Apple Manufacturing contacts in China Ping!
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Posted on 12/19/2014 2:36:25 PM PST by dennisw
Apple CEO Tim Cook 'deeply offended' by BBC report into poor working conditions in suppliers' Chinese factories
BBC reporters secretly filmed an iPhone 6 production line in China 'Exhausted' workers were filmed falling asleep on their 12 hour shifts But experts on China labour conditions say report 'does not fairly reflect conditions' Claims Apple is 'doing more than any other firm' for workers rights
Apple's Tim Cook was 'deeply offended' by a BBC report into conditions in the firm's iPhone 6 production line at the Pegatron factories near Shanghai.
Panorama secretly filmed on an iPhone 6 production line and found workers falling asleep on their 12 hour shifts.
It also claimed that Apple's standards on ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were being breached at the Pegatron factories.
In an email to its 5,000 UK staff at 8am this morning seen by MailOnline, Apple's Senior Vice-President of Operations, Jeff Williams, addressed the issues.
He said Cook was 'deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain' or mislead customers.
'I'd like to give you facts and perspective, all of which we shared with the BBC in advance, but were clearly missing from their program,' he said.
'Panorama's report implied that Apple isn't improving working conditions.
'Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.'
R
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
You people are a bunch of Apple haters!!!!! Do you know how big their profits are, and how cool I look using their products! Like moths to a flame you hatters are full of hatey hate! Grrrrrr!!!!
Where’s my ping list?!?!?
Just thought I would save a few people some time posting the usual.
Profits before people (unless these were reports of gay employees being mistreated).
I have been to China and been in some of their factories...
There is a reason the buildings are surrounded by safety nets. Average wages are 80.00 a month, this after the company takes out for living quarters,(6 to 8 people living in a one room.
They are slaves.
Good point........very nasty business.
He’s a gay slave driver using poor sweatshop communist labor to build Iphones in what is an environmental cesspool.
I’ve owned a few cars built in Detroit in the seventies. Build quality was atrocious.
CC
Pegatron makes stuff for just about every other major PC/phone company. But only Apple is a bad guy, when they are the ONLY company that is trying to make conditions better under near impossible working and cultural conditions in a country that treats all but the ruling elite as slaves?
>>>They have nets on the buildings to stop workers from commiting suicide<<<
Do they have Nets on the Buildings where they make the Nets?
摩西. Transliterated, i.e. spelled, Móxī. Pronounced moe shee.
Apparently Tim Cook sucks.
As a boss, I mean.
How about Curley.
http://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-making-of-an-iphone-pictures/14/
http://www.imore.com/foxconn-buildings-covered-in-suicide-nets-though-most-workers-are-just-sleepy-and-bored
http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-03-30/inside-apple-s-foxconn-factory.html#slide9
Some pictures with various sources for the suicide nets.
I get it.
At first I didn’t.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Some context for your links from the first paragraph of your second link:
The counseling center is sparsely used (most of the workers were simply tired from their 10-to-12-hour shifts), and despite the high profile of the suicides within recent memory, 18 attempts over the last couple of years actually isn't that many considering the Foxconn employs and houses a veritable city of over 230,000 within Shenzhen. A counselor at Foxconn explained why some of the suicides happened.
It's actually 18 suicides spread over ALL of FoxConn's 22 locations in eighteen months. . . with a workforce of 750,000. In the cohorts of the same age groups in the entire Chinese population, the suicide rate is FOUR TIMES HIGHER! In the United States, young people of the same ages, enrolled in Ivy League Universites such as Harvard and Yale, kill themselves at TWICE the rate of of FoxConn workers. Of course, those colleges weren't paying their surviving families the equivalent of $25,000, either, as Terry Gou, the CEO of HonHai, the parent company of Foxconn was doing.
Uh, you dropped a significant figure there, fellah. The actual pay on Apple's assembly line is $480 a month, not $80, not counting overtime. . . approximately twice what is paid on assembly lines for other makers of electronics. There is a fixed charge for room and board. It is nowhere near what you imply. Workers are free to rent space away from the dorms if they choose.
UK Team,As you know, Apple is dedicated to the advancement of human rights and equality around the world. We are honest about the challenges we face and we work hard to make sure that people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Last night, the BBC's Panorama program called those values into question. Like many of you, Tim and I were deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain or mislead our customers in any way.
I'd like to give you facts and perspective, all of which we shared with the BBC in advance, but were clearly missing from their program.
Panorama showed some of the shocking conditions around tin mining in Indonesia. Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines. Here are the facts:
Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component suppliers who sell to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what's going on there.
Apple has two choices: We could make sure all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside of Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly path, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment since Apple consumes a tiny fraction of the tin mined there. We chose the second path, which is to stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution.
We spearheaded the creation of an Indonesian Tin Working Group with other technology companies. Apple is pushing to find and implement a system that holds smelters accountable so we can influence artisanal mining in Indonesia. It could be an approach such as 'bagging and tagging' legally mined material, which has been successful over time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are looking to drive similar results in Indonesia, which is the right thing to do.
Panorama also made claims about our commitment to working conditions in our factories. We know of no other company doing as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, to discover and investigate problems, to fix and follow through when issues arise, and to provide transparency into the operations of our suppliers.
I want you to know that more than 1400 of your Apple coworkers are stationed in China to manage our manufacturing operations. They are in the factories constantly — talented engineers and managers who are also compassionate people, trained to speak up when they see safety risks or mistreatment. We also have a team of experts dedicated solely to driving compliance with our across our vast supply chain.
In 2014 alone, our Supplier Responsibility team completed 630 comprehensive, in-person audits deep into our supply chain. These audits include face-to-face interviews with workers, away from their managers, in their native language. Sometimes critics point to the discovery of problems as evidence that the process isn't working. The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have ever performed, no matter how sophisticated the company we're auditing. We find problems, we drive improvement, and then we raise the bar.
Panorama's report implied that Apple isn't improving working conditions. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. Here are just a few examples:
Several years ago, the vast majority of workers in our supply chain worked in excess of 60 hours, and 70+ hour workweeks were typical. After years of slow progress and industry excuses, Apple decided to attack the problem by tracking the weekly hours of over one million workers, driving corrective actions with our suppliers and publishing the results on our website monthly — something no other company had ever done. It takes substantial effort, and we have to weed out false reporting, but it's working. This year, our suppliers have achieved an average of 93% compliance with our 60-hour limit. We can still do better. And we will.
Our auditors were the first to identify and crack down on a ring of unscrupulous labor brokers who were holding workers' passports and forcing them to pay exorbitant fees. To date, we have helped workers recoup $20 million in excessive payments like these.
We've gone far beyond auditing and corrective actions by creating educational programs for workers in the same facilities where they make our products. More than 750,000 people have taken advantage of these college-level courses and enrichment programs, and the feedback we get from students is inspiring.
I will not dive into every issue raised by Panorama in this note, but you can rest assured that we take all allegations seriously, and we investigate every claim. We know there are a lot of issues out there, and our work is never done. We will not rest until every person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
If you'd like to learn more about our Supplier Responsibility program, I encourage you and our customers to visit our website.
Thanks for your time and your support.
Jeff
I too am shocked! Dismayed! Offended!!!!!!! Not necessarily in that order
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