Yesterday the web was abuzz thanks to a New York Times story that claimed Apple’s Chinese factories were dangerous and exploitative. That made Tim Cook sad, so he sent a very long email to his employees to set the record straight.
You can read the email in full over at 9to5mac, but the gist is: “We’re not doing anything bad or wrong, honest!” What else did you expect? Anyway, there are a few key points you might find interesting:
“Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people.”
Nicely worded, Tim. Everything’s relative after all. It might dangerous and exploitative, but it’s not as bad as our competitors!
“We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment. As you know, more than a million people have been trained by our program.”
A million sounds like a lot of people, but it’s difficult to say exactly how many people should have been trained. I’m willing to give Tim the benefit of the doubt here, though.
“We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word.”
Heart warming. In fairness, he had to make a statement like this. I bet, however, behind the scenes there a lot of people looking into a lot of issues. And that’s a good thing. [9to5mac]
Jim Smith
Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 8:50 PMAs long as we keep buying their products in droves they won’t seriously care about the plight of the low paid workers who make their products. It’s lip service. Their own reports reveal the consistent breaches of their own standards, but still Foxxcon makes all of Apple’s devices.
Spock
Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 8:18 PMMaybe Apple cares, but I sure as hell do not. The entire tech industry, along with clothing and all kinds of manufacturing … all of those industries have been screwing overseas workers for decades. Why the hell should one company be expected go to the guillotine for it?
Keep the gadgets coming, and if these grubs care about their own working conditions they should revolt or something.
alex effing
Monday, January 30, 2012 at 11:54 AMeeew
TSH
Monday, January 30, 2012 at 11:15 AMAlthough they couldn’t possibly have known at the time, Europe and Britain were blessed by the near-apocalyptic plague and famines that happened hundreds of years ago; not to mention massive wars and economic collapses.
With a decimated population in the remnants of a rich economy, suddenly life was precious and workers had a great deal more power and were able to capitalise on that to create the kind of expectations that we have today.
I would not be surprised if the Foxconn factory-towns are *relatively* good places to work, highly paid and comfortable, compared to other factories in China.