Apple Found Out Violations Happened in Different Suppliers

Written by GtoRMan Friday, 05 March 2010 09:30

Apple reported that some suppliers are proved to be responsible of some violations revealed during inspection. Apple inspectors found that underage teens were employed to Apple-contracted facilities in 2009. The news was published through Apple’s websites under a title ‘Supplier Responsibility’ and these underage workers were found at three different suppliers’ facilities that build iPhones, iPod, and Apple computers.

Even though there are no official confirmations about the visited facilities but a report confirmed that Apple auditors visited China, Szech Republic, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, United States, and Thailand.

From the visited facilities, inspectors found that 11 workers had been hired were under legal age at the three questioned facilities. It is true that during the auditing time the workers mentioned were neither underage nor in active employment, but still it drew bad conclusions. According to the facilities’ countries regulation, the legal age to hire employee is 16, in the matter of fact they were 15 when hired.

Moreover, other problem found besides the underage employment is many facilities were overworking their workers. According to Apple’s code, employee should work no more than 60 hours a week and they have at least one day rest per seven days of work. In fact, disobedience also occurred when Apple auditors revealed 24 facilities were not paying the employees properly, they were paid under the minimum required wage, whereas other 57 facilities were proved cheated the employees for private benefits. The worse thing happened is that they would cut the employees’ wages for the so-called disciplinary purposes.

Therefore, to fix the problems that had been occurred beyond its concern, Apple will require the suppliers to create new measures to correct the violations. One of them is to repay the employees who were recognized underpaid and develop new system that will monitor the correct payment and the future weekly work-time. These efforts will be undergone by Apple to keep the factories under proper supervision.  (fallen)