Many articles out today about a report that Apple did which found out some underage workers were employed by third party manufacturers. I’ve read through several of the articles and wanted to point out a key facts.

* Out of all of the suppliers audited, only 11 underage workers were discovered.
* The workers were 15 years old.
* The legal age to work is 16.
* Apple is one of very few companies that even do such audits.

The Bloomberg article has a little more information. This isn’t an instance of some massive underground child labor operation happening, and it appears to be fairly isolated. AppleInsider reports “In reality, Apple stepped in to police a situation it had no legal responsibility to address. “We required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment [at facilities operated by contractors],” Apple stated in the report.

At one facility, Apple discovered that management had actually been falsifying records to make it appear to be compliant with the company’s standards.

“When we investigated,” the report notes, “we uncovered records and conducted worker interviews that revealed excessive working hours and seven days of continuous work.” Apple subsequently terminated all of its contracts with the factory.”

I think that it should be standard policy for American companies to do such audits of suppliers in foreign nations, and I applaud Apple’s efforts for doing so.

Tags: apple