Apple’s 2011 Supplier Responsibility Report is a fascinating 25-page tour of the world of globalised business. Contained within, and inspired by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards, are sections on training and development, foreign contract worker protection, preventing firms employing underage staff, and the use of toxic chemicals in products. It is interesting how many of these areas of enquiry have been insisted on by external parties who make it their business to monitor what Apple gets up to in its business.
While the company’s report, published since 2007, tackles what seem to be an exhaustive list of CSR-type concerns, it does not meet the demands of organisations such as As You Sow, which in 2009 urged Apple shareholders to tell the company to produce a formal CSR reports, as do its competitors HP, IBM and Dell. Apple refused, saying that formal reporting of its approach to recycling, greenhouse gas emissions and toxins would just involve double reporting and unnecessary time and expense.
Apple has bowed to pressure from this and other groups before: in 2007, it agreed to publish recycling goals just before a shareholder vote on the issue. In the same year, Apple gave in to pressure brought to bear by Greenpeace to be more open about its products' environmental credentials. The green campaign group had ranked Apple near the bottom of its Greener Electronics listing. The Californian firm shrugged off this criticism at first, claiming that the environmental ranking used by Greenpeace was meaningless and that Apple had a strong environmental track record in any case. Eventually, the firm caved in and boss Steve Jobs wound up apologising for leaving its customers in the dark on environmental issues.
The major headline-grabbing issues associated with Apple’s suppliers tend to revolve around its manufacturing and assembly works in mainland China. We have outlined previously the conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company operating out of super-factories in south China. These have led to spates of worker suicides, accusations of the use of child labour and toxic chemicals at these Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs). While reporting on these unsavoury practices, many industry-watchers are full of praise of Apple’s efforts to “hack away at” incidences of corporate wrongdoing at its suppliers’ factories.
Other observers point to the litany of ‘unsafe working conditions, lack of basic first-aid, bribery, exploitative recruitment fees and unpaid wages’ and ask if this is all just a by-product of outsourcing manufacturing to China. It's clearly worth it for Apple to continue to use the globalised model of ODMs in the Far East. But how long will Apple's auditors keep having to return to these factories to check on worker abuse? Is there a better way of regulating goods produced in these conditions?