Apple Inc should disclose more details about its suppliers, workers’ rights groups said after the maker of iPhones and iPods revealed some of its contractors had hired underage employees.
“The suppliers are breaking the law,” said Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior in Hong Kong.
“Apple should disclose its suppliers list to NGOs to allow more effective monitoring of the situation,” Chen said.
Cupertino, California-based Apple said in its Supplier Responsibility report this year that three of its partners hired 15-year-old employees in countries that only allow people to start work at 16. The company, which visited sites in countries including China, Taiwan and Thailand in its annual survey, said some suppliers overworked their employees, while some workers were paid less than the local minimum wage.
“Apple should improve disclosure of worker issues at its suppliers to enable external monitoring by rights groups,” said Apo Leong, China coordinator at Asia Monitor Resource Centre in Hong Kong.
Electronics companies typically trail clothing manufacturers in efforts to enhance workers’ rights, he said.
Jill Tan, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Apple, said the company doesn’t disclose its suppliers as a matter of policy. The company also visited sites in Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the Czech Republic, the Philippines and the US as part of its onsite audit of 102 factories, its report said.
Plants in China’s Guangdong Province, home to manufacturing facilities owned by Apple suppliers, including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), face a shortfall of about 2 million workers at present, Leong said.
“I think we are a model supplier within the Apple system,” Edmund Ding, spokesman at Taipei-based Hon Hai said yesterday.
The company doesn’t use child labor, he said.
Hon Hai has no shortage of labor in China, it said in a Feb. 25 e-mail.
Hon Hai, Taoyuan, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world’s second-largest notebook manufacturer by shipments, and Taipei-based Pegatron Technology Corp (和碩聯合), the largest maker of computer motherboards, are among Apple’s Taiwan suppliers, Calvin Huang, a Taipei-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc said by telephone yesterday.
Huang said he was not aware of any suppliers that may have breached Apple’s rules.
“When it comes to labor, it’s more likely for smaller suppliers to break the rules because the larger companies can offer a better package to attract workers,” Huang said.
Competition to hire workers may tempt some companies to breach rules, he said.
“We strictly follow the core policies of our customers,” Quanta spokesman Elton Yang said yesterday, adding that the company does not publicly disclose its clients.
Denese Yao, spokeswoman for Pegatron, did not answer calls to her office and mobile phone.
Apple said it stopped doing business with at least one unnamed supplier after finding repeated violations and “inadequate actions” to address the problems.
The review also found that at eight facilities, including suppliers in Taiwan, foreign workers paid excessive recruitment fees to hiring agencies to get jobs. The company said employees were reimbursed US$2.2 million in fee overcharges over the past two years and that Apple has set a standard limiting such fees to the “equivalent of one month’s net wages.”
“It’s an unhealthy sign, because the factory owners who disregard these minimum age rules may have other violations,” Leong said.
“Underage hiring issues may worsen this year because of labor shortages in southern China,” said Leong, who said he was “disappointed” by Apple’s disclosure.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS