Apple and the Ugly Truth About How Computers Are Made

Last week, Apple released its Supplier Responsibility 2010 progress report -- an audit of all of the manufacturing production facilities -- and the results aren't pretty. The report found that a too-high percentage of facilities employ child labor or unscrupulous labor practices.

Which leads to some broader questions about what real corporate responsibility looks like, and what we should expect of our products -- and ourselves.

According to a writeup of the report on Engadget, Apple audited 102 factories, and found that 54% had employees that worked more than the maximum allowed 60-hour weeks; 24% were paid less than minimum wage; 37% failed to meet anti-discrimination practices, and three facilities had employed a total of 11 people who were 15 when they started working. In response, Apple seems likely to employ approaches that range from better training to using threats of ending business and more to push manufacturers into compliance.

So what are we supposed to make of this? The Telegraph UK headlined, "Apple admits using child labor," an extremely disingenuous bit of editorializing that masquerades as journalism. The story made it seem as though Apple got caught with its pants down, rather than simply published an audit it had, itself, performed. These issues are far too important for a major global publication to write a defamatory story when, in fact, it's actually incredibly progressive for a major company to voluntarily conduct this sort of audit and then publish the results -- warts and all.

Because the most disturbing part of this whole story is that in the course of the audit, in many factories, Apple found that they were almost always the first Western company to try and perform such an audit. These are the plants where all of our electronics are built, and to hear that companies have no idea about what's going on is pretty disenheartening. I'm glad to laud Apple for doing this audit -- and I'll be even more glad next year to report all their progress.

Still, the larger question has to center on what we expect of our manufacturing processes. Consumer demand for lower prices drives pressure for unscrupulous practices. A huge part of changing the world, then, has to mean voting with our dollars.

Photo Credit: djenan