9 ms·

Apple CEO calls Times supplier report "patently false and offensive"

29 points by ttt_ 15y ago

badclient 15y ago
From their supplier responsibility site(http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/ http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/): We insist that all of our suppliers provide safe working conditions Notice the word "insist". How about requiring it? There is a massive difference between insisting and requiring.
- ugh 15y ago
  Really? That’s your argument?! What?!
- smackfu 15y ago
  Right, their own report says they are only getting around 75% compliance, and there were two serious accidents in 2011. And this is after five years of these reports...
- jarcoal 15y ago
  In this world, in this moment, if you want companies to "require" all their suppliers, and their supplier's suppliers, and so on, to have safe working conditions, then computers won't be manufactured. Not a single one, from any brand. Hate to sound like a fanboy, but the very fact that Apple has addressed this issue has put them above and beyond the entire industry.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    This type of thing isn't just and electronics industry problem. Running a grain elevator isn't really that safe, and big grain companies spend a lot of time on safety issues for a lot of the same reasons Apple does, but it doesn't prevent the deaths that happen every year (yes, every year in the US). These aren't overall farming deaths, I'm just talking grain elevators. It isn't as sexy as Apple and it is a problem in the US, but everyone needs to eat. The other electronics companies are probably pretty happy Apple is taking all the heat. It should be interesting when the Brazil plant opens.
  - greiskul 15y ago
    Yeah, and the reason is, if you do that, your product costs more, and you will beaten by your competition that doesn't have any problems with using slave labour. We do everything we can to make astronauts safe, but don't do a thing to stop subsidizing our products with the lifes of third world workers. It is precisily in this kind of thing where the goverment should meddle in the economy, like it did when it abolished slavery.
nirvana 15y ago
EVERYBODY DOES IT Foxconn makes everybody's stuff. Yet I don't remember ever hearing about how the Xbox is made with "Slave labor". Nor have I ever heard about Microsoft publishing a public report on auditing the conditions of workers in its supply chain. I'm not bashing Microsoft. I'm just pointing out that the people who keep bringing up this issue are also the same people who use any excuse they can find to claim that Apple is evil, or Apple is going to fail, or whatever. Frankly, I think the "Supplier Responsibility" report was a mistake. It is Apple giving in to the nonsense from people who are just throwing mud. Foxconn's jobs are better than most in China, and when they have openings they have massive numbers of people who apply to fill them. These people are not masochists! Obviously Foxconn is offering them a better job than they would get elsewhere. ITS JUST POLITICS I think the bottom line on all this is that it is the political left in america, and american unions, picking a target that is high profile and raking muck to try and punish them for using nonunion workers. We've seen this before-- Target and Walmart have nearly the same policies, but Target is more unionized, while Walmart is less so, and thus we've had a decade of attacks against Walmart from unions. You don't see the NYT criticizing Sony for using the same workers. You don't see the NYT attacking Target. Or Dell, or HP, or Cisco, or Motorola, or Nokia, or RIM. But, Walmart, Apple, and other high profile company can expect to be regularly smeared. BUT DON'T POLLUTE HACKER NEWS But really, is union mud throwing appropriate for Hacker News? Scratch that. Is ANY mud throwing appropriate for Hacker News? Every time Apple comes up some jackwagon is going on about "stupid sheep buying the iThings made with slave labor." It doesn't belong on Hacker News. This has nothing to do with hacking, startups, or even technology. It's a purely political issue, and it only servers to pollute the environment here, making discussion of things relevant to hackers less prevalent. Its getting rare to find stories on HN on hacks, engineering techniques, etc. About the best I can regularly find are "8 ways something helped my startup" and "heres what's happened with my startup" and the occasional "here's a new open source package relevant to hackers." But the least relevant to me of any of those type articles is an order of magnitude better than this "apple uses slave labor" BS. EDITS Edit: RE: Unions. Took out an editorial comment about unions because I don't really mean to start a debate about them. But when it was in, I was not talking about cost differences, they're going to be there always between countries. Unions however make manufacturing more rigid. You can't improve efficiency without risking some segment (generally the workers whose steps are eliminated) striking and the whole workforce walking out. If you can't improve your plants domestically, you're more likely to move them abroad. Apple, for instance, radically changes the way iPhones are manufactured from generation to generation. Even going so far as to buy large numbers of rare machines. The workforce in china is pretty fluid. They aren't striking because their job changed. Edit2: I'm not going to rebut claims. To prove me wrong, show me articles attacking other prominent technology companies, then show me how they've been promoted on HN. Show me evidence that the people applying to Foxconn are desperate, not people who have other jobs. All I know is that there are a lot of them applying for each position. The real point is-- this is Hacker News-- Politico News. I know to expect downvotes, and this article, as predicted, is collecting a lot of "righteous" outrage that Apple would dare defend itself. But look at those comments. Even if you agree with them, is this the Hacker News you want? I don't. Karma be damned, I'm going to take a stand. Please, just stop with political crap! EDIT: OH, right. You're telling politically motivated lies about Apple because "hackers have a social conscious". Bullshit.
pbreit 15y ago
Title is a bit misleading. The actual quote is "Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us".
- tedsuo 15y ago
  And with apple, they might even be serious about that "patently" part.
tsunamifury 15y ago
Well I find it patently offensive that your executives make statements like "we aren't here to solve America's problems" when you are an incorporated United States company whose primary userbase is STILL in the United States. You benefit from the freedom, support, and infrastructure set up by a US democracy, and you hire much of your high level talent from the US. Apple may be a multinational and it may not have customers just in the US -- but you have 60 some odd billion dollars in your bank accounts and you turn to people suffering, starving and dying (out of house and home and not looking for free hand outs but a chance to work hard) and say "we aren't here to solve your problems." Do you not comprehend the arrogance of such a statement?
- gareim 15y ago
  Apple pays its employees much better than what they would have been paid working at something else. That's why people flock there for a chance to work. My parents and grandparents are those exact people that would have had a much better quality of life if they had been given a chance to work at places like Foxconn. Luckily, they were able to escape China. If you are so against it all (basic economics, the history of the world, etc), then don't buy products from Apple or any other company that uses Chinese manufacturing. Apple has done far more for people than what you will ever do and you have the audacity to critique them. Do you not comprehend the arrogance of your statements?
  - tsunamifury 15y ago
    My statement was not at all about China, but specifically about their attitude towards the United States.
    - gareim 15y ago
      My point still holds valid since any company that uses Chinese manufacturing instead of US manufacturing would come under fire from you. The thing is, Apple can't get the results they want from companies here and so they go where they can (there was an article about this recently on HN). American consumers get the products they want, China gets the opportunity to improve the quality of life for its citizens, and Apple continues to do what it wants. It's a win win win situation. You're arguing for companies to use US manufacturing and that's a naive view in the long run. Any student of economics will understand that it's a GOOD thing for the market to not be controlled the way you want (arbitrary limits on where Apple should and should not go). Placing restrictions would make the market not as competitive as it could be and just result in greater inefficiency.
redthrowaway 15y ago
I see Jobs' Reality Distortion Field is still healthy in Cupertino. To be fair, this isn't an Apple problem; it's the tech industry's dirty little secret. From massive environmental damage as a result of rare earth metal extraction, to deplorable conditions at the factories that make our consumer electronics, to the health calamities at the places where electronics are stripped and recycled for their valuable metals, ours is not the clean industry we like to pretend it is. So again, it's not an Apple thing, but Cook's crocodile tears and affected "outrage" at someone airing our dirty laundry is pretty transparent.
jpalomaki 15y ago
Apple is trying to be transparent about their suppliers and the working conditions there. This is pretty much voluntary, to my knowledge nobody is forcing Apple to release this information. Now Apple is getting attacked and people are using the facts from their own report as ammunition. Other companies that either don't care at all (don't audit their suppliers) or don't publish this kind of information are safe from this kind of bad publicity. I don't think this kind of activism is very productive. I would like to see more focus on the things Apple has managed to improve within their suppliers. Some people seem to demand Apple to stop working with suppliers not complying with the regulations. Is this really the best way to improve workers conditions there? The logic seems to be that if Apple is no longer buying from that supplier, it must do some improvements to stay in business. What if it doesn't, what if it just finds another client that does not care?
wes-exp 15y ago
For all the focus on the negative, what about the fact that millions of people are being lifted up out of abject poverty? Even a long-hours factory job with some safety risks could be better than facing starvation. Not saying conditions couldn't be improved, but, just to think about the situation in the bigger picture.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - wes-exp 15y ago
    I made the assumption based on the idea that industrialization has historically provided better living standards than an agricultural way of life. If that is not actually happening, please forgive me for my ignorance of the situation. Maybe "out of poverty" is the wrong wording and it should be stated as "making life a little less difficult". I at least would like to hope that the current conditions are a temporary, intermediate step in bigger improvements. You might be aware that there was a time when the US had pretty bad environmental conditions in many places. In 1969, the Cuyahoga river was so polluted that it caught on fire (http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_river_fire_40_years_a.html http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_...). In general, pollution had been bad for a long time, but it seems like a "tipping point" had to be reached where the problem was obvious to everyone. Reforms eventually came and succeeded in cleaning things up. So hopefully, given enough time, the kinds of issues you've described can be solved.

29 points by ttt_ 15y ago

From their supplier responsibility site(http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/ http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/): We insist that all of our suppliers provide safe working conditions Notice the word "insist". How about requiring it? There is a massive difference between insisting and requiring.

ugh 15y ago
Really? That’s your argument?! What?!
smackfu 15y ago
Right, their own report says they are only getting around 75% compliance, and there were two serious accidents in 2011. And this is after five years of these reports...
jarcoal 15y ago
In this world, in this moment, if you want companies to "require" all their suppliers, and their supplier's suppliers, and so on, to have safe working conditions, then computers won't be manufactured. Not a single one, from any brand. Hate to sound like a fanboy, but the very fact that Apple has addressed this issue has put them above and beyond the entire industry.
- protomyth 15y ago
  This type of thing isn't just and electronics industry problem. Running a grain elevator isn't really that safe, and big grain companies spend a lot of time on safety issues for a lot of the same reasons Apple does, but it doesn't prevent the deaths that happen every year (yes, every year in the US). These aren't overall farming deaths, I'm just talking grain elevators. It isn't as sexy as Apple and it is a problem in the US, but everyone needs to eat. The other electronics companies are probably pretty happy Apple is taking all the heat. It should be interesting when the Brazil plant opens.
- greiskul 15y ago
  Yeah, and the reason is, if you do that, your product costs more, and you will beaten by your competition that doesn't have any problems with using slave labour. We do everything we can to make astronauts safe, but don't do a thing to stop subsidizing our products with the lifes of third world workers. It is precisily in this kind of thing where the goverment should meddle in the economy, like it did when it abolished slavery.

nirvana 15y ago

EVERYBODY DOES IT Foxconn makes everybody's stuff. Yet I don't remember ever hearing about how the Xbox is made with "Slave labor". Nor have I ever heard about Microsoft publishing a public report on auditing the conditions of workers in its supply chain. I'm not bashing Microsoft. I'm just pointing out that the people who keep bringing up this issue are also the same people who use any excuse they can find to claim that Apple is evil, or Apple is going to fail, or whatever. Frankly, I think the "Supplier Responsibility" report was a mistake. It is Apple giving in to the nonsense from people who are just throwing mud. Foxconn's jobs are better than most in China, and when they have openings they have massive numbers of people who apply to fill them. These people are not masochists! Obviously Foxconn is offering them a better job than they would get elsewhere. ITS JUST POLITICS I think the bottom line on all this is that it is the political left in america, and american unions, picking a target that is high profile and raking muck to try and punish them for using nonunion workers. We've seen this before-- Target and Walmart have nearly the same policies, but Target is more unionized, while Walmart is less so, and thus we've had a decade of attacks against Walmart from unions. You don't see the NYT criticizing Sony for using the same workers. You don't see the NYT attacking Target. Or Dell, or HP, or Cisco, or Motorola, or Nokia, or RIM. But, Walmart, Apple, and other high profile company can expect to be regularly smeared. BUT DON'T POLLUTE HACKER NEWS But really, is union mud throwing appropriate for Hacker News? Scratch that. Is ANY mud throwing appropriate for Hacker News? Every time Apple comes up some jackwagon is going on about "stupid sheep buying the iThings made with slave labor." It doesn't belong on Hacker News. This has nothing to do with hacking, startups, or even technology. It's a purely political issue, and it only servers to pollute the environment here, making discussion of things relevant to hackers less prevalent. Its getting rare to find stories on HN on hacks, engineering techniques, etc. About the best I can regularly find are "8 ways something helped my startup" and "heres what's happened with my startup" and the occasional "here's a new open source package relevant to hackers." But the least relevant to me of any of those type articles is an order of magnitude better than this "apple uses slave labor" BS. EDITS Edit: RE: Unions. Took out an editorial comment about unions because I don't really mean to start a debate about them. But when it was in, I was not talking about cost differences, they're going to be there always between countries. Unions however make manufacturing more rigid. You can't improve efficiency without risking some segment (generally the workers whose steps are eliminated) striking and the whole workforce walking out. If you can't improve your plants domestically, you're more likely to move them abroad. Apple, for instance, radically changes the way iPhones are manufactured from generation to generation. Even going so far as to buy large numbers of rare machines. The workforce in china is pretty fluid. They aren't striking because their job changed. Edit2: I'm not going to rebut claims. To prove me wrong, show me articles attacking other prominent technology companies, then show me how they've been promoted on HN. Show me evidence that the people applying to Foxconn are desperate, not people who have other jobs. All I know is that there are a lot of them applying for each position. The real point is-- this is Hacker News-- Politico News. I know to expect downvotes, and this article, as predicted, is collecting a lot of "righteous" outrage that Apple would dare defend itself. But look at those comments. Even if you agree with them, is this the Hacker News you want? I don't. Karma be damned, I'm going to take a stand. Please, just stop with political crap! EDIT: OH, right. You're telling politically motivated lies about Apple because "hackers have a social conscious". Bullshit.

pbreit 15y ago

Title is a bit misleading. The actual quote is "Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us".

tedsuo 15y ago
And with apple, they might even be serious about that "patently" part.

tsunamifury 15y ago

Well I find it patently offensive that your executives make statements like "we aren't here to solve America's problems" when you are an incorporated United States company whose primary userbase is STILL in the United States. You benefit from the freedom, support, and infrastructure set up by a US democracy, and you hire much of your high level talent from the US. Apple may be a multinational and it may not have customers just in the US -- but you have 60 some odd billion dollars in your bank accounts and you turn to people suffering, starving and dying (out of house and home and not looking for free hand outs but a chance to work hard) and say "we aren't here to solve your problems." Do you not comprehend the arrogance of such a statement?

gareim 15y ago
Apple pays its employees much better than what they would have been paid working at something else. That's why people flock there for a chance to work. My parents and grandparents are those exact people that would have had a much better quality of life if they had been given a chance to work at places like Foxconn. Luckily, they were able to escape China. If you are so against it all (basic economics, the history of the world, etc), then don't buy products from Apple or any other company that uses Chinese manufacturing. Apple has done far more for people than what you will ever do and you have the audacity to critique them. Do you not comprehend the arrogance of your statements?
- tsunamifury 15y ago
  My statement was not at all about China, but specifically about their attitude towards the United States.
  - gareim 15y ago
    My point still holds valid since any company that uses Chinese manufacturing instead of US manufacturing would come under fire from you. The thing is, Apple can't get the results they want from companies here and so they go where they can (there was an article about this recently on HN). American consumers get the products they want, China gets the opportunity to improve the quality of life for its citizens, and Apple continues to do what it wants. It's a win win win situation. You're arguing for companies to use US manufacturing and that's a naive view in the long run. Any student of economics will understand that it's a GOOD thing for the market to not be controlled the way you want (arbitrary limits on where Apple should and should not go). Placing restrictions would make the market not as competitive as it could be and just result in greater inefficiency.

redthrowaway 15y ago

I see Jobs' Reality Distortion Field is still healthy in Cupertino. To be fair, this isn't an Apple problem; it's the tech industry's dirty little secret. From massive environmental damage as a result of rare earth metal extraction, to deplorable conditions at the factories that make our consumer electronics, to the health calamities at the places where electronics are stripped and recycled for their valuable metals, ours is not the clean industry we like to pretend it is. So again, it's not an Apple thing, but Cook's crocodile tears and affected "outrage" at someone airing our dirty laundry is pretty transparent.

jpalomaki 15y ago

Apple is trying to be transparent about their suppliers and the working conditions there. This is pretty much voluntary, to my knowledge nobody is forcing Apple to release this information. Now Apple is getting attacked and people are using the facts from their own report as ammunition. Other companies that either don't care at all (don't audit their suppliers) or don't publish this kind of information are safe from this kind of bad publicity. I don't think this kind of activism is very productive. I would like to see more focus on the things Apple has managed to improve within their suppliers. Some people seem to demand Apple to stop working with suppliers not complying with the regulations. Is this really the best way to improve workers conditions there? The logic seems to be that if Apple is no longer buying from that supplier, it must do some improvements to stay in business. What if it doesn't, what if it just finds another client that does not care?

wes-exp 15y ago

For all the focus on the negative, what about the fact that millions of people are being lifted up out of abject poverty? Even a long-hours factory job with some safety risks could be better than facing starvation. Not saying conditions couldn't be improved, but, just to think about the situation in the bigger picture.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- wes-exp 15y ago
  I made the assumption based on the idea that industrialization has historically provided better living standards than an agricultural way of life. If that is not actually happening, please forgive me for my ignorance of the situation. Maybe "out of poverty" is the wrong wording and it should be stated as "making life a little less difficult". I at least would like to hope that the current conditions are a temporary, intermediate step in bigger improvements. You might be aware that there was a time when the US had pretty bad environmental conditions in many places. In 1969, the Cuyahoga river was so polluted that it caught on fire (http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_river_fire_40_years_a.html http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_...). In general, pollution had been bad for a long time, but it seems like a "tipping point" had to be reached where the problem was obvious to everyone. Reforms eventually came and succeeded in cleaning things up. So hopefully, given enough time, the kinds of issues you've described can be solved.