The documentary Apple's broken promises (Apple's broken promises) broadcast last Thursday by the BBC in prime time is causing, how could it be otherwise, a great stir
Apple sends a reply letter: "we are deeply offended"
Last Thursday the with the BBC aired an investigative documentary within the series Panorama in which he infiltrated a Pegatron factory in China, near Shanghai, to verify that the working conditions in that company supplying Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), (more specifically it is where iPhones and iPads are assembled) they were not as they should be, having eliminated breaks and being forced to overwork with periods of up to 18 days in a row. He was also visiting a tin mine in Indonesia where security measures were conspicuous by their absence and child labor by their abundance.
As they point out from iTespresso, journalists concluded that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), not doing enough to improve conditions work in your suppliers' Chinese factories, hinting that the efforts of Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), to improve such conditions they may be out of step with your public comments and claiming that working conditions within Pegatron facilities are not improving.
All this has caused a deep malaise within Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), which has led to Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations for Apple to send an internal letter to their UK employees, which we have been able to access thanks to its full publication in the newspaper The Telegralp and that you can read below:
Team UK,
As you know, Apple is dedicated to promoting human rights and equality around the world. We are honest about the challenges we face and work hard to ensure that the people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Last night, the BBC's Panorama program questioned those values. Like many of you, Tim and I are deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple could break a promise made to workers in its supply chain or mislead consumers.
I would like to share with you facts and perspectives, which we have shared with the BBC in advance but were clearly missing from their program.
Panorama showed some of the shocking conditions around tin mining in Indonesia. Apple has publicly stated that there is Indonesian tin that ends up in our products, and some of that tin probably comes from illegal mines. Here are the facts:
Tens of thousands of artisanal miners sell tin through many middlemen to smelters who supply component suppliers who sell the product to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia that the BBC visited, and of course we are appalled at what is happening there.
Apple has two options. We could have all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us and would certainly protect us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly way, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment as Apple consumes a small fraction of the tin mined there. So we chose the second option, which is to stay there and try to push for a collective solution.
We have spearheaded the creation of a Tin Working Group in Indonesia with other technology companies. Apple strives to implement a system whereby corruption in smelting furnaces is exposed and artisanal mining can be further influenced. It could be an approach to the legal and regulated collection of tin, which has worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are trying to drive similar results in Indonesia, which is the right thing to do.
Panorama also made statements about our commitment to working conditions in our factories. We are not aware of any other company that does as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, discover and investigate problems, fix them and move forward, and to provide transparency in our suppliers' operations.
I want you to know that more than 1.400 of your colleagues at Apple are in China to manage the manufacturing operations. There are talented engineers and managers in factories all the time who are also compassionate people, trained to speak up when they see safety hazards or abuse. We also have a team of experts dedicated exclusively to achieving compliance with our Supplier Code of Conduct through our vast supply chain.
In 2014 alone, our Supplier Responsibility team personally completed 630 comprehensive audits of our suppliers. These audits include face-to-face interviews with workers, away from their managers, in their mother tongue. Critics sometimes point to problems as evidence that the process is not working. The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have conducted, no matter how sophisticated the company we are auditing is. We ran into problems, made improvements, and then raised the bar.
The Panorama report implies that Apple is not improving working conditions. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. These are just some examples:
Several years ago, the vast majority of workers in our supply chain worked more than 60 hours per week, and 70-hour weeks were typical. After years of industry excuses and slow progress, Apple decided to tackle the problem by tracking the weekly hours of more than a million workers, taking corrective action with our suppliers, and posting the results on our monthly website. something that no other company had ever done. It takes a substantial effort and involves finding and discarding false reports, but it works. This year, our providers have averaged 93% compliance with our 60 hour limit. We can still do better. And we will.
Our auditors were the first to identify and eliminate a ring of unscrupulous labor intermediaries who were withholding workers' passports and forcing them to pay exorbitant prices. To date, we have helped these workers recover $ 20 million in overpayments like these.
We have gone far beyond auditing and corrective actions by creating educational programs for workers in the same facility where our products are made. More than 750.000 people have benefited from these college-level courses and enrichment programs, and the feedback we receive from students is inspiring.
I'm not going to discuss every issue that Panorama has raised in this note, but you can be sure that we take all allegations seriously and investigate every claim. We know that there are many problems and our work is never done. We will not rest until each person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
If you would like more information about our Supplier Responsibility program, I encourage you and our customers to visit our website at Apple about Responsibility of Suppliers.
Thank you for your time and your support,
Jeff
SOURCES: iTespresso | The Telegraph