Apple claims it's improving working conditions, but a new report shows that for many, their jobs are getting worse, not better.
Read & sign our open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Last week, around one thousand workers rioted for hours at an iPhone factory, voicing anger over their treatment at the plant.
Apple has been claiming that conditions for workers are getting better -- but the truth is that for many workers, they've gotten much worse. Apple's suppliers claim to the press that they have ended excessive overtime and doubled workers' salaries. Meanwhile, interviews with the workers themselves reveal that, for many not in management, pay has actually decreased. Even worse, workers are now being told to work UNPAID overtime or risk losing their jobs. And while Apple says that the factories have gotten more humane, workers say that they're now being forced to clean toilets as a disciplinary measure.
Apple's PR team thinks that it's bought off the press with its promises to improve working conditions at some point in the future. We need to send a clear message to Apple -- it can't hide the truth.
If 50,000 SumOfUs.org members sign our open letter to Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, we'll publish the letter in his hometown newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News. That way, Tim's friends, employees, and competition will know what really goes on when Apple thinks nobody is watching. Apple wants to keep all of this out of the paper and out of mind, but by forcing Apple to confront this issue, we are letting it know that we will not go away.
All of this emerged last week when Hong Kong-based watchdog group SACOM -- Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour -- released a scathing report on conditions in Foxconn factories. The report is the first of its kind released since Apple pledged to treat its workers ethically, and it confirms our fear that Apple isn't taking workers' rights seriously. The fact is that Apple still hasn't taken any real action to make its products ethically.
Instead, Apple has sent out a number of self-congratulatory press releases about its grand plan to improve these working conditions. Since it's clear Apple cares deeply about its public image, we have an opportunity to make sure Tim Cook knows we aren't going away as long as Apple's colossal profit margins still come off the backs of exploited workers.
--Taren, Claiborne, Kaytee, Emma and the rest of us
P.S. While this is an issue across the Chinese electronics manufacturing sector, no company has the profit margins, centralized supply chain, and organizational clout to improve working conditions like Apple does. With Apple's outsized influence, it alone can affect change across the entire industry. That's why we need to tell Tim Cook to act now. Click here to sign our open letter.
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Background Information:
SACOM Report, Sweatshops are good for Apple and Foxconn, but not for workers, 31 May 2012
WantChinaTimes, Dozens arrested after Foxconn riot in Chengdu, 6 June 2012