Apple prohibits practices that threaten the rights of workers — even when local laws and customs permit such practices. We’ve taken action toward ending excessive recruitment fees, preventing the hiring of underage workers, and prohibiting discriminatory policies at our suppliers. And as the first technology company to be admitted to the Fair Labor Association, Apple is setting a new standard in transparency and oversight.
Apple and the Fair Labor Association.
Apple is the first technology company to be admitted to the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The FLA has made incredible progress over the past decade to improve working conditions and protect workers in the apparel industry. As a member of the FLA, Apple will open our supply chain to an FLA auditing team that will measure our performance against the FLA’s own Workplace Code of Conduct. The results of these audits will appear on the FLA website. This represents a level of transparency and independent oversight that is unmatched in our industry.
Ending indentured migrant labor.
During a 2008 audit, we discovered that in order to work for some suppliers, many workers were coerced by unscrupulous recruiting agents into paying excessively high fees to gain employment in neighboring countries. Because fees to these corrupt middlemen often equaled many months’ wages, workers were taking on huge debt even before they started at the job. They were forced to hand over nearly all their wages to recruiters to pay this debt, and they had to remain at the job until the debt was paid.
To protect workers from practices that could result in involuntary labor, Apple has established and enforces a standard that limits recruitment fees to the equivalent of one month’s wages. We also require suppliers to reimburse overpaid fees for all foreign contract workers in their facilities — including workers not assigned to Apple projects. To prevent future abuses, we have engaged with government agencies, NGOs, and peer companies to educate our suppliers on how to improve their recruiting practices, as well as on their legal and ethical obligations to foreign workers.
The Supplier Code of Conduct prohibits all types of involuntary labor, such as slavery, indentured or bonded labor, child labor, and prison labor. Our suppliers certify compliance with the local laws applicable to their operations, including any slavery and human trafficking laws, and we verify compliance by conducting rigorous audits of their facilities. Beyond auditing, we provide our employees who are directly responsible for supply chain management with training on involuntary labor and human trafficking issues to reinforce our prevention efforts, and we hold them accountable for complying with our standards.
Educating Indonesian workers.
By educating potential contract workers, Apple is working to prevent involuntary labor before it happens. Apple partnered with NGOs and local suppliers in North Sumatra, a province of Indonesia, to help residents understand the recruiting process for foreign contract workers and their rights in the workforce. Through a print and radio campaign, we reached thousands of people in communities with historically high rates of migrating workers.
Preventing underage labor.
Apple does not tolerate the use of underage labor. When we discover suppliers with underage workers or find out about historical cases — where workers had either left or reached legal working age by the time of the audit — we demand immediate corrective action.
We require suppliers to return underage workers to school and pay educational expenses, living stipends, and lost wages for six months or until the worker reaches the age of 16, whichever is longer. We also ensure that students have the support they need to succeed in school. We help students contact their families, identify educational options, and enroll in school — and we follow up on their progress. If underage workers have already left the facility, we try to locate them and offer the same support for their education.
We also require suppliers to maintain robust documentation and age verification procedures, personnel records, and systems for communicating labor policies across their facilities and with third-party recruiters. And we hold our suppliers accountable for agencies and schools providing workers to them.
and status of workers at a facility in Shanghai. Suppliers are required to maintain all relevant documentation and to produce it during audits.
Additional protections for workers ages 16 to 18.
Preventing underage labor is only part of our efforts. We also monitor the treatment of workers who are old enough to work legally but are younger than 18. We don’t allow these workers to perform some types of work, even in cases where local laws allow it. Our standards also require factories to adhere to student labor laws and to ensure that schools and universities follow the laws as well, which is particularly important as factories increasingly turn to these institutions for student interns.
Addressing excessive work hours.
We continue to address excessive work hours, and this has been a challenge throughout the history of our program. While the problem is not unique to Apple, we continue to fight it. Apple limits factory working hours to a maximum of 60 work hours per week and requires at least one day of rest per seven days of work — except in emergencies or unusual circumstances.
The reasons behind excessive work hours vary, but they include inadequate shift planning, failure to prepare for changing demand or employee attrition, lack of accountability by management, and inadequate oversight when the same employee works for multiple business groups or customers.
We began weekly tracking of 110 facilities where excessive work-hour violations were commonplace. Additionally, we are working with industry experts on a work-hour reduction program that combines training, management consultation, and verification of work-hour systems and practices. While the problem is complex, it is also manageable. Reducing excessive overtime is a top priority for our Supplier Responsibility program in 2012.
Monthly reporting to address excessive work hours.
In our effort to end the industry practice of excessive overtime, we're working closely with our suppliers to manage employee working hours. Weekly data collected in January 2012 on more than 500,000 workers employed by our suppliers showed 84 percent compliance with the 60-hour work week specified in our code. That's a substantial improvement over previous results, but we can do better. We will continue to share our progress by reporting this data on a monthly basis.
Prohibiting discriminatory policies.
Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct protects against discrimination in a range of areas: race, color, age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, religion, political affiliation, union membership, national origin, and marital status.
We also prohibit the use of pregnancy tests and medical tests as a condition of employment. When we find instances of discrimination — even where permissible under local laws — we require facilities to discontinue the practice and to establish clear policies and procedures to prevent recurrence.
Sourcing conflict-free materials.
Apple is at the forefront of a joint effort with the EICC and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) that will help our suppliers source conflict-free materials. In 2010, Apple was one of the first companies to map the use of potential conflict minerals across its supply chain, identifying 218 Apple suppliers that use tantalum (also known as coltan), tin, tungsten, or gold to manufacture components for Apple products and the 175 smelters they source from. We are continuing our efforts with the EICC to complete smelter audits to ensure that our suppliers use only metals that have been procured through conflict-free sources that adhere to our standards of human rights and environmental protection.