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.
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