Will some of the polish come off Apple with new reports that its coolest products are made in crowded labor camps by sometimes underage workers who work 60 hours or more a week and live 20 or 100 to an apartment (depending on the report) with suicide netting installed to keep them from jumping? .
This morning, the New York Times weighed in with a front page 5000-word investigative report that focused heavily on Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturing behemoth that manufactures iPhones and iPads. The Times’ report suggests that not only did Apple know about the horrendous conditions and fail to act, but that its corporate culture actually tacitly encouraged its suppliers to exploit workers by emphasizing component price points and extreme product deadlines over employee safety and working conditions.
The New York Times article also reports:
- Employees who arrived late to work were sometimes required to write confession letters and copy quotations.
- Salaries of $22 a day or less, including overtime, for college grads.
- Living quarters with 20 people stuffed into a three-room apartment, according to workers.
- Foxconn disputed workers’ accounts of continuous shifts, extended overtime, crowded living accommodations and the causes of the riot.
- Audits have found consistent violations of Apple’s code of conduct.
For a company that has carefully cultivated a progressive image, the Times piece poses some challenges for Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook. Cook’s $378 million in annual compensation is at the top of 2011 executive compensation lists and Apple is sitting on $98 billion in cash at the moment. That’s at least $30 billion more than analysts expected Apple to have on hand at this time.
Source: NYT