The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.
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An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.
When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.
Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.
A caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home.
“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?”
Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.
The caller told Mr. Lai’s father.
“He’s in trouble. Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including the one at the Chengdu plant on May 20, 2011, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.
There was also a second explosion and fire at Foxconn's Shandong plant on September 27, 2011.
Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department.
“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible, but what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”
Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.
Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.
And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.
But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.
Foxconn Precision Components
Li Mingqi, a former manager at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners said.
“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.”
Li worked at Foxconn Technology until April 2011, and is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.
He said.
“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests.”
Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.
Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures. This system may not be pretty, they argue, but a radical overhaul would slow innovation. Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every year.
One former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements said.
“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on. Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.
The executive asked.
If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?”
Apple, in its published reports, has said it requires every discovered labor violation to be remedied, and suppliers that refuse are terminated. Privately, however, some former executives concede that finding new suppliers is time-consuming and costly. Foxconn is one of the few manufacturers in the world with the scale to build sufficient numbers of iPhones and iPads. So said Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard and a former member of the Monitoring International Labor Standards committee at the National Academy of Sciences said.
"Apple is not going to leave Foxconn and they’re not going to leave China. There’s a lot of rationalization.”
Apple was provided with extensive summaries of this article, but the company declined to comment. The reporting is based on interviews with more than three dozen current or former employees and contractors, including a half-dozen current or former executives with firsthand knowledge of Apple’s supplier responsibility group, as well as others within the technology industry.
In 2010, Steven P. Jobs discussed the company’s relationships with suppliers at an industry conference.
Mr. Jobs, who was Apple’s chief executive at the time and who died last October said.
“I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry, and maybe in any industry, of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain. I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh, I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.”
Here's the video of All Things Digital interviewin Steve Jobs about Foxconn's deplorable work conditions.
When asked specifically about Foxconn, Steve Jobs says,
"We're pretty on top of it. We're all over this."
Others, including workers inside such plants, acknowledge the cafeterias and medical facilities, but insist conditions are punishing.
One former Apple executive said.
“We’re trying really hard to make things better, but most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”
The Road to Chengdu
In the fall of 2010, about six months before the explosion in the iPad factory, Lai Xiaodong carefully wrapped his clothes around his college diploma, so it wouldn’t crease in his suitcase. He told friends he would no longer be around for their weekly poker games, and said goodbye to his teachers. He was leaving for Chengdu, a city of 12 million that was rapidly becoming one of the world’s most important manufacturing hubs.
Though painfully shy, Mr. Lai had surprised everyone by persuading a beautiful nursing student to become his girlfriend. She wanted to marry, she said, and so his goal was to earn enough money to buy an apartment.
Factories in Chengdu manufacture products for hundreds of companies. But Mr. Lai was focused on Foxconn Technology, China’s largest exporter and one of the nation’s biggest employers, with 1.2 million workers. The company has plants throughout China, and assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics, including for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nintendo, Nokia and Samsung.
Foxconn’s factory in Chengdu, Mr. Lai knew, was special. Inside, workers were building Apple’s latest, potentially greatest product: the iPad.
When Mr. Lai finally landed a job repairing machines at the plant, one of the first things he noticed were the almost blinding lights. Shifts ran 24 hours a day, and the factory was always bright. At any moment, there were thousands of workers standing on assembly lines or sitting in backless chairs, crouching next to large machinery, or jogging between loading bays. Some workers’ legs swelled so much they waddled. Zhao Sheng, a plant worker said.
“It’s hard to stand all day.”
Banners on the walls warned the 120,000 employees:
“Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.”
Apple’s supplier code of conduct dictates that, except in unusual circumstances, employees are not supposed to work more than 60 hours a week. But at Foxconn, some worked more, according to interviews, workers’ pay stubs and surveys by outside groups. Mr. Lai was soon spending 12 hours a day, six days a week inside the factory, according to his paychecks. Employees who arrived late were sometimes required to write confession letters and copy quotations. There were “continuous shifts,” when workers were told to work two stretches in a row, according to interviews.
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COMMENTARY: I first became aware of the sweat shop conditions and suicides at Foxconn International in a previous blog post dated September 17, 2010 following an extensive CNN investigation back on June 1, 2010. To say the least, any employer that would hang a threatening banner that says,
“Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow,”
is not concerned about the welfare of its employees, but concerned solely about production and meeting Apple's deadlines. If I were a worker at Foxconn International, I would consider that a form of working under extreme duress and threat of being fired. Any American company that would hang such a banner in their plant would be the subject to immediate investigation by the National Labor Relations Board, OSHA, ACLU, EPA and human rights organizations.
Let there be no doubt that Apple's "magical" devices are awash with the blood of 12 Foxconn International plant workers who committed or tried to commit suicide. This does not include the dead Chinese plant workers who died from cancer or suffering from chronic illnesses due to the massive environmental pollution committed by several of Apple's Chinese manufacturers or the plant workers killed due to explosions and fires at two Foxconn plants. For whatever its worth, here's a timeline of the list of suicides at Foxconn International in 2010:
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The testimony given by numerous previous plant managers, Chinese investigators and Foxconn plant workers is in sharp contrast to the naievity with which Steve Jobs struggles to explain away the sweat shop conditions, human rights violations, pollution, explosions and fires at Foxconn International, and should be an insult to the intelligence of all Apple evangelists throughout the world.
In a blog article dated November 7, 2011, I commented on the findings of China's Environmental Protection Agency that Apple's supply chain in China was creating a "hazardous waste disposal disaster on a massive scale." Apple has always operated under a web of secrecy created by Steve Jobs, and refused to even admit that the companies identified by China's Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) even produced products or components for Apple. In fact, Apple did not even bother to respond to China's IPE about the alledged pollution violations. This prompted me to contact Apple directly, and all I received for my efforts was a "no comment," by Apple's publicity department.
Apple's supplier chain pollution disaster flies in the face of Apple's established Supplier Responsibility requirements for its worldwide suppliers. Below is a highlight of the opening exerpt from Apple's Supplier Responsibility requirements:
"Supplier Responsibility at Apple"
Apple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility wherever our products are made. We insist that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes.
Apple’s program is based on our comprehensive Supplier Code of Conduct, which outlines our expectations for the companies we do business with. We evaluate compliance through a rigorous auditing program and work proactively with our suppliers to drive change."
The specific language in Apple's Supplier Responsibility requirements which drew my attention is a line in the first paragraph that says, "..and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes."
Apple's suppliers in China have a record of abusing their plant workers, creating dangerous working conditions, and polluting the environment on a massive scale, but all of this is in direct violation of Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct. This makes you wonder just how muchTim Cook, then Steve Jobs' Chief Operating Officer, and responsible for Apple's worldwide outsourced manufacturing, knew about all the worker abuses and environmental pollution. Steve Jobs makes it sound like Apple was completely caught off guard, and his comment that they are "studying and trying to understand the situation," sounds like pure bullshit to me. I have never heard Steve Jobs struggle so much to explain the problems at Foxconn International. Sorry, Apple evangelists, but Steve Jobs is nothing but an asshole, but may his soul rest in peace.
Looks like Foxconn International found a solution to reduce worker complaints and allegations of operating a sweat shop--just get rid of the plant workers. In a blog article dated October 15, 2011, I commented on Foxconn International's plans to replace plant workers with one million robots over the next three years.
In a blog post dated January 13, 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed a comprehensive list of its 156 major Chinese suppliers for the first time, along with a detailed Apple Production Supplier Responsibility Report - 2012 Progress Report on factory inspections, moving to combat an array of criticism about working conditions in its supply chain and the company's transparency about it.
Tim Cook said.
"Working hours is a complex issue. I am confident the company can improve in the area by monitoring these plants at a very, very micro level. I know this is a journey."
Mr. Cook said Apple has been sharing more of its findings about working conditions in its factories over time, but this year's update represents its most detailed. It comes as the drumbeat of criticism against practices across the company's ballooning supplier footprint has grown from prominent Chinese environmental activists and others. Many of those have taken aim at the company's prior unwillingness to disclose all the suppliers it works with.
When Tim Cook was Apple COO, he was responsible for worldwide manufacturing and those 156 Chinese suppliers, but he either looked the other way, ignored the problem or refused to admit the suppliers under investigation were even suppliers. It's truly remarkable that Apple is finally getting around to accepting responsibility and disclosing its Chinese and other Asian suppliers.
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I have no doubt that Apple is at its very core is responsible for what is going on with its suppliers in China. It's strict secrecy and the "curtain of fear" created by Steve Jobs is at the root of the problems in China. No Apple employee would ever admit anything or say something to violate that strict secrecy without personally receiving the wrath of Steve Jobs, and now Tim Cook.
Apple is known for the stellar profit margins (46% in Q4 2011) which are the highest of any computer and consumer electronics company, and there's a reason for this. This chart, put together by Bloomberg, shows the slim profit margins that Foxconn deals with to build millions of pieces of consumer electronics for clients like Apple -- which has seen its margins grow dramatically in recent years.
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At the time of the iPhone launch in 2007, Apple's profit margins were at 15.4 percent, while Foxconn's was at 2.7. In the most recent quarter, Apple reported 30.8 percent margins -- double what it was 4 years ago -- with Foxconn at a mere 1.5 percent.
Foxconn has continued to grow with the tremendously successful launches of new iPhones and the iPad. The company has sacrificed margin growth so it can get volume and scale, something very important to Apple which puts extraordinary pressure on its suppliers for low prices.
While Foxconn's margins are extremely small in comparison to Apple, they do exceed those of a number of categories, including grocery stores and the global shipping industry.
The bottom line is this: It's clearly all about corporate profits, and Apple has found a great partner in Foxconn International, so you won't bee seeing any changes in suppliers for its iPhone and iPad anytime soon.
We can only hope that Apple realizes that they must keep a balance between good corporate ethics, respect for workers, worker rights and protecting the environment. Let's hope that Apple CEO Tim Cook is serious about both sides of the equation.
Courtesy of an article dated January 25, 2012 appearing in The New York Times and an article dated July 11, 2011 appearing in The DamnLag
Sorry, my post pissed you off, but that's the God's honest trust. Take it anyway you want it, little boy.
Posted by: Tommy | 02/02/2012 at 05:47 PM
really? that's terrible! I can't believe that!
Posted by: writer jobs | 02/02/2012 at 11:17 AM