Apple tackles child labour.

In Apple’s 2010 Supplier Responsibility Report they announced that, among other things, some of their suppliers were found to have hired underage workers. They also uncovered that their suppliers underpaid workers, over-worked workers, improperly disposed of hazardous waste, conducted employee discrimination, and falsified formal records meant to cover up these violations. In a shocking display of transparency Apple released the report which found that one or more violations were found in 60 of the 102 facilities audited.

Apple announced this news in its Supplier Responsibility Report, a report released for three years running that audits of Apple’s supplier factories. These factories aren’t owned by Apple, but while working on Apple’s goods they are contractually obligated to work within Apple’s worker’s rights rules and the laws of the country that they operate in. The violations occurred in both of those categories. For instance, workers were found to have worked beyond Apple’s 60 hour-per-week limit in 60 of the 102 factories audited and 11 workers across various facilities were found to have been hired at 15 years of age, one year below their respective country’s legal working age limit.

Apple found three factories had hired non-certified hazardous disposal agencies to do away with their waste and 44 facilities that didn’t have a proper environmental impact assessments including 11 which didn’t have air emissions permits. In the Supplier Responsibility Report they state, “when social responsibility performance consistently fails to meet Apple expectations, [they] terminate business.” In many of the cases of violations the wrongs have been righted, for instance underpaid workers have been paid for the discrepancies and the underage workers are all now at the legal working age.

Though the violations come as a shock it’s nice to know that Apple is clearly displaying their assembly line faults and laying out a plan of action to fix them — if they haven’t already. Apple also noted in their report that all of the factories audited stated that Apple was the only company to have ever audited their facility. The report highlights issues that occur when the supply and manufacturing chains are geographically removed from the business operations. Without oversight factories violations can slip under the radar. Kudos to Apple for finding these violations and laying out plans to fix them. You can rest easy knowing Apple is doing something to make sure your gadgets are made with responsibility in mind.

Disclaimer: Some images hosted on this blog have been collected from external research associates to be presented as stimulus to those seeking news from the cutting edge of packaging. The imagery is not being presented as our own and copyright still belongs to the owner/creator of said work.