Child labour "uncovered" in
Apple's supply chain
Internal audit reveals 106
children employed at 11 factories making Apple products in past year
Juliette Garside, telecoms
correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 25
January 2013 14.22 EST
Apple has discovered
multiple cases of child labour in its supply chain, including one Chinese
company that employed 74 children under the age of 16, in the latest
controversy over the technology giant's manufacturing methods.
An internal audit found a
flipside to the western consumer's insatiable thirst for innovative and
competitively priced gadgets. It uncovered 106 cases of underage labour being
used at Apple suppliers last year and 70 cases historically. The report follows
a series of worker suicides over working conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese
company that assembles must-have products such as the iPad and iPhone, and
lethal explosions at other plants.
Apple's annual supplier
report – which monitors nearly 400 suppliers – found that children were
employed at 11 factories involved in making its products. A number of them had
been recruited using forged identity papers.
The report uncovered a
catalogue of other offences, ranging from mandatory pregnancy tests, to bonded workers
whose wages are confiscated to pay off debts imposed by recruitment agencies.
They also found cases of juveniles being used to lift heavy goods, workers
having their wages docked as a punishment and one factory dumping waste oil in
the toilets.
One Chinese supplier, a
circuit board component maker called Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics,
was axed by Apple after 74 children under the age of 16 were recruited to work
on its production lines. According to Apple, the children had been knowingly
supplied by one of the region's largest labour agencies, Shenzhen Quanshun
Human Resources. Its investigators found that the agency conspired with
families to forge identification documents. Apple did not disclose the ages of
the children involved, but its code of conduct states it will not employ
workers under the age of 15, or under the legal working age in any jurisdiction
– which is 16 in China.
Apple's chief executive,
Tim Cook, who in a previous role was responsible for building Apple's supply
chain, has been under pressure to push through changes after the suicides at
Foxconn, whose manufacturing operations are largely based in China. Last
September a brawl involving up to 2,000 workers forced Foxconn to close a plant
in northern China.
Last year he described the
use of underage labour as "abhorrent", saying it was "extremely
rare in our supply chain", and stepped up measures to weed out bad
practice including hiring an independent auditor, the Fair Labor Association.
"Underage labour is a
subject no company wants to be associated with, so as a result I don't believe
it gets the attention it deserves, and as a result it doesn't get fixed like it
should," said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations at Apple.
He vowed to eradicate the practice, but said it could take some time.
At Pingzhou, the children
were returned to their families and the employer was "required to pay
expenses to facilitate their successful return". Although 95% of the
facilities scrutinised by Apple complied with child labour laws, transgressors
were told to return minors to a school chosen by their family, pay for their
education, and give them an income equal to their factory wages.
Bonded labour was
discovered at eight factories. In order to find work, some foreign labourers
pay fees to a string of recruitment agencies and sub-agencies, amassing huge
debts. Their wages are then automatically handed over to pay the debts, tying
them to jobs until the balance has been paid off.
Apple ordered its
suppliers to reimburse excessive recruitment fees – anything higher than one
month's wages – and said $6.4m (£4m) was handed back to contract workers in
2012.
Investigators found 90
facilities that deducted wages to punish workers, prompting Apple to order the
reimbursement of employees. Mandatory pregnancy testing was found at 34 places
of work, while 25 tested for medical conditions such as hepatitis B. At four
facilities, payroll records were falsified to hide information from auditors,
and at one, a supplier was found intentionally dumping waste oil "into the
restroom receptacle".
Apple said it took
measures to protect whistleblowers, and that it made 8,000 calls last year to
workers interviewed by auditors in order to find out if they had suffered
intimidation.
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