Labor Activist: Apple Best at Auditing Factories, Still Not Doing Enough

[alfredo]

http://blog.laptopmag.com/labor-activist-apple-best-at-auditing-factories-still-not-doing-enough

Labor Activist Li Qiang wants you to know that the iPhone 4 in his pocket is not an endorsement of Apple’s policies, just an acknowledgement that the company is doing a better job of monitoring factory conditions than its peers. The founder of leading advocacy group China Labor Watch (CLW) told us that, though the Cupertino company does more-thorough inspections than competitors, it is responsible for poor working conditions at its suppliers’ factories and needs to invest some of its record-breaking profits in improving them.

“Although I know that the iPhone 4 is made at sweat shop factories in China, I still think that this is the only choice, because Apple is actually one of the best. Actually before I made a decision, I compared Apple with other cell phone companies, such as Nokia,” he said through a translator. “And the conditions in those factories are worse than the ones of Apple.”

Li explained that Apple is one of the few OEMs that discloses its factory audit reports to the public and he lauded the company’s honesty in disclosing serious vendor violations like child labor or safety violations to the public. Indeed, a quick read of Apple’s 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report reveals such potentially embarrassing facts as:

[Eid Ma Clack Shaw]

1. Interesting.

Just one voice, of course, but a pretty notable one and what he says is in tune with the facts that are available beneath the sensationalism.

[alfredo]

2. It seemed more balanced that what I've read from US pundits.

[Eid Ma Clack Shaw]

3. Agreed - Also, I think the issue goes far beyond Apple or any individual manufacturer...

If you halted cheap Chinese manufacturing tomorrow, it would pull the rug from the fragile economies of the west and doom them completely. We need to ask how it was that we became so reliant on this type of thing rather than casting aspersions on this company or that company, which is what I feel the western media likes to do with Apple. We need a big, branching debate on how to substantially improve conditions in China while allowing an infrastructure that, long term, allows some of it to take place at home.

[alfredo]

5. The Chinese will fight to improve conditions when they feel a need to do so. All we can do is

support their struggles.

I was surprised to see that Foxconn has a union.

[girl gone mad]

4. Nonsensical rationalizations.

As Bill Black explained, Apple's "thorough" audits are not thorough at all. Worse, they've been designed largely to help Apple skirt the laws in China and hide the identity of their law-breaking suppliers. If anything, performing these audits is worse than doing nothing since it merely establishes the false pretense (which Li Qiang has clearly bought into) that Apple is taking positive actions to improve labor conditions when, in fact, they are doing precisely the opposite.

[alfredo]

6. Has Bill Black been to China? Does he know that Foxconn's suicide rate is better than the

rate throughout China? BTW, his numbers are wrong. Foxconn has 400,000 employees.

According to WHO (2010) China's suicide rate is 22.23 per 100,000. WHO reported that Foxconn has a suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000

The Suicide rate in the US is around 12 per 100,000.

I think a labor activist in China would have more insight than a pundit living in the west.

At least Apple makes their audits public. Has Dell ever done such a thing?

Foxconn is unionized.

Working conditions suck there, and throughout China. That is something the Chinese people will have to address if they find conditions intolerable.

We should not just zero in on one company using Foxconn, we need to put pressure on the other US firms that use them.