CLW’s investigations revealed at least 86 labor rights violations, including 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations. The violations fall into 15 categories: dispatch labor abuse, hiring discrimination, women’s rights violations, underage labor, contract violations, insufficient worker training, excessive working hours, insufficient wages, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, difficulty in taking leave, labor health and safety concerns, ineffective grievance channels, abuse by management, and environmental pollution.
In short, the Pegatron factories are violating a great number of international and Chinese laws and standards as well as the standards of Apple’s own social responsibility code of conduct.
In May 2013, Apple heralded that its suppliers had achieved 99 percent compliance with Apple’s 60-hour workweek rule, this despite the fact that 60 hours is a direct violation of China’s 49-hour statutory limit. This “accomplishment” is further discredited by the fact that average weekly working hours in the three factories probed by CLW are approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively. For instance, in Pegatron Shanghai, our investigation uncovered that workers were forced to sign forms indicating that their overtime hours were less than the actual levels.
Indeed, a number of Apple’s social responsibility promises are being broken, including those related to worker safety, protecting the environment, and more. None of the Pegatron factories investigated here, for example, provide sufficient safety training to workers. At Riteng and AVY, waste water is disposed of directly into the sewage system, polluting the local water source.
Conditions at these factories are so poor that most workers refuse to continue working for long. In a period of two weeks, 30 of 110 new recruits at AVY left.
Apple continues to source from Pegatron factories despite serious labor rights violations. That Apple has made promises on the conduct of its suppliers means that Apple is complicit in the persistence of violations at these factories.
Apple has zero tolerance for lapses in the quality of its products. If a quality issue arises, Apple will do everything it can to have it corrected immediately. But a lower level of urgency apparently applies in responding to labor rights abuses. Despite its professed high standards for the treatment of Apple workers, serious labor violations have persisted year after year. Apple must prioritize its efforts into halting the abuse of the workers making Apple products.
CLW executive director Li Qiang said, “Our investigations have shown that labor conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories. Apple has not lived up to its own standards. This will lead to Apple’s suppliers abusing labor in order to strengthen their position for receiving orders. In this way, Apple is worsening conditions for workers, not improving them.”
The report brings this issue into sharp relief by comparing 17 social promises that Apple has made with 17 corresponding realities uncovered during CLW’s investigation.
From March to July 2013, CLW sent investigators into the three Pegatron Group factories to carry out undercover investigations and conduct nearly 200 interviews with workers outside the factories. The factories included Pegatron Shanghai (producing the iPhone), Riteng (a Pegatron subsidiary in Shanghai producing Apple computers), and AVY (a Pegatron subsidiary in Suzhou producing iPad parts). Together, these three Pegatron factories have more than 70,000 employees.
A PDF file of the full report can be downloaded here.
Check out this short film produced by China Labor Watch.
Apple’s Supplier, Pegatron Group, Violates Workers’ Rights
in News/by MAM TeamIn short, the Pegatron factories are violating a great number of international and Chinese laws and standards as well as the standards of Apple’s own social responsibility code of conduct.
In May 2013, Apple heralded that its suppliers had achieved 99 percent compliance with Apple’s 60-hour workweek rule, this despite the fact that 60 hours is a direct violation of China’s 49-hour statutory limit. This “accomplishment” is further discredited by the fact that average weekly working hours in the three factories probed by CLW are approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively. For instance, in Pegatron Shanghai, our investigation uncovered that workers were forced to sign forms indicating that their overtime hours were less than the actual levels.
Indeed, a number of Apple’s social responsibility promises are being broken, including those related to worker safety, protecting the environment, and more. None of the Pegatron factories investigated here, for example, provide sufficient safety training to workers. At Riteng and AVY, waste water is disposed of directly into the sewage system, polluting the local water source.
Conditions at these factories are so poor that most workers refuse to continue working for long. In a period of two weeks, 30 of 110 new recruits at AVY left.
Apple continues to source from Pegatron factories despite serious labor rights violations. That Apple has made promises on the conduct of its suppliers means that Apple is complicit in the persistence of violations at these factories.
Apple has zero tolerance for lapses in the quality of its products. If a quality issue arises, Apple will do everything it can to have it corrected immediately. But a lower level of urgency apparently applies in responding to labor rights abuses. Despite its professed high standards for the treatment of Apple workers, serious labor violations have persisted year after year. Apple must prioritize its efforts into halting the abuse of the workers making Apple products.
CLW executive director Li Qiang said, “Our investigations have shown that labor conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories. Apple has not lived up to its own standards. This will lead to Apple’s suppliers abusing labor in order to strengthen their position for receiving orders. In this way, Apple is worsening conditions for workers, not improving them.”
The report brings this issue into sharp relief by comparing 17 social promises that Apple has made with 17 corresponding realities uncovered during CLW’s investigation.
From March to July 2013, CLW sent investigators into the three Pegatron Group factories to carry out undercover investigations and conduct nearly 200 interviews with workers outside the factories. The factories included Pegatron Shanghai (producing the iPhone), Riteng (a Pegatron subsidiary in Shanghai producing Apple computers), and AVY (a Pegatron subsidiary in Suzhou producing iPad parts). Together, these three Pegatron factories have more than 70,000 employees.
A PDF file of the full report can be downloaded here.
Check out this short film produced by China Labor Watch.
Government Extends Review of Smithfield Sale to Chinese Firm
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamThe companies submitted the deal in June to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, an executive branch panel that examines foreign investment for potential threats to national security.
Many deals are approved during an initial 30-day review, but some transactions are given a second 45-day examination.
“Smithfield and Shuanghui International remain committed to working cooperatively with CFIUS throughout the process,” Smithfield said in the statement confirming it had been notified of the panel’s plan for an extended review.
“The CFIUS process is confidential and Smithfield and Shuanghui International do not intend to comment further on that process while it is ongoing. Smithfield and Shuanghui International continue to expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2013,” the company added.
Why Social Sustainability Should Be Part Of Every Business
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamI can’t think of anything that illustrates the human cost of doing business more than the tragedy this past April in Bangladesh. More than 1,100 men, women, and children died when the Rana Plaza building, which housed a number of garment factories, collapsed. Most were garment workers who were ordered by supervisors to report to work, even after inspectors deemed the building unsafe.
Millions of people around the world work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, earning a nominal income to deliver the products we consume. While the factory collapse in Bangladesh is a terrible tragedy, it’s another wake-up call that business leaders need. We can no longer ignore the human side of our global supply chains. Now is the time for all of us to recognize and embrace social sustainability–much in the same way we’ve focused on environmental sustainability for the past 20 years–as a mission-critical way of doing business. By social sustainability, I mean investing in the livelihoods of farm and factory laborers, ending worker exploitation, and ensuring that there is ethical sourcing behind the things we buy.
Here are three key points that every business leader should keep top-of-mind:
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MITIGATES RISK
Simply put, ignoring social sustainability is a liability–to both your brand and product quality–that businesses can no longer afford.
Case in point: apparel companies, especially those that had previously outsourced their manufacturing to Bangladesh, began scrambling for PR cover within days of the Rana Plaza collapse. Earlier factory tragedies involving global corporations resurfaced as well, demonstrating the prominence of these issues in the eyes of the media and consumers.
Similarly, businesses risk product quality by ignoring the social side of sustainability. In the last month alone, the FDA issued recalls or safety alerts regarding food products tainted by salmonella, listeria and hepatitis A–contaminations that typically start in the fields where farm workers could be more vigilant if they were trained and empowered to do so. Not only do these outbreaks create a serious threat to public health, they can also cost food manufacturers millions of dollars to remedy each incidence of food-borne illness.
CONSUMERS WANT SOCIALLY SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS
We’re seeing the rise of the conscious consumer–people who are informed and engaged, and who care about the environmental and social impact of the products they buy.
Businesses are responding. West Elm, for example, is partnering with Craftmark, an organization that is part of the All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association, to bring locally sourced and handmade products to consumer markets around the world. Many rug importers and exporters are looking for products free of child labor, and they work with organizations like GoodWeave for quality control. And with some companies, like prAna, customers show support by looking for the Fair Trade Certified label on their clothing offerings.
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER
The good news is that social sustainability has never been easier to practice. There is no lack of information, and no shortage of partners who can help you develop, implement and audit a business model that gets it right:
The Fair Labor Association conducted an in-depth investigation of factories in China operated by Foxconn, Apple’s biggest supplier. Both Apple and Foxconn have agreed to follow FLA guidelines to reduce working hours, protect pay, and improve working conditions.
United Farm Workers, Oxfam America, and Costco, in collaboration with many other organizations, have lent considerable muscle to develop and support the Equitable Food Initiative. One of the initial projects had California strawberry growers commit to training their workers and paying them higher wages as an incentive to practice a higher standard of food safety.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters recently completed a two-year partnership with Fair Trade USA and USAID to educate small-scale coffee farmers in Brazil about environmental conservation and effective natural resource management.
By putting people back into business, we’re choosing a world where farmers and workers are able to fight poverty through better trading practices, work in safe conditions, and have access to adequate schooling, health care, and housing. When this happens on a large scale, social sustainability will no longer just be “good business,” it’ll be business as usual.
WHY YOU SHOULD BUY AMERICAN-MADE
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamWelcome to Green Style, a series that shows you how to make your wardrobe more environmentally friendly — all without sacrificing your personal look.
Read more: Why You Should Buy American-Made – Best Environmentally Friendly Fashion Tips for Men – Esquire
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Visit us at Esquire.com
Expansion Management: The Myth of Globalization
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamFor the first time in memory, I’m hearing manufacturing people sound optimistic about facilities they want to build not just in Asia but also in the United States.
I feel it is time to rethink globalization.
Five years after the near-collapse of the world’s largest economies, with Europe in crisis, the United States economy stalled, and China continuing its ascent as a growing economic power, it seems fair to ask, “Was Thomas Friedman correct in so heartily embracing the process of ‘flattening the world’ and convincing executives to lead, follow or get out of the way?”
Read the rest of the article at Industry Week: http://www.industryweek.com/expansion-management/expansion-management-myth-globalization
Strong Support for Labeling Modified Foods
in Food Products/by MAM TeamAmericans overwhelmingly support labeling foods that have been genetically modified or engineered, according to a New York Times poll conducted this year, with 93 percent of respondents saying that foods containing such ingredients should be identified.
Thirty-seven percent of those worried about G.M.O.’s said they feared that such foods cause cancer or allergies, although scientific studies continue to show that there is no added risk.
Among those with concerns, 26 percent said these foods are not safe to eat, or are toxic, while 13 percent were worried about environmental problems that they fear might be caused by genetic engineering.
Nearly half of Americans said they were aware that a large amount of the processed or packaged foods they now buy at the grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients. And although just a handful of G.M.O. crops are on the market, about 4 in 10 respondents said they thought that most or a lot of their fruits and vegetables were genetically modified.
Overall concern was higher among women than men, perhaps not surprisingly, as more women identify themselves as the principal grocery shopper in the household.
Americans were almost equally divided about eating genetically modified vegetables, fruits and grains, with about half saying they would not eat them.
They were even less comfortable about eating meat from genetically engineered animals: three-quarters said they would not eat G.M.O. fish, and about two-thirds said they would not eat meat that had been modified.
The national telephone poll was conducted from Jan. 24 to 27 with 1,052 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Lucky Brand Jeans Goes American-Made
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamUntil 2010, most of Lucky Brand’s jeans were made in the U.S. But after that, the company switched to manufacturing the vast majority of its goods in countries including China, Indonesia, and Mexico. Now, with parent company Fifth & Pacific reportedly in the final stages of selling the brand to private-equity firm Advent International, Lucky Brand announced it’s getting back into the made-in-America game.
C.E.O. David DeMattei invoked sweatshops, patriotism, and environmental concerns when asked by Women’s Wear Daily why Americans are responding to American-made products now:
Hey Manufacturers: What If Manufacturing Came Back To America?
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamWhat would you do if all the manufacturing work lost to low-cost countries came back overnight?
These questions may seem like imagining what you’d do If you won the lottery – fun for a minute, and ultimately not very useful. But they’re legitimate questions for any manufacturer that’s experienced losing work based on price to ask himself and his organization. And I’ll go so far as to say this is a valuable exercise for any small or medium sized manufacturer.
There have been several reports in the recent past that show buyers of manufactured goods – including discrete parts – have taken to “on-shoring” to offset ancillary costs in the face of the global economic downturn, volatile fuel/transportation markets and quality issues.
I read a column a while back called “Emotional Homecoming” by Pete Zelinski at Modern Machine Shop that got me to thinking about those kinds of questions – because his sentiment toward on-shoring is the same as mine. On the one hand, I’m hopeful that this trend continues and grows. The U.S. belongs in the center of the competitive global manufacturing marketplace.
But wishful thinking doesn’t make it so. I’m pragmatic about the selection of low-cost alternatives to improve profits within a supply chain. The global supply chain genie is out of its bottle, and too many opportunities exist these days for your customers and prospects not to consider improving their bottom lines.
Also in Pete’s column, I found references to other articles that in turn led me to a report from the American Small Manufacturers Coalition (ASMC) titled “The Next Generation Manufacturing National Survey.” The ASMC interviewed over 2,500 small and medium sized manufacturers from 18 U.S. states to determine their “health” in 6 areas or strategies.
The categories ASMC defined as Next Generation Manufacturing enablers include “Customer Focused Innovation,” “Human Capital Development and Retention,” “Superior Process Innovation,” and “Global Engagement.” The study is interesting for many reasons, but I was struck by the disparity between small and large manufacturers when it comes to valuing these strategies.
In every case, small manufacturers showed a strong reluctance to embrace these initiatives. It’s as though they’re skeptical of change, which to me is what I find most troubling and why I’m asking these questions.
Add to this equation that the U.S. is still the number 1 manufacturing economy of choice in the world for technically advanced and superior products. The reluctance of small manufacturers to pursue new technically advanced markets and processes suggests that whatever work does return, it may not be sustainable if value isn’t established and maintained to make it less likely the work will leave again.
The point is, it doesn’t matter if the work comes back or not. What’s important is to set our companies up to win and sustain business in a global supply chain that is reinventing itself and redefining what value is.
In the end, many products that were once of a value that would sustain higher functioning businesses and standards of living are no longer. We must be asking ourselves the right questions so that we can attract more of the work that will sustain us and establish our value to the world.
Change is hard, but asking the right questions can be the catalyst for capitalizing on that change and attracting work back from customers whose expectations have changed.
Written by: Mitch Free, Contributor
I have a unique bird’s eye view of the manufacturing economy.
Google's Moto X: Difference Between Made In America And Assembled In America
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAn interesting little point made in passing at The Verge is this about Google‘s upcoming Moto X. There’s a rather large difference between “Made in America” and “assembled in America”. And it’s also true that given the difference between those two the least valuable part of the process is the “assembled” part. It might still be true that Google will attract buyers as a result of the assembly in the Good Ol’ US, but it really isn’t where the value add is nor where the good wages are.
What is the standard for a product to be called Made in USA without qualification?
This might be a nice addition to employment possibilities in America but it’s really not the return of high paid manufacturing work, not at all.
Bipartisan PA. Caucus Forms to Promote Manufacturing
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamBut on one important subject — how to promote manufacturing in Pennsylvania — there is cooperation, both politically and geographically.
The group has two co-chairmen: Rep. Eli Evankovich, a Westmoreland County Republican, and Rep. John Galloway, a Democrat from Bucks County, which is just north of Philadelphia.
“If we are going to move our state forward economically, manufacturers must want to move into Pennsylvania and those who are here must want to stay here,” said Mr. Evankovich, who worked for U.S. Steel for several years before entering politics.
Read more: http://bit.ly/15kuSxx