Backlash Against FLA Head's Early Praise for Foxconn, Apple
Fair Labor Association president Auret van Heerden's comments about working conditions at iPhone factories are criticized by labor groups and even his own second-in-command.
A day after the head of a non-profit association that this week began inspecting the Chinese factories of Apple partner Foxconn called them "first-class," labor rights groups and even the organization's own second-in-command questioned the appropriateness of those remarks.
Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), that he was impressed during his initial visits to Foxconn's facilities.
The factories where Apple's iPhones and iPads are assembled are "first-class," van Heerden said, with working conditions that "are way, way above average of the norm" relative to other manufacturing facilities in mainland China.
Labor groups did not appreciate van Heerden's comments, The New York Times reported Thursday, and the FLA's No. 2 official also appeared to dial back his boss's remarks.
"The work we're doing at Foxconn is not about first impressions or whether something has a paint job or not," Jorge Perez-Lopez told the newspaper. "The proof will be in the pie, will be in the eating. It will be when the report comes out."
An Apple-Backed Investigation
The FLA was recently asked by Apple of its top eight manufacturing partners in China, starting with Foxconn, the main assembler of the company's popular consumer devices and the target of heavy criticism from labor rights groups.
The non-profit won't release an official preliminary report on its findings at the Foxconn plants until early March. Later, the agency will send inspectors to Chinese factories run by other contract suppliers used by Apple, including Quanta Computer, Pegatron, and Wintek.
Van Heerden's comments came just a few days into the FLA's inspection of Apple partners' facilities that kick off with a three-week tour of Foxconn's factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, the latter of which experienced a deadly explosion last year that is believed to have been caused by improper ventilation of aluminum dust.
About 30 FLA staffers will tour the Foxconn facilities and conduct anonymous interviews with a third of the 100,000 workers who work and live at the two plants, seeking information on their living conditions, emotional well-being, and whether Foxconn's agents in the rural areas where many workers are recruited are acting responsibly in the hiring process.
"I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," van Heerden told Reuters earlier this week. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."
The FLA president was referring to at Foxconn plants in recent years which spiked in 2010 and brought new scrutiny to the working conditions at the Chinese factories that churn out computer and consumer electronics products for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and other titans of the high-tech industry.
He said such suicides were not unique to the plants where iPhones and iPads are made but have been tracked by the FLA since the 1990s at many facilities that employ young rural workers who are living away from their families for the first time.
"They're taken from a rural into an industrial lifestyle, often quite an intense one, and that's quite a shock to these young workers," van Heerden told Reuters. "And we find that they often need some kind of emotional support, and they can't get it."
'Hasty' Comments Criticized
The Times said representatives of several labor groups were "surprised and dismayed" by the FLA head's remarks.
"Generally, in a labor rights investigation, the findings come after the evidence is gathered, not the other way around," the paper quoted said Workers Rights Consortium executive director Scott Nova as saying. "I'm amazed that the FLA would give one of the most notoriously abusive factories in the world a clean bill of health—based, it appears, on nothing more than a guided tour provided by the owner."
Verite founder Heather White told the Times that van Heerden's remarks appeared "hasty," while Nova added that Apple's backing of the FLA inspection could call into question the impartiality of the association's findings.
Van Heerden's first take on the conditions at Foxconn's facilities came a day after Apple chief executive Tim Cook that the company's leaders "care about every worker."
"We believe that every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment, free of discrimination where they can earn competitive wages and where they can voice their complaints freely," Cook said at Tuesday's Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. "And Apple suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple."
The iPhone maker has encountered growing criticism of its partners' labor practices in the past several weeks. A detailed press gang-like working conditions and questionable safety practices at Foxconn's factories. Before his death last year, then-CEO Steve Jobs reportedly told President Barack Obama that it would be impossible to manufacture Apple products efficiently elsewhere.
In the wake of such reports, concerned Apple users on the websites SumofUs.org and Change.org, calling for Apple to improve worker protections, increase transparency around the monitoring of its suppliers and make an "ethical" iPhone 5. Protestors recently converged on various Apple Stores, , to deliver the petitions, which garnered about 250,000 signatures.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, Taiwan-based Foxconn by a new group of so-called hacktivists and emails from its CEO were exposed.
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