Apple on Tuesday said that ended business with a factory in China that is found had spent 42 underage workers.
In "the responsibility of the supplier" Apple internal review published today, the company said that the factory represented almost half of workers under age 91 employees in 2010 its contractors to build products which smartphone to iPhone, iPad tablets and Macintosh computers. Apple has decided to cut ties with this specific contractor facility because she "had determined that management had chosen to ignore the problem and was not committed to tackling the problem."
Apple says that the factory had worked with a vocational school that was "student ID falsified and threatened retaliation against students who showed their age during the checks". Apple reported the school "appropriate Chinese Government authorities".
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Apple has chosen to maintain its contracts with nine other factories which used a total of 49 underage workers last year, since those factories has agreed to collaborate with Apple policies designed to "prevent the employment of underage workers." Apple says it has also started a training programme to prevent any future recruitment of workers under the age of 16, that is the legal age to work in China.
Was not only labour that Apple had to correct the last year, however, as the company reported also find many other core violations "with its standard working. Among them there were:
* 137 workers in a factory in Suzhou suffered "adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane, a chemical detergents used in certain production processes." Apple said that the illness was due to poor ventilation within the plant and that no workers have fallen sick because the ventilation system was set last year. Australian Broadcasting Corporation broke the story about employees of Apple is poisoned by n-hexane making Apple products. According to the report by ABC, some workers poisoned said that exposure to the chemical has left them unable to walk. "
Less than a third of all factories Apple magazines complied with rules on working time. Although Apple tells factories that the workers can work for a maximum of 60 hours, the company found that "76 structures had record that indicated the workers had exceeded the limits of hours work weekly for more than 50 percent of the time". Apple says that it requires factories "development of management systems to ensure compliance with labour standards.
* Only 57% of the factories Apple reviewed complied with rules of professional accident prevention of the company. Apple found that 64 factories had engineering control violations, 95 factories did not conduct regular safety inspections and 54 factories or not to give their workers of security equipment or train workers to use the equipment properly.
* Apple finished also contracts with a factory that gave the payroll accounts falsified records and another establishment that tried to bribe the accounts with cash.
In addition to reports on violations of labour standards, Apple has reported the results of its investigation the 10 suicides that occurred last year at its factory in Shenzhen of Foxconn. Team of Apple "independent" of suicide prevention specialists made several recommendations to reduce the likelihood of suicide of the installation, including "best staff training hotline and the Councillors of the Centre of care and better control in order to ensure the effectiveness
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