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]