To help drive change from the bottom up, we engage directly with workers to teach them new skills and raise awareness of their rights. And we train managers on their responsibilities under the Supplier Code of Conduct — and beyond.

This newly opened e-learning center in Shanghai allows workers to gain new skills through the Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program. To date, over 60,000 students throughout our supplier base have taken SEED classes.

Training workers on their rights.

We know that finding and correcting problems is not enough. Apple-designed training programs educate our suppliers’ employees about local laws, their rights as workers, occupational health and safety, and Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct. Today there are more than one million people in the workforce who know their rights because they went to work for an Apple supplier.

We have worked with Verité and the Fair Labor Association — two internationally recognized organizations dedicated to human rights — to evaluate the quality of our social responsibility training. Their assessments showed that Apple-mandated training had increased workers’ knowledge and awareness of their rights. We will continue to improve our supplier training programs by working with these organizations.

Training managers on their obligations.

In addition to training the workers, we train supervisors and managers on their responsibilities to those workers. For example, we require management from suppliers in Malaysia and Singapore to attend a two-day workshop that covers our Prevention of Involuntary Labor standard along with best practices for labor agency monitoring, direct hire processes, and onsite management of foreign workers.

All of our final assembly suppliers now have
onsite e-learning centers like this one in Shanghai.

Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program.

Apple has also expanded professional development opportunities for workers through our Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program. This Apple-designed program offers workers classes in topics such as finance, computer skills, and the English language. In addition, SEED programs partner with Chinese universities to allow workers to earn associate degrees. The program began as a pilot at Foxconn’s facility in Shenzhen and expanded to all final assembly sites in 2011. Over 60,000 workers have participated, and our evaluation of the program shows that participants have higher morale and are promoted more often than other employees.