SupplierResponsibility
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Apple still faces challenges in the fight for better working conditions
The factories where our gadgets are built can be nasty, inhumane and sometimes lethal places to work. As the richest company on the planet, Apple has a duty to lead the charge against poor conditions and child labor. Today, the company has published its ninth annual Supplier Responsibility report that repeats its commitment to treat all workers with "dignity and respect." The headline stats are positive, and the company only found 16 child labor violations, but there's still a few things that have to be worked on.
Apple looking to fill more than 200 new positions in China
Apple has a good chunk of the consumer electronics market in the developed world, with the company's flagship iPhone and iPad products still flying off the shelves. But there's still a lot of the world -- in particular Brazil, Russia, India and China -- where the company can make huge inroads. Apple appears to be turning its attention to China, with more than 200 job openings appearing in the last several weeks on LinkedIn. With the Chinese government and state-run media focusing on environmental and workplace issues at Foxconn facilities where Apple products are manufactured, and attacks earlier this year over warranty policies that allegedly discriminated against Chinese customers, the company has obviously decided to put assets on the ground to keep an eye on things. The advertised openings included a number of Supplier Responsibility positions, as well as an Environmental Affairs Program Manager. Apple is also hiring senior engineers in Taiwan, which has led to some speculation that the company is considering opening a new R&D facility in the island nation to focus on iPhone product development.
Browse through this interactive map of Apple's suppliers worldwide
Apple releases a list of all of its hardware supplier partners about once a year, as part of its Supplier Responsibility program. But the most recent list of suppliers included not only company names, but also addresses for each, and so a site called ChinaFile took all of those addresses and put them into an interactive Google map. With a few clicks and drags, you can now visually browse and see just where Apple is getting all of its various iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac parts from. As you can see above, the distribution is one of the most interesting views. Obviously, the majority of Apple's suppliers are still based over in Asia, and when you zoom in, you can see that big number is split between Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea. But Apple also gets parts from the US and Europe, and even places as far away as Brazil. Unfortunately, what this map doesn't show you is exactly what products and parts come from which suppliers. In a few places, you can guess, and in some places the information isn't very relevant (the address in Australia, for example, is just an address Down Under for a supplier that primarily works out of Asia). But nevertheless, this is an interesting look at just how global Apple's hardware business is.
Apple drops supplier over underage labor violations, hails 'high compliance' with reducing excessive work hours
Apple's latest Supplier Responsibility Report has just been published, detailing 393 audits focused on the plants and suppliers that help make all that hardware. The audit number is a 72 percent increase in what it covered in its last annual report, while Apple was also quick to highlight its contracting companies' high compliance (92 percent) with a maximum 60-hour work week. Senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams told Reuters that underage workers and limiting working hours were two of the most challenging issues it faced in its supplier audits. Apple decided to end business relations with component maker Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics over underage labour issues. "We go deep in the supply chain to find it," said Williams. "And when we do find it, we ensure that the underage workers are taken care of, the suppliers are dealt with." Update: As 9 to 5 Mac noticed, the supplier report also contains another notable detail: it lists Freemont, California-based Quanta Computer as one of Apple's final assembly facilities.
Made For iPhone manufacturers may have to comply with Apple's supplier responsibility code
There's no gaggle of satellite trucks or eager liveblogs documenting every moment, but one of the most important Apple-related events is going on right now in Shenzhen, China: the annual MFi (Made For iPhone/iPad/iPod) manufacturers' conference. This multi-day meeting is the interface, so to speak, between Apple's mobile products and the vast ecosystem of accessories, gadgets and peripherals that swarms around them. Only MFi-licensed vendors can use the "Made for iPhone" logo on their packaging, and they are the only ones who get access to Apple's internal documentation for interfaces and connectivity. With the advent of the Lightning connector across the iOS product line, this year's conference is a key opportunity for vendors to get the intelligence they need for 2013 and beyond. In fact, reports last month revealed that Apple intends to control the supply of Lightning connector pins directly, rather than allowing third parties to make the parts themselves. The cone of silence surrounding the MFi meeting is intense, unlike the rather leaky WWDC experience. That's understandable: there's way fewer MFi companies than iOS/OS X developers, and the technical information under discussion at the MFi conference could provide Apple competitors with valuable intel. Nevertheless, during the meeting this week a few interesting tidbits have made their way to us through the Great Firewall. Most are trivial (did not know: the Lightning connector is waterproof!) but one big one is not. According to our source at the event, Apple intends to make compliance with its supplier code of conduct a condition of MFi licensing. The supplier code, which has been implemented and expanded over the past few years as Apple and manufacturing partner Foxconn have come under increasing scrutiny for working conditions, currently applies only to Apple's manufacturing supply chain partners and component vendors. Pushing it out to the larger accessory ecosystem would be a concrete example of Apple using its 800-pound-gorilla status in the consumer electronics space to influence more companies to behave ethically on worker rights, environmental issues and more. Of course, there may well be MFi participants who see this move as heavy-handed and unnecessary. It's not yet clear what the schedule, audit requirements or penalties for non-compliance might be -- but there may be some vendors at the margins who feel that the additional effort and expense to comply decreases the overall value of participating in the iOS accessory market. Even if you don't believe the DigiTimes rumor that Foxconn is considering building out LCD TV manufacturing plants in the US (and we don't), accessory makers which have US-based operations may have a leg up on compliance over those in China and elsewhere. We'll keep an eye out for official word of these policy changes in MFi over the next few weeks.
Apple supplier shows 95% overtime compliance in March 2012
Apple maintains a supplier responsibly report on its website and recently added some new statistics that show overtime working conditions are improving in its factories. Noticed by The Next Web, Apple is now seeing 95 percent compliance with its 60-hour work week requirement. This is up from 89 percent in February 2012 and 84 percent in January 2012. As noted before, most workers are averaging a 48-hour work week. This latest report covers over 800,000 workers in supply chain factories who are tracked weekly. [Via The Next Web]
Apple updates report on supplier working conditions
It probably wasn't Mike Daisey's fabricated "theatrical work" that moved Apple to work on improving working conditions for employees at overseas suppliers, but even if it wasn't, the company is doing a great job of making good on their plans to help those employees. Apple is providing monthly updates on its Supplier Responsibility web pages to let the public know how they're doing. The current focus is on making sure that people aren't working ridiculously long hours, one issue that has been implicated in the past suicides of some Foxconn employees. Apple's guidelines state that employees should work less than 60 hours per week, and the company reported that for January, the compliance rate with the guideline as 84 percent. For February, there was a noticeable increase in compliance, with the rate bumping up to 89 percent. Among 500,000 workers, the average workweek was an almost-comfortable 48 hours. As we've noted before here on TUAW, Apple is working with the Fair Labor Association to perform audits of working and living conditions for many of the employees working for Foxconn and other suppliers. As 2012 progresses, we look forward to seeing Apple moving ahead in the area of labor and human rights. [via Macworld]
Apple supplier audit reveals sub-minimum wage pay and records of underage labor
Apple's famous desire for total control over its operations seems to have extended to its manufacturing facilities as we've come across Cupertino's Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report, which details audits the American company has done of its overseas suppliers and the failures identified therein. The findings are pretty damning on the whole, with more than half (54 percent) of all factories failing to meet Apple's already inflated maximum 60-hour work week, 24 percent paying less than the minimum wage, 37 percent failing to respect anti-discrimination rules, and three facilities holding records of employing a total of eleven 15-year olds (who were over the legal age of 16 or had left by the time of the audit). Apple is, predictably, not jazzed about the situation, and has taken action through train-the-trainer schemes, threats of business termination with recidivist plants, and -- most notably -- the recovery of $2.2 million in recruitment fees that international contract workers should not have had to pay. It should come as no shock to learn that cheaper overseas factories are cutting illegal corners, but it's disappointing to hear Apple's note that most of the 102 audited manufacturers said Cupertino was the only vendor to perform such rigorous compliance checks. Still, we'll take what we can get and the very existence of this report -- which can be savagely skewed to defame Apple's efforts (as demonstrated expertly by The Daily Telegraph below) -- is an encouraging sign that corporate responsibility is being taken seriously. We hope, wherever your geek loyalties and fervor may lie, that you'll agree Apple's leading in the right direction and that its competitors should at the very least have matching monitoring schemes. They may have to swallow some bad PR at first, but sweeping up the dirty details of where gadgets come from is juvenile and has no place in a civilized world. Hit the source link for the full report.
