CHINA HAS taken to Apple’s innovative gadgets with wild enthusiasm, but the world’s most valuable tech brand is facing a number of problems. These include bad PR over reports of poor working conditions for workers making iPhones and other Apple products.
The Californian company is also forced to deal with tricky trademark issues which have seen the iPad taken from the shelves in some areas.
Apple responded to growing pressure to come clean on working conditions by calling in an independent labour group this week to monitor the vast plants, including those of Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn.
Apple is portraying the inspections, to include reviews of four Foxconn facilities in southern China, as an innovative measure.
“The inspections now under way are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope,” the company’s chief executive said in a statement.
China is Apple’s fastest-growing market. Sales more than quadrupled there last year to over €10 billion. In January, it published a report detailing an audit of working conditions of its entire supply chain, comprising about 170 firms.
In 2009, there was a wave of suicides at Foxconn, which labour activists said were down to poor working conditions and long hours. However others said the suicides were at least partially due to rising property prices in Shenzhen and other parts of southern China, making getting married difficult.
The Fair Labour Association is the brainchild of former US president Bill Clinton, who set up the group in 1999 to monitor workplace environments around the world. Many big companies have signed up to take part, including Nike and Nestle.
The association began the two-week process on Monday of interviewing workers, checking out dormitories and inspecting work stations. It will provide an extensive review of the suppliers’ operations.
“The reason why Apple is having this FLA inspection is not because they want to solve the problems,” Li Qiang, executive director of the China Labour Watch group said in a statement. “Instead, it’s because Apple wants to get publicity and rebuild its positive image.
“What Apple should do now is to take action to solve the problems and improve the labour conditions in their supplier factories.”
Protesters last week, putting pressure on Apple to come up with a worker-protection strategy to stop abuse at its suppliers’ facilities, presented the company with petitions signed by more than 250,000 people at its Grand Central shop in New York City.
In a separate development, a Chinese company, Proview, is asking customs officials to block shipments of Apple’s iPad both into and out of the country, part of an ongoing row over who owns the name iPad in China. Proview won a judgment in a Chinese court last year and is now trying to block sales of the iPad in China, claiming violation of trademark.
Apple says it bought the rights to the name years ago and insists it is operating entirely legally.