hipster will tell you that Apple are the “good guys” of the tech world! I mean, Microsoft and Google are surely far more evil…right?
Based on what they did, Clearly apple wanted to spend less and gain more. They work with these companies because they offer labor for a cheap cost compared to others which in my eyes interpret as “We get the job done at a low cost and we don’t care where it comes from.”
bit missed here was…. production costs around £5 …selling price 500 / 600 , not a bad mark up even if other costs added ie marketing transport packaging etc
Why does anyone think Apple isn’t fully aware of what’s going on? They hired the outside firm, Pegatron, to handle their labor and manufacturing and Apple is deeply involved in all aspects of manufacturing as all corporations are. This tactic is called plausible deniability when the worker is systematically abused. It’s the same tactic used the world over by abusing uber’ capitalistic companies from Walmart and their abusive warehouses systems, to this sad excuse for a supposedly benevolent and enlightened corporation.. But it’s all OK!
The hipster get’s their up-to-the-minute cell phone, Apple gets their money. and the worker bees get “the long hard one”..
funny when you are the pretentious hipster who hates on Apple because it is too “mainstream” and doesn’t give you the street cred of being “tech savvy” and “in the know”
but but but would you spend 10% more on Apple products just for them to use more expensive labor?
so consumers want to spend less on products but yet wants companies to spend more on manpower.
mind blown
include the cost of risk and r&d and wages and overheads.
Businesses are not out to make the lowest possible margins, if you truly believe that should be the case, why not go start your own business and do just that?
are you fully aware of what kind of conditions the farmers go though when you purchase fresh foods?
so you claim that the workers are systematically abused, what do you think those workers want? do you really think that people in impoverished countries gives a shit whether they stay in cramped quarters or works from a young age? prepare to be mind blown, they don’t, they’re not self-entitled muricans, factory work in China pays more than whatever else they have the opportunity to do, why else do you think that factories can hire tens of thousands of workers within a single month?
Chinese workers want what workers the world over want. They want decent pay, They don’t want to be worked half to death with forced overtime to the point they’re working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. They want safe environments where they don’t die from a mysterious ailment after working a couple of years for a company. They want to be able to leave the plant when they’re not working, rather than be pushed into small rooms, a dozen to a room, and locked in… They don’t want beat up by company goons and blackballed from all employment everywhere if they have a disagreement with the company. Why do I think these factories can hire 10,000 or more workers in a single month? Could it be they’re starving in the country-side, and the factory employers have a little over 1.3 billion souls to choose from? If the pay was good enough a factory could hire 10,000 or more a month right here in the USA. Factories did it during WWII all the time…BTW: Spare me the bit about the poor farmers.. I’ve known farmers all my life. They always complain about something and they always make a bunch of money for their produce and other crops…That’s why they’re farmers…How else would a farmer be able to buy a $400-500k combine every few years or so?
Slave labor is good…
they are paid a decent salary, if not why would thousands of them sign up for it?
please take your hyperbole somewhere else, you raise all of your “concerns” but have you considered any alternative? you think those are tough conditions to work in but I can assure you, 18 hour shifts 7 days a week is nothing, it is you westerners who are too pampered and couldn’t take a little hardship so take your idealism and shove it up your ***, the Chinese certainly don’t need your “sympathy” and “concern”, they’d rather keep their jobs than potentially lose it.
The reason companies move manufacturing out of the USA is cause you guys are too self-entitled, demanding higher wages yet not willing to produce greater value, you know how this world works? if you don’t wanna do it, someone else would, this is why general workers gets paid low wages, they easily replaceable and are mere commodity, the Chinese workers gets it, that is why they work hard, to keep their jobs to make sure they have food to feed themselves and their families.
USA only manages to ramp up their industrial might during the war because…. oh war effort mandate. right.
you muricans should just god damn mind your own business and stop acting like you’re the world needs you to save and liberate them, Asia certainly doesn’t need a country that exported almost the entirety of its own manufacturing overseas to come lecture us about how should the manufacturing business should be ran and managed. it is laughable, why not go fix your own country’s problems first?
as for farmers, why not go to china and south asia and ask if the farmers who grows many of your produce earns 400k every few years.
slave labor is when you don’t get paid at all, low cost labor on the other hand is good.
Excellent assumption, dear friend. You know so much about me.
It’s not because I simply don’t like the aesthetic, nor the fragility of the materials used at all. Plus the price, most importantly.
shouldn’t lash out blindly R.R. without the facts , nowhere did I say, the mark up was criminal or excessive and I did say not counting other costs. as to your last sentence I have and been trading successfully for many decades, ….
Watch out! Your empathy for your fellow man is showing! I would have to say: Spoken like a person whose never broken a sweat or worked a hard job in their lives. I’m going to try to do you a favor and give you the means to get some of your humanity back. Read this story:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor….. It’s been my experience that low cost labor is VERY good, as long as you’re not the one who’s having to do such labor because no other work is available…
On second thought, you POS, there is no hope for you ever getting you humanity back. May the karma you so richly deserve catch up with you very quickly, I hope to God it’s not good at all, and you learn something from it before it’s too late for you…
Excellent assumption! just like how you simply assumed that “pretentious hipsters” will tell you that Apple are the “good guys”
wow you’re like the living definition of a hypocrite, oh and your reasons are bullpuck.
and what do you know of me? what if I told you that I had to do factory work when I was young and it was what got me through college?
You claim to know them so well, have you lived or been there? or are you judging based on your extremely limited understanding and applying your own values and forcing it down Asian’s throats, believing that this is what they want and this is whats best for them?
there are no other work because there are simply no other work and low cost to you is good money for someone else, take away that “low cost labor” and you’ll get entire communities that starves due to unemployment, $5 is better than $0. you white men knows nothing, damned hypocrites.
great! so are your paying your employees a salary that is like 80% of your profits?
wow talk about PoS when you wanna decide for Asians what they should or should not be doing.
this is what you’d call the “white men syndrome” you think that Asians needs you to come liberate them, just like how you’d butt into wars and cause a country to be divided, that if you made enough noise, Asians in poorer communities will get miraculously paid well and be so thankful to all of you. No, if cost increases, jobs gets taken elsewhere, $5 is better than $0.
I can’t believe such immense self importance. all you could do is spout BS and absolute untruths based on your limited shallow understanding of a world so distant from yours.
you should just go mind your own business and stop trying to butt into the livelihood of others, white men are very good at destroying jobs with their welfare state and “human rights” crap.
Here you are, leaping valiantly to the defence of a multi-billion dollar corporation, go you! Aren’t you the guy Mr Rogers knew you could be!?
I never realised I’d have to give citations for all the people I know with Apple phones in a comments forum. You should be a moderator, your thoroughness in service to the defence of the weak and needy marks you as a true arbitrator of justice!
whats with you guys being against large corporations? you guys can’t take it when someone else succeeds? lol weak and needy, from where I came from, one’s life is his own responsibility.
“You guys.”
I didn’t realise I was a component of a gestalt collective of corporation-haters. I don’t mind most corporations, provided I ignore the fact each one of them exploits the environment, populace or workforce they have access to in irresponsible ways.
yeah “you guys” cause c’mon, you think you’re original? nah, you’re just like one of the many corporation hating guys around, absolutely unoriginal, unimaginative and unproductive, in fact I could smell your anti-corporation BS a galaxy away.
yeah yeah exploits this exploits that yeah whatever, go live in a bloody cave you hypocrite, you’re living a lifestyle that constantly consumes products and services from corporations that exploits something somewhere so you’re only being selectively critical of corporations so save your hippie BS, I ain’t buying it and I’ve got enough brains to cut through all that crap you’re serving.
Wow, I really don’t know what your angle is mate. Seriously, it seems you’ve dissolved into an avatar of pure hate rather than a person with an opinion. Did someone who dislikes corporations kill your sensei or urinate in your cornflakes?
Heaven forbid I possess a mentality that is partly-composed of a wish for a more responsible future. I’m not selectively critical of corporations, and frankly I’m not a hippy either, I work in the oil and gas industry for one.
But please, continue using me as as strawman to vent all your angst on. I’m sure sensei would be most proud of you.
nah, I just can’t stand hypocritical poseurs like you
It’s good to know you care more than I do. Also that you seem to like petty insults over discussion, which I’ll take as a sign to refrain from bursting your perceptive bubble.
glad to hear you approve of my business ethics