Apple responds to factory worker conditions, we're still waiting on the others.

January 27, 2012

Apple responds to factory worker conditions, we’re still waiting on the others.

“We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain,” Cook said in an email to Apple employees, published Thursday at 9to5mac.com. “Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.”

…

“Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain,” Cook said in his email to Apple employees. “As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people.”

…

“We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment,” wrote Cook, who served as Apple’s chief operating officer and oversaw its supply chain prior to becoming the company’s CEO. “We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain.”

Let me remind you of Stephen Fry’s post from the other day:

Kindle, Apple, PSP 3, Xbox, Nokia, Samsung, Wii, IBM, Intel, MS all made at Foxconn. Apple takes the flak but only Apple truly addressing it.

Actually it’s a much longer list than you could fit on Twitter. According to Wikipedia, here’s a list of all of their customers. I’ve crossed out the ones which have addressed the situation: