Apple ‘Devoted to Constant Improvement’ Amid Labor Violations Report

A week ahead of the anticipated announcement of iPhone 6, China Labor Watch (CLW) and Green America released a report citing “serious health and safety, environmental, and human rights violations” at Catcher, a factory in Suqian, China, that they said manufactures metal iPad covers and other parts for fifth-generation iPhones. During the August investigation, 500-600 workers from Catcher Suqian were transferred to a sister location in Taizhou, China, to work on the iPhone 6, CLW said. Apple told us the plant doesn’t make covers for iPhones, only aluminum enclosures for MacBooks and iPads.

CLW had investigated the Catcher factory in April 2013 and found many of the same violations, it said. CLW reported its findings to Apple privately, and Apple committed to reforming some of the problems, but CLW said Apple has not made progress with the supplier to improve conditions for its workers. “In spite of Apple’s supplier code of conduct and commitments to prevent these violations, more than a year later, they persist,” CLW said. The factory, which also produces components for Dell, HP, HTC, Lenovo, Motorola and Sony, is not one of the 18 final assembly plants in China where Apple has committed to ban use of benzene and n-hexane in manufacturing, CLW said.

Among the violations cited in the report were “significant amounts” of aluminum-magnesium alloy shavings on the floor and dust particles in the air; lack of proper ventilation that poses a health and fire safety risk; inadequate personal protective equipment for handling toxic materials; locked safety exits; dumping of industrial fluids and waste into groundwater and nearby rivers; students 16-18 years old employed in the same positions as adults, working 10-plus hour days; excessive hours for all workers, including student interns; forced overtime and an estimated six hours of unpaid overtime per worker each month; hiring discrimination based on age and presence of tattoos; and a grievance process that retaliates against workers for raising valid workplace issues, CLW said.

In August, Apple took action to ban benzene and n-hexane at its final assembly factories, and “now it needs to build on those commitments to address workers farther down its supply chain,” said Todd Larsen, corporate responsibility director for Green America.

In an email response, Apple told us, it’s “committed to ensuring safe and fair working conditions for everyone in our supply chain. We are the only technology company to be admitted to the Fair Labor Association, and our suppliers must live up to the toughest standards in the industry if they want to keep doing business with Apple.” Apple is “devoted to constant improvement” and the company did 451 audits last year “deep into our supply chain so we could uncover problems and work with our suppliers to fix them,” it said. It’s a priority for the company to investigate “every specific concern brought to our attention,” Apple said.

Apple’s inspectors audit the facility’s aluminum wet-polishing systems every month and “consistently find that they exceed international safety standards,” Apple said. It does quarterly fire-safety inspections, as recently as last week, and Catcher has made same-day repairs of broken and expired fire extinguishers, unblocked corridors and fire exits, and added missing emergency exit signs, Apple said.

Apple’s most recent annual audit in May “found some concrete areas for improvement in Catcher’s operations, and we worked with Catcher to develop a corrective action plan,” Apple said. The company had scheduled a follow-up visit for October to review progress but in light of the CLW report “dispatched a team there immediately,” it said.

Apple said “excessive overtime is not in anyone’s best interest, and we work closely with our suppliers to prevent it.” Catcher has averaged 95 percent compliance with Apple’s 60-hour workweek limit this year, Apple said. It said Catcher is one of 160 suppliers enrolled in the 18-month Apple Supplier EHS Academy training program, launched last year to “raise the bar for environment, health and safety management in the industry.”