[real-eyes] Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy,’ Critics Say
- From: Steven Clark <kcpadfoot@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:20:26 -0600
The following is from:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-foxconn-investigations/
foxconn
Staff members work on the production line at the Foxconn complex in the
southern
Chinese city of Shenzhen. Photo: Kin Cheung/AP
Updated Feb. 13, 2012 at 6:48 p.m. PST with additional information from FLA.
Following ongoing public outcry and
organized protests at Apple stores
last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair
Labor Association
is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the
factories of
Foxconn, its manufacturing partner in China.
The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen’s “Foxconn City.” In the
inspections,
FLA representatives will interview thousands of factory employees about
their living
and working conditions, delving into topics such as compensation, health
and safety,
working hours, and the workers’ communication with management. The
results of the
inspections will be posted on the FLA’s website in early March.
“We were hoping for a quick response, but I don’t know if we were
actually expecting
such a fast response from Apple,” said Sarah Ryan, a human rights
organizer at Change.org,
one of two groups that orchestrated last week’s protests at Apple
stores. “It’s especially
exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public.”
The FLA said the audits will be conducted by “a team of labor experts”
composed of
FLA staff and representatives from two accredited service providers,
Openview and
INFACT. They’ll be visiting another Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China
in the coming
weeks.
While encouraged by today’s Apple announcement, Ryan also conceded the
FLA is “surrounded
with controversy in terms of effectiveness and objectiveness.” Still,
Ryan says Change.org
recognizes Apple has an existing relationship with the FLA, and as long
as its findings
are open and transparent, that’s a good thing.
But another key advocate of the Foxconn workers was even less impressed
with Apple’s
Monday announcement. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of
SumOfUs.org,
told Wired, “We’re hopeful that this is a step towards the solution, but
it’s not
even close to the solution itself. The FLA does not have a great track
record of
conducting effective investigations.”
SumOfUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition asking Apple to respond
to allegations
of Foxconn worker abuse, and to commit to developing “ethical” products.
More than
250,000 people signed the petition, which was hand-delivered to Apple
Stores across
the globe on Thursday morning. A second petition, from Hong Kong group
SACOM, takes
last week’s protest one step further
by outlining five specific areas
in which Apple needs to improve, including ending the use of student
workers and
providing a living wage for factory employees.
Although knowledge of
poor working conditions
inside Foxconn has existed for years, after Apple’s
record earnings
in 2011, the issue struck a big nerve with much of the public. A New
York Times
piece that highlighted some of the dire conditions inside Apple’s
Chinese factories
motivated people to start taking action against the status quo.
The new FLA investigations, detailed in an Apple
press release
, appear to be a direct response to this outcry. Apple has conducted
more than 40
supply chain audits
of Foxconn since 2006 and over 500 audits of its factories total.
“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair
work environment,
which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance
of our largest
suppliers,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the release.
“As an Apple consumer, I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook is taking this
seriously
and is breaking ground in the industry with Fair Labor Association
auditing,” said
Mark Shields, the consumer who originally launched the
Change.org petition
, in a statement. “But Apple still needs to use some of their trademark
creativity
and problem solving to create a worker protection plan for new products
— especially
the upcoming iPad 3 — so that they’re proactively taking care of their
workers.”
But for those looking for Apple (as well as other tech companies) to
really change
their ways, the FLA may not be the best company to perform these
assessments, if
its history is anything to go by.
Stinebrickner-Kauffman pointed out a site called
FLA Watch
that’s dedicated to monitoring the company’s well-publicized audits.
It calls the
FLA “a public relations mouthpiece” for corporations (particularly the
apparel industry).
“The FLA was created in response to student protests around the
sweatshop issue in
the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with NIKE as a
founding member,”
Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students
Against Sweatshops
(the organization behind FLA Watch), told Wired. “Ten years later, we
see little
to no reform of sweatshop conditions in NIKE’s supply chain, and no
positive changes
can be attributed to the FLA.”
Another veteran of the garment industry backs up Cheng’s opinion of audits.
“Reading that Apple has been auditing their vendors since 2006 does not
mean anything,”
says Sindy Sagastume, production manager for a fashion company called
Aimee Lynn,
which imports clothing for distribution to companies like Walmart,
Target, and Sears.
“Audits are truly a tool used by retailers in the US to make themselves
seem to be
socially compliant, but in fact does nothing to ensure factories are
acting appropriately,”
Sagastume told Wired.
So how much teeth does the FLA really have behind its audits? The
organization has
developed a code of conduct with which it judges workplace conditions,
but all it
does is investigate and report on working conditions; it doesn’t
actually instigate
any change itself. According to the organization’s website: “The FLA is a
brand accountability system
that places the onus on companies to voluntarily achieve the FLA’s
labor standards
in the factories manufacturing their products.”
In other words: The FLA is a reporting agency, not a policing agency.
Any real change
for Foxconn workers will come from either Foxconn itself, or pressure
from the Chinese
government or Apple.
“This is at best a decent first step,” echoed Stinebrickner-Kauffman of
SumOfUs.org.
“At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign.”
Please visit the nutkc blog
www.nutkc.wordpress.com
Please follow me on twitter
www.twitter.com/blindbites
Text follow blindbites to 40404 in
the United States
To subscribe or to leave the list, or to set other subscription options, go to
www.freelists.org/list/real-eyes
Other related posts:
- » [real-eyes] Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy,’ Critics Say - Steven Clark
