QUESTION
Literature review on child labour on electronic firms/companies
– choose 4 articles.
-Try and focus mainly on Apple Inc.
SOLUTION
Critical Review
Child labour is one of the most emerging issues nowadays for the society and it is affecting the whole economy badly. We everyday listen or watch in news regarding the child labour cases in our surroundings. Here in this report we will be discussing the child labour practices and its negative impact on the Apple products.
Apple outsources its products and parts from 156 companies across the world. These are the effective parts manufacturer and suppliers for Apple corp. So it is very important for these companies to follow the norm and regulations related to the child labour and others for the better relationship with Apple Corp and it will also have a positive impact on the Apple’s branding.
Apple publishes auditing report for all its suppliers every year to keep the whole thing very much transparent and open. In 2011 audit report they have caught various violations of the child labour rules in their suppliers organization, like labour working for more than 6 days a week, there were some factories which were found guilty for the less wages payment to the labours and 5 factories were caught guilty for the underage labour practices in their factories.
These auditing reports are being done by the internal auditors of Apple itself. But to cover up all the aspects of all these suppliers is not very easy for Apple. They have more than 150 companies associated with them as their supplementary organization which are supporting and providing the parts to Apple. To make an effective move towards these aspects and to stop these violations, such as underage labour practices, less wages to the labours, more working hours and other illegal practices in their factories, they have opened their auditing practices to the independent body, FLA (Fair Labour Association). They will be taking care of the auditing of the suppliers of Apple and the internal auditing report will also be verified by the FLA committee. The final audited report will be published to the FLA’s website, www.fairlabor.org .
This is really an effective and proactive step taken by Apple to stop these kinds of violent practices to the associated companies and suppliers. This will create a good customer loyalty and branding aspect to the Apple in market.
Most of the child labour cases were found to their Chinese companies which are supplying materials to them. They found around 91 children who all were underage working with the companies. Then and there Apple dismissed the contact with these Chinese firms.
These aspects really make a negative and bad impact of the brand in common people perception. But with the help of their proactive and predictable aspects and steps Apple has been able to come out from these crisis situations. Now Apple auditing report will be redirected to the FLA website and anybody can view these reports and if there is any kind of violations of law is there, then they can freely oppose this and we can go for protesting.
Apple is one of the biggest firms in electronic market and these kinds of activities of their suppliers and other associated companies really make a bad impact to the name and fame of the company. That is really a shameful activity which tarnishes the name of the brand in the market. Due to these kinds of irregular activities the organization need to suffer from the negative results and that directly hampers their market share. To make a new customer is very easy but to retain an existing customer is very difficult and this will be possible only if the whole chain of organization and its supplementary organization are moving hand on hand. If there will be any issue with any chain then its effect will be on the whole chain of the firms. The same thing is happening with Apple. Out of their 156 supplier’s factories, few are practicing these kinds of unwanted and undesirable labour practices that is affecting the name of Apple.
Conclusion
Apple is taking proactive step towards these kinds of unwanted and undesirable situation in future and that is why they have decided to publish their internal auditing report of their suppliers to the FLA website and it will be open for all. The common people can easily access the auditing report and can check for the violent practices happening if any to their supplier’s factories. They can freely protest and make video tape of these violent practices.
They are also indulge in conducting more auditing for their existing and new factories, such as we can see that, they conducted 229 audits in 2011, which is 80 percent higher than the last year 2010. So they are taking proactive steps towards the revealing of these kinds of violent and unwanted practices to their suppliers. Most of these cases being caught in Chinese suppliers, so we can make a conclusion that the Chinese firms are indulged in these kinds of illegal labour practices and underage child labour activities.
Apple’s Chile remediation program: They have also a kind of remedy program for the underage child labours. The suppliers which are indulge in these kinds of child labour practices, Apple requires them to send back to the schools and finance them for their education and other required benefits. This will really help in the path of removal of child labour practices by these firms in future. These kinds of auditing reports and practices have reduced the underage labour practices in the suppliers firm.
Apple has also decided to allow the independent auditing body FLA to the suppliers auditing and based on their own rules and norms of Fair labour code of conduct of that particular place they can do the auditing and they are free to publish the report to their website openly. Most of the supplier based firms are already doing this like Nike and all. So at last Apple has also decided to make this applicable to its supplier companies.
Apple has also some kind of Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program and in this program the supplier’s labour can take free classes to the English, computer and finance. This is really an effective step towards the employee/labour development. Lots of workers have already been registered for this program and it has been noted that more than 60,000 workers have already attended the program once of more than that.
These integrated steps will surely make an effective advantage for Apple to reduce these kinds of unwanted crisis situation due to the illegal practices of their suppliers. Their involvement of external auditor i.e FLA will also help them to make the whole auditing process more transparent and effective and then there will be obviously less cases of child labour and other illegal labour practices to their supplier’s factories. Even the result can be seen now also. We can see their step towards the employee involvement in various educational programs like SEED, their online publishing of supplier’s auditing report to FLA website.
These aspects are really going to help the name and fame of Apple for the coming days and there will be now cases of illegal labour practice to their subsidiary suppliers.
Reference List
Child labor violations at Apple suppliers down in 2011, Jacqui Cheng – Jan 14 2012, online available at http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/01/child-labor-violations-at-apple-suppliers-down-in-2011/ , [accessed on 15th May 2012]
Occupy The Apple Store?, online available at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nellmerlino/2012/02/17/occupy-the-apple-store/, [accessed on 15th May 2012]
Child labour, lost wages uncloaked by Apple factories audit, Anna Leach 16th January 2012, online available at
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/01/16/apple_suppliers_audits/ , [accessed on 15th May 2012]
Apple’s child labour issues worsen, online available at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8324867/Apples-child-labour-issues-worsen.html , [accessed on 15th May 2012]
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