Expose Published Jan. 25, 2012

An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.” . . .

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked. . . .

 In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad | The New York Times

Why does Apple continue to lobby against a bill that guards against the use of slave labor in China for products shipped to the United States?

Because it appears the iManufacturer wants its Sino-suppliers to continue the practice, if evidence unveiled by (paywall) investigative website The Information is to be believed.

Citing discoveries made by human rights groups via satellite images, videos, and public statements by Chinese officials, the report “found seven companies supplying device components, coatings and assembly services to Apple that are linked to alleged forced labor involving Uyghurs and other oppressed monitories in China. At least five of those companies received thousands of Uyghur and other minority workers at specific factory sites or subsidiaries that did work for Apple, the investigation found.”

For example, the report identified one computer parts supplier – Advanced-Connectek – that operated in an “industrial park” in the Xinjiang region, where the persecuted Muslim-minority Uighurs are housed and enslaved. From The Information’s report:

Next to the park was a large compound identified by a satellite imagery researcher as a detention center where the factory workers lived. The researcher, Nathan Ruser, from an Australian think tank, said “almost no other factories in Xinjiang have these characteristics except for industrial parks where there is detainee labor.”

The Information and human rights groups have found seven companies supplying device components, coatings and assembly services to Apple that are linked to alleged forced labor involving Uyghurs and other oppressed minorities in China. At least five of those companies received thousands of Uyghur and other minority workers at specific factory sites or subsidiaries that did work for Apple, the investigation found.

Investigative efforts dating back to last year found that Apple utilized Chinese companies that operate in Xinjiang as part of their supply chain.

A report released in March 2020 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute determined that at least three manufacturers of Apple parts use forced Uighur labor that has been relocated to factories in other parts of China: BOE Technology, which makes LCD screens, and O-Film, which makes cameras and lenses, and Hubei Yihong Precision Manufacturing, whose parent company lists Apple as a customer. The report also identified transfer of workers to a Foxconn factory, known worldwide for its assembly of iPhones.

And The Information reported in December that Apple was slow to cut ties with Chinese suppliers found to be violating its labor ethics policies, specifically pertaining to child labor and workplace safety. . . .

 REPORT: More Suppliers for Apple Discovered Using Slave Labor | National Legal and Policy Center