Apple Cares?_1

Apple Cares?_1

Social impacts of Apple and its supply chain:
1. Health and Safety/Training
  1. Short, easy test but employees receive less than 24 hours training – like Apple claims they get
  2. Very demanding training staff, a lot of ordering around:
    1. ‘you get lost, you’re in trouble’
    2. ‘if you don’t do what the company asks you to do, what’s the point of employing you?’
2. Living conditions
  1. Dormitories on site for workers
    1. 18,000 eat, sleep and work there
    2. ‘city whose population lives to serve Apple’
  2. “...no more than eight individuals shall occupy one dormitory sleeping room”, but cases of up to twelve people in one room uncovered by Panorama
3. Recruitment/Pay
  1. Paychecks disguised overtime as bonuses
  2. 14 workers (for Foxconn) committed suicide, resulting in the installation of anti-suicide nets
  3. Another one of Apple’s producers, Pegatron, was supposed to have higher living standards, but critical reports were published - insisting that Apple would’ve known about it. However, almost no improvement was made, even after the report was published
  4. ID taken from citizens at recruitment offices, meaning they are legally required to follow as they cannot be without their ID
  5. Confiscation breeches the employment standards set out by Apple, and people don’t get them back until they’re on factory site, meaning they are unable to leave
4. Working conditions
  1. Workers actually falling asleep at their posts
    1. “their conditions of work are totally and physically intolerable”; Ralph Nader – Former US Presidential Candidate
    2. While standing/operating machinery
    3. People falling asleep on their breaks, and even sometimes when they should be working
    4. Some areas of work had barely any people awake
  2. Evidence of employees being forced to work 12-16 hour shifts, despite Apple’s employee standards stating -“all overtime must be voluntary”
  3. Again despite Apple’s standards, there was further evidence of under 18’s working unsuitable hours – “...juvenile workers shall not conduct night work”
Environmental impacts:
1. Tin Mines - Banka, Indonesia
  1. 30% of the world’s tin comes from here – but not all legal sources
  2. workers concerned about landslides as they’re a constant threat
  3. Many children actually make up the workforce
  4. Tin from the illegal sources investigated, are suppliers to Apple
2. On land, whole areas of forest ripped away to reach ore
Positive impacts?
1. Families in poverty have potential to be helped as their children can go off to work in the factories - potentially better than a primary sector job ie. subsistence farming
2. With Apple being a big brand name, there is an element of status symbol, to be working for such a substantial company
Apple’s response to negative claims
1. After 2010 Foxconn incidents, Apple set out a ‘Standards Plan’ - spelling out how employees should be treated
2. Claims they will investigate Panorama’s findings, including sleeping during production, the issue of ID confiscation, the widespread abuse of migrant workers and working with suppliers to prevent excess overtime
3. They say they investigate every claim brought to them
4. It goes “... deep into its supply chain to enforce standards” – ie. Where it sources its tin from, yet Panorama uncovered it within a few days, showing that not all their claims are accurate
5. Their reply to employees falling asleep at work - “Naps on breaks are not unusual”
6. The issue with employee sleeping arrangements – “Dormitory situation now sorted”
Is Panorama one sided / biased / unreliable?
1. While apple could try harder, it is often not possible to tell exactly where everything is sourced from, ie. The tin smelters themselves do not always know the legality of their raw material, even if apple does source its tin from most smelters in the area
2. Vast workforce makes it very difficult to ensure excellent working standards for every single person
3. It can be argued that every developing country has to go through these stages in order for things to be better for the next generations (ie. The Rostow and Demographic Transition Models)

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