Apple Inc, whose supplier Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) was hit by a series of employee suicides last year, said a quick response by the Taiwanese assembler helped prevent further deaths.
Apple commissioned a review by a team of suicide-prevention experts after the worker deaths, and in August presented its findings to senior executives from both companies, including Foxconn founder and chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘), according to Apple’s annual Supplier Responsibility report.
“The team commended Foxconn for taking quick action,” Apple wrote. “Foxconn had worked openly with many outside experts and government officials in reacting to the crisis. Most important, the investigation found that Foxconn’s response had definitely saved lives.”
Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs on June 2 denied Foxconn was a sweatshop, saying his company was “all over” the supplier to deal with the deaths.
The US firm’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, visited Foxconn’s Shenzhen, China, facility in June last year as part of an effort to stop worker suicides, the company said in the report.
Cook and his group met with Gou to discuss measures Foxconn was putting in place to prevent more deaths, Apple said in the report on Monday.
Most workers who took their own lives did so by leaping from company-owned high-rise dormitories.
Cook’s team, which included suicide-prevention specialists, made recommendations that Foxconn followed, including hiring psychological counselors, opening a 24-hour care center and installing nets in factories, Apple said.
Cook is now handling day-to-day operations at Apple, maker of the iPhone and Macintosh personal computers, while Jobs is on medical leave, the company said on Jan. 17.
Foxconn has more than 1 million employees who churn out products for customers including Apple, Dell Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Sony Corp.
In its report, Apple said its team interviewed workers and their managers in person and inspected Foxconn’s work and living areas.
Apple’s supplier responsibility report also said the company audited 127 supplier sites last year, 97 of them for the first time. More than 40 percent of the companies inspected last year said Apple was the first company to have audited them for social responsibility, the report said.
In addition to China, Apple has since 2007 conducted audits in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the US.
Apple said it had addressed violations of its supplier code of conduct, including excessive fees charged to workers by recruitment agencies, use of underage workers and exposure to harmful chemicals.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS