Apple and Foxconn are staying ahead of the game when it comes to implementing the recommendations from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to improve their manufacturing facilities overseas. The FLA issued a new report on Tuesday to offer a status update on the companies' progress since they partnered with the FLA earlier this year, noting that Apple and Foxconn completed 284 of the recommended items on time or ahead of schedule. Still, there are 76 items left to go over the next year, and many of those are likely to offer some of the largest challenges as workers come to terms with working fewer hours.
Apple announced its decision to begin working with the FLA in January when it released its supplier responsibility report for 2011. At that time, controversy over Apple's and Foxconn's labor practices had flared up again thanks to a smattering of high-profile media coverage. The first was Mike Daisey's now-tweaked one-man show, which painted Foxconn's workers in China as being unhappy and unsafe—which was later made even more popular by radio show This American Life. Those were closely followed by a scathing New York Times report that asserted Apple's willingness to look the other way when it comes to unsafe working conditions.
All those elements combined sparked Apple CEO Tim Cook to send an internal e-mail to employees saying that such accusations were "patently false and offensive." He went on to point out that Apple conducts its own audits of its manufacturing partners every year, and that Apple's employees overseas know the real deal. "As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people," Cook wrote.
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
DIGITAL JUICE
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank's!