iPods: Made for kids, by kids
Summary: Apple's annual report has revealed that some of its suppliers have been breaching the company's "Supplier Code of Conduct" by using child labor and carrying out other dubious practices.
Apple's annual report has revealed that some of its suppliers have been breaching the company's "Supplier Code of Conduct" by using child labor and carrying out other dubious practices.
The most shocking of the revelations is that three factories responsible for manufacturing parts had 11 minors employed. These minors were 15 years old, but the minimum working age in the countries in question was 16.
Another 50 factories were found to be keeping workers on for longer than the maximum 60 hour work week, while another 24 were paying workers less than the minimum wage.
Other issues that were uncovered was that 39% of the factories involved in making Apple products weren't following correct safety regulations and only 43% didn't have the necessary environmental permits.
There's no word on the location of the factories that were found to be breaking the code of conduct.
The good news here for Apple is the fact that these discoveries were made as a result of Apple's own audits of facilities, which means that the company is taking its own code of conduct seriously. Also, as a result of this audit, the child laborers are no longer employed. However, it seems that all the factories discovered to be violating the code of conduct are still being used by Apple.
While Apple should be praised for carrying out the audits, it seem that the company is unable or unwilling to take a "follow the rules of lose the contract" approach. Given Apple's track record on supply chain issues, this is disheartening.
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Talkback
Cheap Labor/Cut Costs - That's All that Counts
Did you read the article?
Your statement of "Cheap Labor/Cut Cost - That's all that Counts" is more true for the manufacturing companies.
Um, so don't contract to countries where it happens.
profits
suppliers there? or do you blame only apple?
I agree, it happens with far too many companies
I see your point too.
they're probably cheap and efficient. Even if they
don't earn more money out of the cut labor costs
for those companies, they still won't change the
manufacturer because that would probably turn out
to become a higher cost for them too.
Including HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc...
So, Apple should leave the US?
I guess we don't want to have those jobs here in this country.
They left a long time ago. US is just a sales territory.
30.000
i know, never let the facts get in the way of an argument.
@elllroy
As far as facts getting in the way, it's only a fact if you can back it up.
Let me help you: http://seekingalpha.com/article/115797-apple-inc-f1q09-qtr-end-12-27-08-earnings-call-transcript?source=front_page_transcripts&page=-1
That backs up your claim of 35k employee's but it also states that lots of emoployee's are in at least 10 other countries, so I highly doubt that 30k employee's are in the US. Thats also early 09, after more research I found the Apple was set for layoffs and more were coming (didn't research what else happened). Refrence for this fact (try a refrence sometime yourself if you can) http://www.macworld.com/article/139365/2009/03/layoffs_enterprise.html
Get some real facts and refrences then come back.
facts
apple had a layoff? on which planet? apple is shuffling headcounts as
any other company on a regular basis as they adjust their business
strategies. two weeks ago 40 people from the final cut devision had to
go. that is not a layoff. microsoft axing 5000 and more jobs to reduce
costs - that is a layoff.
most of apple's employees work in cupertino and their stores (most of
the stores are in the u.s.). in addition to it apple has offices in 10
more countries, most of them smaller (a few hundred people) and
bigger ones in ireland and singapur. 30.000 in the us is a guess
based on these facts. the exact number is not known, but it should be
roughly 30.000 based on the number and size of offices and stores
around the world and in the u.s.
Nice strawman
Wal-Mart could be hiring underages in the US, but that's a US company hiring in the US. You slap them on the wrist, and make them stop. They're still hiring Americans.
In these places overseas, these are jobs that SHOULD go to Americans. They're not, so not only are these companies undercutting us on our own products, with our own companies, and costing us our jobs, they're breaking the rules to do THAT.
But from the looks of this, you're going to pick out one sentence in this three paragraph post, and nitpick it. You don't have much to say otherwise.
Allow me to nitpick
the posts by ellroy (who has reviewed Apple's
report and linked to it) what Apple is doing is
<i>enforcing the rules</i> on their
subcontractors. Apparently - based on what
those contractors' employees told Apple - Apple
is the only one actually doing that.
On to sentence number two: You can make the
argument that US workers should be doing the
jobs, I won't try to convince you otherwise.
The facts of life are that we live in a global
economy and global supply chains are to be
expected. The best we can hope for is
accountability.
I never thought I would be doing this, but let
me link to a comment by <i>honeymonster of all
people</i> about this point. If you read a lot
of ZDNet you will recognize Honey as someone
who is not a big Apple fan but I think he puts
the situation into perspective well.
http://bit.ly/ciMzAT (link leads to comments on
The Apple Core blog here on ZDNet)
Well, yes.
Point #2... it sucks. This is a global economy, and by that happening, companies that stay 100% American are usually screwed. But that's a conversation for another time and place, really, as it's not the crux of the point.
but
Well, to start off with.
manufacturing is in fact done in China. You don?t believe that all those
xboxes, mice, office suites, operating systems, etc. are made in the
United States? Do you? It is a sad fact of life that American companies are
only a shadow of their former self.
There is nothing shocking about it !
If you have ever visited few developing countries and bothered to get out of the way that was paved for impressing tourists, and seen the harsh realities of life, you wouldn't feel it shocking to know that 15 year old kids are working in factories.
Lot of these manufacturing companies hide the fact that minors are working for them. It has nothing to do with Apple or iPod. It is just that they bothered to do an audit by themselves and found out
Shocking no, Disgusting yes! (nt)
I guess I'm not seeing what's shocking about
together. It's less dangerous than a paper route for crying out loud.
But I guess we've all been indoctrinated into thinking that underage
worker means a 6-year old crawling inside a stamping machine in 1905
to clean out a jam.