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Apple and Foxconn admit to hiring too many temporary workers
Foxconn and Apple have admitted to using far more temporary workers than allowed by Chinese law, according to a report from Bloomberg. The violation was discovered by China Labor Watch (CLW) after a long investigation and confirmed by both Foxconn and Apple. The group said that in August, temporary "dispatch" workers made up around half the workforce in August, where Chinese labor law allows a maximum of 10 percent. Both had vowed in the past to stop the practice, multiple times.
Apple investigating reports of student workers in factories (again)
Apple is investigating reports that one of its parts suppliers is illegally using high school students on its assembly line. Hong Kong-based human rights group Sacom alleges that Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta Computer has been skirting labor laws by using teenage "interns" to assemble the Apple Watch Series 4.
Amazon admits to labor violations at Echo speaker factory in China
Labor violations are an all too common reality in technology manufacturing, and Amazon just made that patently clear. In the wake of a joint exposé between China Labor Watch and the Guardian, Amazon has acknowledged that a Foxconn factory in Hengyang, China has been violating labor laws while making Echo speakers and Kindle e-readers. A March audit revealed that over 40 percent of staff were low-cost agency workers (who don't get holiday or sick pay and can be laid off without wages), or well over the 10 percent allowed in China. Moreover, employees who worked overtime were paid at their regular rate, rather than the time-and-a-half demanded by both Chinese laws and Amazon itself.
Labor board says Google legally fired diversity memo writer
James Damore may claim Google was wrong to fire him over his memo criticizing the company's diversity culture, but a federal government overseer begs to differ. The National Labor Relations Board has published a January memo recommending a dismissal of Damore's then-active complaint. Board attorney Jayme Sophir found that Damore was protected under federal law when he criticized Google, but that he wasn't protected when he suggested that women were biologically inferior at programming. His remarks were likely to create "serious dissension and disruption" in the workplace, Sophir said, and that actuallly happened -- women pulled their candidacy for engineering positions after hearing of Damore's memo.
Apple supplier accused of chemical safety and overtime violations
Apple is still struggling to improve working conditions at its suppliers. Both China Labor Watch and Bloomberg report that Catcher, a key supplier for iPhone and MacBook casings, makes workers endure harsh safety conditions and unfair work terms in a factory in Suqian. According to observers and discussions with workers, the machines are not only loud, but spray fluid and metallic particles that frequently hit workers' faces (only some of which have access to safety goggles and gloves). Workers suffer health issues such as vision problems, irritation and discoloration. Beyond this, the facility reportedly pumps out wastewater that violates local safety levels, and workers return to cold dorms with no hot water or built-in showers.
French reporters infiltrate Foxconn iPhone 5 factory, find few of the vaunted changes (updated)
Envoyé Spécial, a 60 Minutes-like program from public TV station France 2, went undercover at the Zhengzhou iPhone 5 Foxconn factory recently (within the past two months) and reported many of the same problems the Chinese manufacturer and Apple promised to fix earlier this year. According to the story that aired last night, dorms at the new factory were occupied by workers despite the fact that many were still under construction and had no elevators, electricity or running water -- apparently because builders focused on the production lines at the expense of housing. A Foxconn manager even warned employees on hidden camera not to plug devices into dorms that did have electricity, saying that eight workers were killed in a fire after overloading circuits.
National Labor Committee report on Chinese CE factories uncovers deplorable conditions
Yesterday, the National Labor Committee produced a report on the working conditions at the KYE Factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong, China. KYE operates (like many factories in China) a live-work facility and generated sales of $400 million in 2008. KYE manufactures outsourced products for HP, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech, and ASUS. Their largest customer, however, is reportedly Microsoft. The report details some of what we've come to expect in stories of labor abuses -- near children, most of them women, working for 16 or 17 hours a day, living in nearly deplorable conditions, for less than a dollar an hour -- all so that the world's ever-growing need for / addiction to consumer electronics can be fed. Now, the gadget industry isn't the only offender by a stretch -- but it's quickly becoming one of the largest (in addition to producing a truly horrific amount of toxic garbage). After the break are some choice facts from the report that our readers might be interested in ingesting, so read on.
Trade unions take issue with "iPod City" report
So even though Apple's investigation of the Chinese manufacturing plant that's come to be known as "iPod City" found no egregious violations in the working conditions (except for, you know, the long hours, military-like punishments, and not exactly "Cribs"-style living arrangements), at least one major trade union conglomerate isn't all that happy with its conclusions. Speaking to BBC News, the director of human and trade union rights at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Janek Kuczkiewicz, noted that his organization was "not impressed either by the report or by the findings of Apple." Most troubling to the ICFTU was the fact that only 100 of the over 30,000 employees working at the Foxconn-owned plant were interviewed by Apple's special investigative team; and since the conditions under which the interviews were held is unknown (i.e. were they being watched by supervisors and told to just smile and nod?), Kuczkiewicz stressed that "we have serious reservations about the report." He went on to point out that there are other labor standards such as the freedoms from discrimination, of association, and to bargain collectively that were not necessarily enjoyed by the Foxconn employees. While it's certainly admirable that not everyone is simply lauding Apple for its inquiry and assuming massive changes are underway, it's also important to realize that when doing business in a foreign country, outside corporations don't always have the final say on how things are run; so as much as Mr. Kuczkiewicz would like to see the workers band together and demand $5.15 an hour, we're not sure how well that would go over with the Chinese government. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that manufacturers are driving each other to find cheaper and cheaper labor in order to maintain already thin margins, and when that's the case, even a company as rich and powerful as Apple can do little to create the utopic working conditions that we'd all like to see.[Via The Inquirer and PC Pro]
Apple completes "iPod City" investigation into Foxconn
Well, looks like Apple's all done with that investigation into Foxconn's 200,000 person manufacturing facility where some 30,000 people assemble iPods for a living. Apparently Cupertino farmed out some of the work to a firm that specializes in workplace standards of conduct, and put in over 1200 "person-hours" (i.e. a team of 5 people working 40 hours a week for 30 workdays) into investigating everybody from line workers to executives to the janitors at the plant. The long and short of it is Apple apparently did not find child or forced labor, learned that more than half of iPod city residents were earning more than minimum wage (and none below), and that there was no forced overtime, but it was found that workweeks too infrequently went long (as often as 35% of the time), some interim dorms for the workers sounded pretty harsh (think: rows of triple bunk-beds on a factory floor), and some workers were "made to stand at attention" when they did something wrong. That Apple took special attention to that last bit is only a wee bit ironic, given Steve's reputation for flying off the handle and firing people on the spot, but hey, "Apple has a zero tolerance policy for any instance, isolated or not, of any treatment of workers that could be interpreted as harsh," and that's the way it is. You know, come to think of it all this gadget blogging is wearing a little thin -- all this iPod assembly stuff kinda sounds like the life for us. Where do we sign up to live in the real iPod city, and not this fake one we've built for ourselves?[Thanks, Motoi & Joey]
Apple issues Report on iPod Manufacturing
Apple has released a report on the alleged abuses in the iPod factory that we reported a few weeks ago. Apple sent a team of investigators to the factory and question and spoke to a number of randomly picked workers. Here is what they concluded, in a nice billeted list: No evidence of child or forced labor was found Dormitories are offered to all workers (there are 200.000 workers in the complex though fewer than 15% of those work on iPods) free of charge, but living in them is optional (most works choose to live in the dorms) Most of the dorms met with Apple's standards, however 3 recently converted dorms (they were factories before) did not, and the vendor has purchased land and is in the process of building replacements All workers make at least the local minimum wage (which may seem low to us, but in the context it isn't overly low) with many employees making more. Apple did find that reporting hours and the pay structure were too complex. The vendor is redoing both processes. No forced overtime was found, however, the Apple weekly limit of a 60 hour work week with one day off was exceeded 35% of the time with workers working more then 6 straight days 25% of the time. Apple believes this to be excessive and is working with the vendor to correct it. I am very impressed with the way Apple is handling this. At the end of the report they point out that the firm of Verité has been hired to continue the monitoring of conditions at these factories. Good job, Apple, and here's hoping that some people's lives will improve just a little bit because of all this.
Apple: "iPod City" investigation still underway
Despite recent comments by a Foxconn spokesperson that Apple had already investigated and found no problems with the Chinese factory that has come to be known as "iPod City," BusinessWeek is reporting that the probe is still in fact underway, with an Apple representative reiterating that the company takes "allegations of noncompliance very seriously." According to spokesperson Steve Dowling, Apple is in the midst of a "thorough audit" of the Hon Hai-owned plant, which had recently admitted to breaking labor laws concerning overtime, but which continues to deny other allegations contained in the original Daily Mail exposé. Specifically, Dowling says that the auditors are looking into "employee working and living conditions," conducting interviews with workers and their managers (separately, we hope), and generally making sure that the factory lives up to a supplier code of conduct that supposedly "sets the bar higher than accepted industry standards." This is all very good news indeed, but now Apple faces yet another hurdle in the form of a jaded public highly skeptical of corporate-speak, meaning that whether the investigation turns up violations or not, the company may still have a hard time convincing folks to accept the auditors' final verdict.[Via AppleInsider, image courtesy of Mail on Sunday]
"iPod City" admits labor law violations
In what would seem to be a 180-degree reversal from last week's vehement denials concerning the Daily Mail's "iPod City" exposé, Hon Hai Precision Industry's Foxconn factory has now come forward to admit that it has indeed been in violation of Chinese labor laws. Even though the company -- which was accused of underpaying and overworking employees -- had initially threatened to take legal action over the story, ChinaCSR is now reporting that a Foxconn spokesperson has publicly copped to the fact that its workers are forced to be on duty an extra 80 hours a month, which is 44 more hours of overtime than Chinese regulations allow (or 1.5 to 2 extra hours per day depending on the length of their work week). On the plus side, company representative Li Zong did point out that the workers are being paid according the minimum salary standards of the Shenzhen local government, so at least all those extra hours will help them maintain the highest standard of living for the scant amount of free time they get to spend in their overcrowded dormitories (supposedly pictured above). We realize that a lot of people are arguing that it's not fair to single out Apple when this is an industry-wide problem, but the fact of the matter is that Apple has been called out, and this new revelation only makes it that much more important for the company to conduct its promised investigation in a thorough and open manner.Update: It should also be noted that the ChinaCSR article quotes Li as saying that "Apple has sent a special team to investigate, but has found no problem with Foxconn." While it's not clear when this investigation took place, we're hoping that Apple has more to say on the matter, because it sounds more than a little shady if Cupertino gave Foxconn the thumbs-up while these admitted violations were occuring.[Via The Inquirer]
