Apple-supplying Chinese factory allegedly violates labour laws

Electronics giant Apple has dispatched a team to China to investigate a report of extensive labour law violations in a factory producing parts for its products.
Thu, 11 Sep 2014 | By Sarah MarquetElectronics giant Apple has dispatched a team to China to investigate a report of extensive labour law violations in a factory producing parts for its products.
 
China Labour Watch and Green America released an investigative report late last week on working conditions at Catcher Technology in Suqian, China, which produces metal casings for consumer electronics companies including Apple.
 
It found that not only were Chinese labour laws being violated, but Catcher’s own policies, as well as Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct. The report went on to say “Apple has a long way to go to ensure workers are labouring under safe and fair conditions”.

An Apple statement, provided to Recruiter this week, said the company had found some “areas for improvement” in the factory during its own audit in May and was to conduct a follow up audit next month but dispatched a team immediately in light of the report.

The statement said the factory makes aluminium casings for MacBooks and iPads, “and our inspectors are there constantly”.

It also said Apple had already been working with Catcher to address safety concerns following a quarterly fire-safety inspection last week.

“Catcher has made same-day repairs of broken and expired fire extinguishers, unblocked corridors and fire exits, and added missing emergency exit signs.”

The same factory was investigated by China Labour Watch last year and findings, including safety violations, excessive overtime, insufficient social insurance, and a lack of protective equipment, were shared with Apple.

The latest report, based on the findings of an undercover investigator working to produce parts for the latest iPad, was the follow up investigation but it found nothing much had changed, except for additional violations.
 
“Apple and Catcher have done little to ensure that safety standards and other conditions have improved for Catcher’s workers. In fact, the investigator going into the factory in 2014 discovered numerous additional violations that weren’t found in 2013, as well as repeat violations from year to year, suggesting that conditions may actually be getting worse in the factory,” the report said.
 
Through observation and more than 100 interviews with Catcher employees, the investigation found 22 labour violations including:
 
  • Discriminatory hiring practices, including an upper age limit of 40 and refusal to hire people with tattoos.
  • Workers have to wait up to two months after beginning to work at Catcher to receive their contracts, violating China’s Labour Contract Law.
  • Without receiving any safety training, workers must sign documents to say they have done so.
  • The contract includes rules related to occupational safety and working conditions which the company itself does not comply with.
  • Despite using toxic chemicals, workers frequently do not receive protective equipment in a timely manner leading some to suffer skin and eye irritations.
  • Fire exits and windows are locked and some safety routes are blocked or too narrow to allow more than one person at once to exit, meaning many workers could become trapped if there was an explosion.
  • There are no first aid kits in workshops or dormitories and workers did not know there was such a kit in the workshop office.
  • Hazardous and general waste are not separated and industrial waste is poured into the sewerage system and into a nearby river.
  • Workers are made to work mandatory overtime of up to 100 hours a month, three times the allowed amount under Chinese labour law.
  • Workers labour on their feet for 10 hours a day, six days a week.
  • Workers find it difficult to resign as their notices are not accepted by supervisors and then they are made to quit and cannot easily collect unpaid wages.
  • There is no functional union. There is a complaint line but workers are discouraged from using it. If they do so, it is not confidential and they can suffer retaliation.
  • In factory dormitories, there are eight people to a room and they must pay for showers and drinking water.

The report claimed that while Apple’s standards, code of conduct, and its own investigations looked good on paper, they often did not result in fundamental improvements in labour conditions.

It said it had been almost 10 years since Apple introduced its Supplier Code of Conduct, "yet while Apple has earned hundreds of billions of dollars of profit over this period, the workers making Apple's valuable gadgets continue to suffer daily human rights and safety violation".

The Apple statement said excessive overtime was “not in anyone’s best interest, and we work closely with our suppliers to prevent it.

“We track and report the weekly working hours for more than 1m workers and, through the end of August, Catcher has averaged 95% compliance with our 60-hour work-week limit this year.

“Catcher is among the 160 suppliers enrolled in our 18-month Apple Supplier EHS Academy training program, which we launched last year to raise the bar for environment, health and safety management in the industry.”

The China Labour Report investigator worked at the factory for at least three days.

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