iPhone or iExploit? Rampant Labor Violations in Apple's Supply Chain

Thursday, 25 August 2016 00:00 By Nicki Lisa Cole, Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37363-iphone-or-iexploit-rampant-labor-violations-in-apple-s-supply-chain

Right now hundreds of thousands of young Chinese workers are laboring on iPhone 7 production lines. With these products set to launch in September, the final assembly is happening in a series of Foxconn and Pegatron factories across the country.

Foxconn is likely a familiar name to readers, as it became the focal point of international media attention in 2012 after widespread legal and ethical labor violations were revealed by This American Life and The New York Times. Pegatron, however, has received scant media attention, despite its growing role in Apple's supply chain over the last four years. Unfortunately, the terrible conditions in which 100,000 young Chinese workers labor and live at Pegatron's Shanghai factory are painfully familiar.

A new report published August 24 by China Labor Watch (CLW) demonstrates that the same legal and ethical violations that attracted media attention in 2012 continue unabated at Apple supplier factories today. In the case of Pegatron, CLW reports that conditions have actually worsened since 2015, despite years of audits commissioned by Apple, a membership in the Fair Labor Association, and promises from the company that it is committed to ensuring the safety and dignity of those who make its lucrative products.

CLW, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing labor rights violations in the Chinese factories that produce for global brands, revealed this through a study of workers' pay stubs and interviews with workers at Pegatron Shanghai. The study found that workers continue to be forced to endure extreme overtime hours, working as many as 109 hours per month beyond their regularly scheduled workdays -- three times the legal limit in China.

CLW found that the vast majority of workers within the maintenance department recorded more than 82 overtime hours in March 2016, while all 382 pay stubs examined from this department showed overtime hours in excess of the 36-hour-per-month legal limit for overtime. Included among these workers are student "interns" who are not legally allowed to work overtime, yet were found to log up to 80 hours of overtime per month.

When questioned about these practices, executives at Pegatron and Foxconn state that overtime within their facilities is optional. However, CLW's research shows that high production quotas imposed by Apple, low base wages imposed by the factory, and harsh management techniques and denial of requests for time off combine to remove workers' choice in the matter.

CLW's investigation revealed that the base wage offered to workers by Pegatron, after deductions, is equivalent to just $213 per month, which is $117 less than the legal minimum wage in Shanghai. Even with all of the overtime hours, workers still earn $300 below the average monthly wage for the region.

These figures represent a decline in wages for Pegatron workers from 2015 to 2016, because the factory management made up for a government-mandated minimum wage increase by cutting welfare payments and forcing workers to contribute monthly earnings to the social insurance benefit that was previously paid by the company. So, though wages were legally raised from $1.85 per hour in 2015 to $2.00 per hour in 2016, workers' real hourly earnings after deductions were just $1.60 per hour.

Other legal and ethical violations documented by CLW include daily unpaid labor of more than one hour, cramped and unsanitary living conditions in factory dormitories, and the failure to provide necessary protective equipment, which puts the health and safety of workers at risk.

A 14-Year History of Ignoring Serious Labor Violations

Legal and ethical violations like these at Apple suppliers should ring familiar. You've read about them before, here and in other media outlets. What you might not realize is that they are happening a full decade after they were first brought to Apple's attention.

On August 18, 2006, Britain's The Mail on Sunday published a scathing report on conditions at Chinese factories where Apple's iPod line was then in production. Investigative reporters found that workers were living 100-to-a-room at Foxconn's Longhua facility in Shenzhen, then dubbed "iPod City," and that they labored as much as 15 hours per day for very low wages. They found similar conditions at an Asustek facility in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, which produced the iPod Shuffle. Laboring up to 12 hours per day, workers lost half their wages to the factory-imposed cost of accommodations and food.

These legal and ethical violations in Apple's supply chain actually date even further back. In a report published in September 2005, SOMO, a Dutch nonprofit group that researches the practices of global corporations, documented trouble at Apple laptop suppliers Quanta Shanghai and Elite Computer Systems, located in Shenzhen. SOMO's investigation documented excessively long work hours, insufficient wages, failure to protect the health and safety of workers, intimidation and humiliation of workers by management and an absence of grievance channels through which workers could safely raise workplace issues.

Since then, my own analysis of available data on labor incidents shows that the same types of violations -- and others, including injuries and medical problems, worker exhaustion and emotional distress, the use of dispatch labor, and interference with third-party audits -- have recurred year after year at Apple suppliers across China. Using all known reports by nonprofits and scholars who have documented labor conditions in Chinese Apple suppliers, including CLW, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, SOMO, Good Electronics and a few others, I found that these violations, which occurred at 36 unique supplier factories over a period of 14 years, continue through the present.

In its annual supplier responsibility reports, Apple repeatedly claims that it works with troubled suppliers to improve workplace and dormitory conditions, and that it removes those who fail to improve from its supply chain. However, year-over-year repeat violations were found at 17 supplier sites owned by 10 companies with which Apple has contracted. Most recently, repeat violations have been documented at Pegatron-owned facilities from 2012 through the present, as well as at numerous Foxconn facilities through 2015.

In total, my study identified 76 unique cases, one for each year that legal and ethical violations were documented at any given factory. Over 14 years, the most common and consistent legal violations were overworking of employees and failure to protect worker health and safety -- each present in more than three-quarters of all cases. Further, I found other serious violations in half or more cases, including harsh management tactics involving intimidation and humiliation of workers, insufficiently low wages, workplace injuries or medical problems stemming from an unsafe workplace, unpaid wages, severe and chronic exhaustion often coupled with emotional distress, and the lack of a union or other body to represent and protect the interests of workers.

 

In addition, I found that in more than a third of the cases, workers reported that the factory had ineffective or nonexistent grievance channels through which to express complaints. In more than a quarter cases, workers suffered in poor living conditions. Also in more than a quarter cases, suppliers relied on "dispatch workers" who are economically exploited by both the factory and the employment agency that supplies them, and on student "interns" who are forced to work for low wages by their schools and local governments. These "interns" work as much as 80 overtime hours per month even though Chinese labor law prohibits overtime among student workers. Interference with third-party audits, through falsifying overtime documents or intimidating workers against speaking with auditors, was also common -- I found it in 12 percent of the cases I examined.

These data show unequivocally that Apple is not effectively holding suppliers accountable for violations that breach Chinese law and the company's Supplier Code of Conduct. Today, the same violations can be found at Apple suppliers as were present 14 years ago, calling into question the efficacy of the industry-wide practice of auditing.

What's more, CLW's Li Qiang asserts that Apple is actively "obstructing" positive change in the industry by squeezing suppliers to miniscule profit margins while simultaneously imposing production quotas that require round-the-clock factory operation. Due to Apple's role as the smartphone sector's profit-leader, Qiang believes that little will change in the industry until Apple changes its practices.

Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. is a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society in Graz, Austria. A sociologist with expertise in global capitalism and consumerism, she is currently writing a book about the popularity and hidden costs of Apple products. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and find more of her writing here. Contact her at nickilcole@gmail.com.

Punishing the Messenger: Israel’s War on NGOs Takes a Worrying Turn

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/25/punishing-the-messenger-israels-war-on-ngos-takes-a-worrying-turn/

August 25, 2016

by Ramzy Baroud

“You deserve to see your loved ones suffer and die. But, maybe, you would be hurt before them,” was part of a threatening message received by a staff member at ‘Al-Mezan’, a Gaza-based human rights group. The photo attached to the email was of the exterior of the activist’s home. The gist of the message: ‘we are coming for you.’

‘Al-Mezan’, along with three other Palestinian rights groups – ‘Al-Haq’, ‘Al Mezan’, ‘Aldameer’ and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – are actively pushing a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing it of war crimes in Palestine, particularly during the war on Gaza in 2014.

In April 2015, the Palestinian Authority (PA) had officially signed the Rome Statute and, a few months later in November, the groups presented a substantial amount of evidence of Israel’s suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But even before these dates, the war on independent rights groups was already heating up. Restrictions on Israeli NGOs, especially those that challenge the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, are fairly recent. However, pressure, violence, restriction on movement, raiding of offices and arrests, have been a fixture of Israeli policy against Palestinian rights groups. The most recent episode is only one example.

“Since September 2015, several of the organizations have faced ruthless smear and intimidation campaigns seeking to discredit them and stoke insecurity among their staff,” Amjad Iraqi wrote in Israel’s +972Mag. “The harassment culminated in death threats made against two individuals: A senior Palestinian advocate with ‘Al-Mezan’ and Nada Kiswanson, a Palestinian-Swedish lawyer who is Al-Haq’s representative in The Hague.”

Israel is, no doubt, feeling embattled. Its carefully carved brand – that it is an oasis of democracy in an arid authoritarian desert – is now full of holes. Its occupation, wars and siege in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and the dissemination of images and information about such conduct throughout the internet and social media platforms is making it impossible for Israel to sustain its official hasbara. Thus, the angry backlash.

The Israeli Knesset has been busy passing laws and proposing bills aimed at restricting the work of its own rights groups, or any independent civil society organization that seems, in any way, critical of the government and sympathetic towards the Palestinians.

The ‘NGO Law’ is now in effect. It forces NGOs to declare their sources of funding and punishes those who refrain from doing so. It also levies heavy taxes on such funds, even when declared. The European Union, along with the United States Government warned Israel against such laws, but to no avail. The bill is written in too broad a terminology, thus making it possible for the government to target such organizations without appearing vindictive or politically-motivated.

“What is happening in Israel now is fascism,” said David Tartakover, who was quoted in the British Guardian newspaper. Tartakover, the artist who designed the logo for the Israeli ‘Peace Now’ campaign in the late 1970’s described ‘a slow creep of limitations’ that began in 1995 (following the assassination of Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, at the hands of a Jewish extremist), but one that accelerated in the last year.

One example includes the “Loyalty in Culture Bill”, which sounds like, according to Michael Griffiths, “something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four.” But it is no fiction. This bill targets artists and authors, and withholds funding from organizations that promote any material deemed objectionable by Israel’s political establishment.

This led to the banning of “Borderlife”, an Israeli novel by Dorit Rabinyan, depicting a love story between a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman. Israel’s Minister of Education, the hardliner, Naftali Bannett, banned the novel on the pretext that it promotes ‘assimilation’ between the races.

With the ‘most rightwing government’ in Israeli’s history now in charge, and an equally hawkish parliament, the foray of contentious bills are likely to continue.

However, while Israel’s own organizations, rights groups and dissenting artists are targeted by bans, fines and withholding of funds, Palestinians are threatened with much more severe consequences.

To appreciate this more, one ought to look at the language used by a recent conference organized by Israeli newspaper, ‘Yediot Aharonot’.

According to investigative journalist, Richard Silverstein, the conference, which mainly attacked the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) “has become a veritable carnival of hate.”

“Everyone from delusional Hollywood celebrities to cabinet ministers, to the leader of the Opposition have pledged fealty to the cause,” he wrote.

Top officials included Intelligence Minister, Israel Katz, who called for the “civil targeted killing” of BDS leaders like Omar Barghouti. According to Silverstein, the phrase Katz used is “sikul ezrahi memukad” which “derives from the euphemistic Hebrew phrase for the targeted killing of a terrorist, which literally means ‘targeted thwarting’.”

Working hand in hand with various western governments, Israel’s official perception of the non-violent BDS movement is reaching the point of treating the civil society movement as if a criminal organization. BDS merely demands moral and legal accountably from western governments and corporations that contribute in any way to Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.

The recent death threats against rights activists who are pressing for respect of international law and for justice for thousands of Gazan civilians killed during recent wars is a natural progression of Israel’s relentless efforts.

While restricting the work of independent rights groups is quite common by Middle Eastern governments, Israel’s campaign is most dangerous for it receives little media coverage and, at times, outright support from the US and other western governments.

The latest of these was the recently passed legislation at the Democratic-led Legislature in the State of New Jersey, which was signed by Governor, Chris Christie. New Jersey is now the latest of US states that outlawed BDS and vowed to punish any company that joins the boycott of Israel campaign.

With little or no accountability, Israel will continue with its fight targeting NGOs, threatening activists and restricting the work of anyone that dares to be critical.

“What is happening in Israel now is fascism,” said Tartakover, and he is, of course, right.

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Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: ramzybaroud.net