Foxconn reportedly hid teenage workers for inspectors, Daisy’s monologue available as royalty-free download

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 22 February 2012, 9:15 pm

As the Fair Labor Association (FLA) inspectors interviews Foxconn employees about working conditions at iPad plants, early reports coming our way are a bit ambiguous and a tad confusing. First FLA president told Reuters that plant floors are spotless, then Bloomberg published an article claiming the organization has found “tons of issues” and finally those two video teasers (here and here) from ABC Nightline’s ‘iFactory’ documentary added amiguity as the producers apparently “didn’t find any egregious violations”.

Knowing ABC’s parent company Disney has the Steve Jobs Trust as its largest shareholder and considering that FLA is funded by the biggest players in the industry – including Apple which commissioned the Foxconn inspection that began last week – some watchers are speculating there must be more to this than meets the eye.

According to AI, Foxconn did hide underage workers before FLA inspectors arrived for audits. Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) project officer Debby Sze Wan Chan told the publication that “All underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any overtime work and some of them were even sent to other departments”. Foxconn is putting on a show, Chan added:

Most of the time, the workers are aware of the presence of Apple’s representatives inside the factories. It is not the problem that Apple doesn’t know the real problems at their suppliers. They know, but it is only because they do not care.

Chan attempted to deliver reports, documentaries and petition cards personally to Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters but she’d been shown the door as “a security guard tried to disperse us and he promised that he would hand the materials to someone in charge, but I haven’t heard from them since then”.

For example, another worker told Chan her employee approved three breaks a day during the inspections versus just one a day prior to the FLA audits. Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct only approves of underage workers if they are legally allowed to work and in China this means sixteen-year-olds. The whole Foxconn mess, as you’ll recall, actually erupted after big media piggy-backed on an episode of the popular radio program This American Life which adapted Mike Daisey’s highly acclaimed monologue “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”.

Daisey’s show was the first to expose the controversial working conditions at Foxconn’s Shenzhen, China factory in a big way, creating a major PR problem for Apple which in years past was facing constant accusations of questionable labor practices in Chinese sweatshops. If you’re eager to lear more about Daisey’s monologue that started it all, you can now download a PDF transcript of the entire episode free of charge. Furthermore, Daisey released the transcript under an open license so that it may be performed by anyone and anywhere.