Apple not as rosy as claimed on the ground

The world’s most profitable company is proving less successful in sorting out worker exploitation in its supply chain, research has found.

The world’s most profitable company is proving less successful in sorting out worker exploitation in its supply chain, research has found.

In late January 2015 Apple reported the largest quarterly profit ever in corporate history, but for many hundreds of thousands of young Chinese workers toiling on assembly lines producing Apple’s slick products, 2014 was not such a good year.

Reports from China Labour Watch (CLW) and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), and evidence gathered by researchers Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai detail a litany of labour law violations at factories across China.

Their reports provide clear evidence of a lack of corrective action from 2013 to 2014 on both the part of Apple and several of its suppliers. They found violations of Chinese labour law and Apple’s supplier code of conduct are commonplace.

These include work hours in excess of daily and weekly limits, managerially and economically forced overtime, workplace safety hazards including locked fire exits and blocked pathways, regular intimidation and verbal abuse, an inability to take sick leave, and no opportunity for collective bargaining or resolution of worker concerns.