The Wall Street Journal spoke about the report with new CEO Tim Cook, who as SVP for Worldwide Operations and then as COO oversaw the closure of Apple’s own factories and the assembly of its current supply chain over the past 14 years.

In one of his first interviews as Apple Chief Executive, Tim Cook said the Cupertino, Calif., company has long aimed to be more transparent and believes the steps it is taking—including nearly doubling the number of supplier audits it does—are “raising the bar” for the industry.

“I have spent a lot of time in factories over my lifetime and we are clearly leading in this area,” said Mr. Cook, previously Apple’s chief operating officer who oversaw its supply chain. “It is like innovating in products. You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem.”

Apple’s audits covered all of its final assembly manufacturers and included 14 specialised environmental audits in China. From Apple’s own list of highlights:

• In 2011, we conducted 229 audits throughout our supply chain — an 80 percent increase over 2010 — including more than 100 first-time audits. We continue to expand our program to reach deeper into our supply base, and this year we added more detailed and specialized audits that focus on safety and the environment ….

• Our audits have always checked for compliance with environmental standards. In 2011, in addition to our standard audits, we launched a specialized auditing program to address environmental concerns about certain suppliers in China. Third-party environmental engineering experts worked with our team to conduct detailed audits at 14 facilities. We uncovered some violations and worked with our suppliers to correct the issues. We will expand our environmental auditing program in the coming year.

• We have a zero-tolerance policy for underage labor, and we believe our system is the toughest in the electronics industry. In 2011, we broadened our age verification program and saw dramatic improvements in hiring practices by our suppliers. Cases of underage labor were down significantly, and our audits found no underage workers at our final assembly suppliers.

Alongside the report, Apple announced its membership of the Fair Labour Association, a factory monitoring organisation established in 1999 by the Clinton White House and a group of apparel manufacturers bearing fresh bruises from a string of highly-publicised sweatshop scandals. From Bloomberg:

“Most big corporations have their ‘Nike moment’ at some stage — when they realize the difficulties of maintaining their standards, particularly in an increasingly global environment,” said FLA President Auret van Heerden. “The problem with the supply chain is that it’s a moving target ….”

“If you’re a 16-year-old girl in a developing country, your best chance of enjoying proper rights is if you get to work at a multinational,” he said. “The power of their contract is more powerful than the power of law ….”

Independent monitoring isn’t the panacea to problems in China’s factories, said Geoffrey Crothall, communications director of workers-rights group China Labour Bulletin .

“The problem isn’t whether or not they do audits, but whether workers are treated in a reasonable manner,” he said. “What the workers need is an effective voice in the workplace.”

The use of child labour among Apple’s suppliers has attracted particular attention in the past, particularly after the number of reported cases increased from 11 in 2009 to 91 in 2010. Last year, the total subsided to 19, in spite of the greatly expanded inspections.

We discovered a total of 6 active and 13 historical cases of underage labor at 5 facilities. In each case, the facility had insufficient controls to verify age or detect false documentation. We found no instances of intentional hiring of underage labor.

We required the suppliers to support the young workers’ return to school and to improve their management systems— such as labor recruitment practices and age verification procedures—to prevent recurrences. (p 9)

In an email to company employees published at MacRumors, Cook said that “we will not rest until the number is zero everywhere”.

Apple’s report emerged amid a burst of well-deserved attention to Mike Daisey’s show, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’, which was featured this month on This American Life. When Daisey visited the Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant in 2010, he spoke to several workers in their early teens:

And I say to her, you seem kind of young. How old are you? And she says, I’m 13. And I say, 13? That’s young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you’re– and she says oh no. And her friends all agree, they don’t really check ages. The outside companies do have inspections, but workers told me Foxconn always knows when there’s going to be an inspection. So what they do then, they don’t even check ages then. They just pull everyone from the affected line, and then they put the oldest workers they have on that line ….

Do you really think Apple doesn’t know? In a company obsessed with the details, with the aluminum being milled just so, with the glass being fitted perfectly into the case, do you really think it’s credible that they don’t know? Or are they just doing what we are all doing? Do they just see what they want to see?

Apple has repeatedly disclosed cases of child labour in its supply chain, though not at which suppliers these cases were discovered. The 2012 report states that no such cases were found at final assembly manufacturers such as Foxconn in 2011, suggesting either an ineffective audit or a miraculous reversal of the situation Daisey found the previous year. But others interviewed by This American Life lent some credence to Apple’s claim:

This is Ian Spaulding, who estimates that he has been in or worked with about 1,000 factories throughout China. The company that he founded and runs, INFACT Global Partners, goes into Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility standards that are set by Western companies so those companies are ready when outside auditors come and check on working conditions ….

… [H]is only real objection to anything that Mike Daisey found had to do with child labor. Ian Spaulding said yes, there definitely is child labor in China, but not at the top tier electronics manufacturers. Other people who we talked to agreed with this. Even people who are critical of Foxconn for all kinds of things agreed with this. He said maybe a stray worker here and there might get in on a borrowed ID, but it is not a widespread problem.

The report also describes measures taken in response to explosions last year at factories in Chengdu and Shanghai, in which a total of 77 were injured and four killed. Both accidents were found to have been caused by the ignition of airborne aluminium particles.

Working closely with external experts, Apple audited all suppliers handling aluminum dust and put stronger precautionary measures in place before restarting production. We have established new requirements for handling combustible dust throughout our supply chain, including:

• Specific ventilation requirements with regular testing of air flow velocity
• Comprehensive inspections of ductwork to identify aluminum dust deposits
• Banning the use of high-pressure compressed air for cleaning to lower the possibility of dust clouds forming
• Requiring that all vacuums be rated explosive proof to prevent ignition
• Ensuring that type-D fire extinguishers are available to handle metal fires

At the time of this report, all suppliers except one have implemented the counter- measures identified by the team of external experts. The one supplier that has not will remain shut down until modifications are in place. (p 15)

The publication of Apple’s supplier list follows sharp criticism of the company’s practices over the past year from Chinese environmental groups, including Friends of Nature and the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Among the coalition’s complaints was Apple’s uncooperative and frequently obstructive attitude. In January last year, they ranked Apple last out of 29 tech companies in terms of supply chain transparency, and the firm’s exceptional secrecy was a major reason for the special attention it received in a follow-up report in August. Apple’s cloak-and-dagger approach was described in a chinadialogue interview with the IPE’s Ma Jun last year:

Liu Jianqiang: … In February Apple released a document admitting that workers in its supply chain had suffered industrial injuries. Has Apple improved its behaviour since then?

Ma Jun: Apple’s behaviour hasn’t improved at all. It has admitted there are issues in its supply chain, but it hasn’t made any adjustments to its policy, maintaining that “it is our long-term policy not to disclose supplier information” and ignoring questions from environmental groups …. We’ve read that Apple progress report carefully. It says that 36 suppliers had “major violations”, but some of those are taking high agency fees or telling workers what to do during audits. The pollution issues we found are a serious threat to local communities – yet not one of those was included.

Personally I feel that the “black box” audits aren’t doing any good ….

LJ: Have you been in touch with Apple during your investigation?

MJ: We wrote to Apple last week, asking it to confirm: whether or not the companies we mention in the report are suppliers; whether or not Apple is aware of their breaches; and whether or not Apple knows about the repeated complaints. But there was no response. After the poisoning incident last year, we sent a list of questions to Apple in August. Apple didn’t reply until November – and then not to Chinese NGOs, but to an American NGO – saying it could not confirm if the company was a supplier, and that Apple needed the environmental groups to provide more evidence. The NGO responded that a lot of publicly available information showed it was an Apple supplier, and Apple replied that “it is our long-term policy not to disclose supplier information”. And so the door was closed.

Apple later engaged in talks with the organisations involved, but the newly released supplier list marks a still more radical departure from its past policy. Although not completely exhaustive, it includes suppliers accounting for 97% of Apple’s procurement spending.

But many have criticised the absence of information beyond a bare list of names which fails to reveal which suppliers have committed violations, where their plants are located, or with which subsidiaries of the larger companies Apple is involved. (Kaedar Electronics, for example, is not listed separately from its parent company, Pegatron.) From The New York Times:

Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy group for workers’ rights, was disappointed Apple did not reveal the location of the suppliers on its list, complicating outside efforts to monitor the progress at the factories. Some plants on the list are relatively unknown, with Web sites that do not list where facilities are situated.

“It’s a bit of a half-step really to say, ‘Here are the names of the factories, go look through a haystack,’ ” Ms. Gearhart said. “But it’s a start ….”

… [T]he list excludes many of the secondary suppliers — companies that provide parts to firms that directly contract with Apple. For instance, though the American glassmaker Corning has manufactured the strengthened glass in iPhones, it does not appear on the list because it technically does not contract with Apple, but with an intermediary that finishes the glass before it is delivered to an assembly factory.

Further frustration came from the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, which pointed out that 62% of Apple’s global suppliers failed to meet the company’s 60-hour-per-week limit, let alone the 49-hour average workweek which is the Chinese legal maximum:

Apple’s Code of Conduct stresses of course that: “Under no circumstances shall work weeks exceed the maximum permitted under applicable laws and regulations.” But very few factory workers in China work less than 50 hours a week, and so we should not be surprised if employees at Apple supplier factories are working in excess of the Chinese legal limit, especially given the results of Apple’s progress report. We can’t say this is for sure however because even in the new post-Steve Jobs era of openness, Apple still does not reveal which factories commit what violations.

Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress Report would be a lot more helpful and meaningful if it went one or two steps further and broke the report down into individual countries and showed to what extent the individual suppliers in those countries complied with the law as well as Apple’s own standards.

This would not be such an issue if Apple’s standards and China’s labour laws were more in sync but an eleven hour gap between the maximum working hours permitted each week is something Apple needs to think about.

The list also failed to win over Mike Daisey, who responded via This American Life’s blog:

Apple has released a list of its suppliers, but it still hides the companies it audited with anonymity. This makes it impossible to learn anything new about what is going on in Apple’s supply chain, to verify anything, or hold anyone responsible. The FLA will audit a tiny percentage of Apple’s factories, and also won’t make public which factories they audit.

If Apple would spend less energy finessing its public image, and instead apply its efforts to real transparency and accountability, it could be a true leader for the electronics industry. Apple today is still saying what it said yesterday: trust us, we know best, there’s nothing to worry about. They have not earned the trust they are asking for.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, child labor, corporate responsibility, Foxconn, Ma Jun, pollution, Shenzhen, transparency, working conditions
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Collaborate with industry groups and NGOs in China to address key issues— such as working hours, underage labor, and employee well-being—through root cause analysis, more aggressive audits, stronger requirements for corrective and preventive actions, and expanded supplier training and assistance.

Elsewhere, the report mentions existing arrangements with NGOs Verité and the Fair Labor Association, and with independent experts in dealing with the Foxconn suicides. It remains to be seen how far greater involvement of outsiders in Apple’s auditing will address concerns about lack of independent verification.

The report covers several China-related issues in some detail: n-hexane poisoning at Wintek, suicides at Foxconn, and the employment of underage workers by a number of suppliers. On underage labour:

To address this difficult scenario, we intensified our search for underage labor in 2010, interviewing more workers and further scrutinizing recruiting practices, employment records, and worker IDs, especially where third-party labor agencies and schools were involved. Our audits of 127 facilities revealed ten Chinese factories that had hired workers under the age of 16 years, the minimum age for employment in China ….

Of the ten facilities with underage labor violations, we found one that had hired a much larger number of underage workers—a total of 42. In addition, we determined that management had chosen to overlook the issue and was not committed to addressing the problem. Based on the poor likelihood of improvement, we terminated business with the facility. During our investigation, we also discovered that the vocational school involved in hiring the underage workers had falsified student IDs and threatened retaliation against students who revealed their ages during our audits. We reported the school to appropriate authorities in the Chinese government.

On the infamous string of suicides at Foxconn:

Like many of our customers and others around the world, we were disturbed and deeply saddened to learn that factory workers were taking their own lives at the Shenzhen facility of Foxconn.

Recognizing that we would need additional expertise to help prevent further tragedies, we launched an international search for the most knowledgeable suicide prevention specialists—particularly those with experience in China— and asked them to advise Apple and Foxconn.

Apple … commissioned an independent review by a broader team of suicide prevention experts. This team was asked to conduct a deeper investigation into the suicides, evaluate Foxconn’s response, and recommend strategies for supporting workers’ mental health in the future.

And on the Wintek case:

In 2010, we learned that 137 workers at the Suzhou facility of Wintek, one of Apple’s suppliers, had suffered adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane, a chemical in cleaning agents used in some manufacturing processes. We discovered that the factory had reconfigured operations without also changing their ventilation system. Apple considered this series of incidents to be a core violation for worker endangerment.

We required Wintek to stop using n-hexane and to provide evidence that they had removed the chemical from their production lines. In addition, Apple required them to fix their ventilation system. Since these changes, no new workers have suffered difficulties from chemical exposure.

The apparent frankness of the report stands in contrast with Apple’s evasive response when the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs raised the Wintek case with them last year. The company refused to confirm or deny any business relationship with Lianjian (a Wintek subsidiary), asking that the NGO produce evidence that such a relationship existed.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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While the legal working age in China is 16, Nike’s code of conduct states that its contractors do not “employ any person below the age of 18 to produce footwear.”

Spokesmen for Nike and for Longfa Shoe Factory denied the allegation and said hiring underage workers would violate company policies.

But some workers at the factory say they were sent to work at age 15 or 16. They were supplied with fake identification papers showing earlier birthdates, they said.

Sawut and Abide, Uyghurs originally from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), said that most of the girls were brought to Longfa at age 16 or 17 in three separate groups during March, April, and September of 2008.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, Guangdong, nike, workers rights
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Before buying a paper, a kind-hearted auntie asks about the papergirl’s situation.

The papergirl rushes up as soon as she sees the man show an interest in buying.

Just ahead of an old street performer, a young boy peddles newspapers.

The papergirl protests the paperboy’s invasion of her “business territory.”

The “invading paperboy” dodges her left and right, smiling the whole while.

The “business territory invasion incident” finally ends with the paperboy getting knocked over by the papergirl.

Before the 2009 Spring Festival, passersby at a Changsha plaza could see a number of school-aged kids peddling newspapers in the cold, amidst crowds of people. Some of the passersby showed disdain for the children, complaining that they obstructed traffic. Others took pity on the kids and said that they deserved sympathy and an outstretched hand. Still others wanted to look more deeply into the matter before deciding whether or not to help.

According to this reporter, these kids may look unkempt, but they haven’t lost a bit of their innocence. Just as they can be competitors amongst each other, they can also be one another’s playmates!

Hecaitou, one of China’s most prominent bloggers, posted these pictures on his blog. The pictures and commentary elicited a number of reactions from his readers, selectively translated by CDT:

?? Says:

??????
Is this real?

Allan An Says:

??
moving

111 Says:

?????????????????
O glorious motherland! How our people are blessed and in good health!

themoss Says:

??????
God, she’s so young …

kapa Says:

??????????????…..
If they’re holding a ?Global Shit Explosion? [this is a pun on the name "Global Times," whose Chinese name ???? huan2qiu2shi2bao4 sounds like ???? huan2qiu2shi3bao4] …..

lilii Says:

?????????????????????????????????????
Child labor. I really pity these kids. While well-off kids are being nurtured at home, these kids invite the evil glares of others.

mute Says:

??????????~~
Ah, quite harmonious, flowers of the homeland~~

???? Says:

??
No words.

gravity0 Says:

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????????????????“?????”?????“??”???
This needs verification. Maybe they’re not selling papers. In the subway stations, there are free newspaper giveouts, and everyday during work hours, I always see middle-aged women in shabby clothes collecting papers that passengers have finished reading. Some of these women are carrying children on their backs. After a few years, maybe those children grow to be about this age, and then they probably have to do the same thing as their moms everyday. This is “the process by which poverty is inherited” (sounds like one of the Four Modernizations).

est Says:

???????????????????????????
These are all pretty much textbook examples of extreme evil, laying bare our old society.

???? Says:

@gravity0
???????????……????????????????????????
????????? ????????
???????????“?????”?????
Oh my gosh. You’re saying you want proof …. you think everywhere in China is like Shanghai? That everywhere is like Beijing? How awesome.
Changsha has subways???? And you thought it was like Beijing.
Seems like Chinese people have already gotten to the level of “let them eat meat porridge” [similar to the saying "let them eat cake"].

name_is_just_code Says:

??????
????????????????????????????????
??????? ?????
Changsha is my hometown.
On Huangxing Road (the busiest road, the street in the photo is similar to it), there are indeed young kids selling papers.
Typically, it’s Xiaoxiang Morning Post on sale for 5 mao a piece.

zergling Says:

????????????
??????????????????????????????
However you see it, this report was heartwarming.
That young boy is still smiling. Thanks to the reporter who recorded this boy’s pure innocence.

nidadai Says:

???????????
????????????
Behind, there’s someone controlling them. How pitiable.
A slum millionaire in the background.

???? Says:

???????????????????????????
This kind of situation still exists. I reckon that the parents are orchestrating this behind-the-scenes.

??? Says:

??????????
??????????????
??
Look at what the journalist is saying.
He’s writing as if this is some great occasion for joy.

picnic Says:

????????????“????????”????????????????????????
This reporter’s commentary is really something, “be one another’s playmates.” Would he (she?) be willing to let his own kids play with the ones selling papers?

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Changsha, child labor, netizens' voices, newspapers, photos
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China is now investigating whether hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poor children of the Yi ethnic minority group in Liangshan were lured or even kidnapped to work in factories that are increasingly desperate for the kind of cheap labor that powered China to prosperity over the past two decades.

Labor recruiters — government investigators and some local residents portray them as con men — have connected two radically different parts of China’s turbulent society. They have brought together ethnic minorities untouched by economic development in their mountainous isolation, and factory owners in the prime export manufacturing zones of southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong.

Exporters have struggled to adjust to soaring inflation, a fast-rising currency and, with some irony, stricter enforcement of labor laws that make it harder to hire regular workers on a seasonal basis. Using child workers from a remote region, many of whom cannot even speak Mandarin, the country’s main national dialect, have provided a temporary, albeit illegal, solution.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, labor rights, Liangshan, Sichuan, Yi minority
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Chinese police have rescued more than 100 village children sold to work as slave labourers in the booming southern province of Guangdong. The children, from the ethnic Yi minority, came from poor families in Sichuan about 600 miles ( 960 km) away. The China Daily said 167 children had been rescued from the factory in the industrial city of Dongguan so far, and several arrests had been made.

China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labour last year.

See also a CDT translation of a Southern Metropolis Daily investigation into this case.

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, dongguan, human trafficking, Sichuan Province, Yi minority
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Lianshang is just one of thousands of impoverished communities in inland China that has been feeding the country’s manufacturing dynamo with unskilled labor. The story goes like this: young migrant workers find jobs at a toy or shoe factory in, say, Dongguan, and the next year, after a trip back home during the Spring Festival, they bring back with them many more fellow villagers hungry for whatever work is available. These workers-turned middlemen make a hundred kuai for every new recruit. That money of course doesn’t last too long. This is what it was like in the late 90s.

But the “business” model soon became less effective as the number of migrant workers increased and fewer people needed help finding a job. That’s when savvy headhunters began targeting teenagers, many of whom are still in school, or even younger.

Ma Haibu was one of those children taken from his village in Niuniuba Township of Meigu County to Dongguan and other factory towns for cheap jobs, in most cases without parental consent. During his trip, over a dozen of his buddies were sold into child-labor for half-year stints.

This reporter found that average Joes in Liangshan Prefecture, from farmers to civil servants to policemen to teachers, all knew about the child labor smuggling, which they call “bringing workers (??).” The practice has mushroomed over the past four or five years. The smugglers make money on the number of laborers they bring to factory bosses in Guangdong, and theoretically wire a few hundred kuai to the children’s parents while pocketing the rest for themselves. In some cases the parents receive nothing.

Ma Haibu’s parents were among the “unlucky” ones, not receiving a penny for half a year. His home is a typical rundown shack. Just a dozen square meters in size, a light bulb is the only appliance in the house. When Ma was smuggled last December, he didn’t have a penny and was in the fourth grade. A former smuggler complained that parents supposedly will get “paid” every month, but some of his comrades literally “sold” the kids to the factories, “ruining the market.” He also said that the poorer the village, the easier it is to trick the children.

Some schools, fully aware of the threat posed by smugglers, lock the school gate in order to protect their students from strangers. In some schools there are upwards of 5-6 smuggling cases in many of the classes, from junior high down to the second-grade.

With the increasing demonstration of wealth by an emerging class of “smugglers,” the spirit of Liangshan is starting to change. The nouveau rich smugglers are exerting their newfound power over the seniors of local clans who used to have authority regional affairs. And some say that as long as the foremen, or smugglers, pay the parents on time, it’s a good thing. It’s no wonder many respected villagers also jumped on the bandwagon.

At a people’s congress meeting earlier this year, the issue was at the top of the agenda of county officials, who vowed to prevent school children from being stolen by smugglers.

Same story by Southern Metro Daily (with flash interactivity). See also a Reuters report on the above story, “Chinese children sold “like cabbages” into slavery.“

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, dongguan, human trafficking, Liangshan, Sichuan
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A company alleged to have used child labor to produce licensed products for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has had its contract terminated, Beijing organizers said Tuesday.

In addition, three other companies accused of labor-law violations in a report released in early June have had their contracts suspended. [Full text]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, Olympics business, Olympics human rights
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We are the fathers of the 400 unfortunate kids who were sold to brick kilns as hard laborers. On June 5th, when we had exhausted all the means to look for our sons, we wrote a joint letter asking for help, which was posted on Dahe website, titled “400 fathers crying out in blood, who can save our children?“. We were hoping that the Internet would pass the suffering of our children to the highest levels of the central government, and attract their attention.

(...)
Read the rest of “How Can You Answer To Your Conscience?” – 400 Fathers of Brick Kiln Child Laborers (1,212 words)

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At the kiln, Li subsisted on a diet of bread, noodles, and water. Although he did his best to avoid irritating the overseers, he got beaten twice when he was too exhausted and weak to work quickly, said the WSJ report.

The brick kiln where Li toiled was set up by the Communist Party chief of the village and run by his son, the WSJ said, quoting Chinese authorities. The party chief has been sacked.

From The Wall Street Journal:

(...)
Read the rest of Finally Rescued, China’s ‘Slaves’ Detail Their Plight (150 words)

© Mo Ming for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, Shanxi, Shanxi brick kiln, slave labor
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