In the wake of
the Fair Labor Association’s inspection of its manufacturing facilities in
China, Foxconn has apparently opted to give its workers a pay raise. Apple
requested those “special voluntary audits,” which included factories in
Shenzhen and Chengdu.
According to Bloomberg,
worker salaries have jumped anywhere from 16 percent to 25 percent.
In late
January, The
New York Times published a series of reports about working conditions
at Foxconn, which builds Apple’s best-selling products. “The workers assembling
iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions,” read the Times' Jan. 25 piece, which partly drew
its information from unnamed factory employees. “Problems are as varied as
onerous work environments and serious—sometimes deadly—safety problems.”
Those reports
drew negative attention to Apple. In January, it became the first technology
company admitted to the Fair Labor Association, and its suppliers apparently
opted to cooperate fully with the inspection. “We believe that workers
everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment,” Apple CEO Tim
Cook wrote in a Feb.
13 statement.
Meanwhile, the
Times report might have blacklisted
the newspaper with Apple. Whereas a handful of other media outlets were offered
an in-depth briefing of Apple’s next Mac OS X version, “Mountain Lion,” the Times was forced to rely on company
press releases for its own article. “They are playing access journalism,” an
unnamed Times employee told The
Washington Post Feb. 16. “I’ve heard it from people inside Apple: they
said, look, you guys are going to get less access based on the iEconomy
series.”
Meanwhile,
some outside organizations have reacted favorably to the recent moves by Apple
and the Fair Labor Association.
“These quick
responses are great steps in the right direction, and I hope the early signs of
a genuine commitment by Apple to make sure that their products are made without
abusing workers,” Mark Shields, who crafted a
Change.org petition asking Apple to install a worker-protection strategy
and publish the results of the Fair Labor Association’s monitoring, wrote in a
Feb. 17 statement.
“It would
still be great,” he added, “to see Apple use some of its hallmark creativity to
issue a worker-protection plan so that the injuries and suicides that have
marked new product launches to date, quickly become a thing of the past.”
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