When organisations are viewed as unethical or earn a poor reputation, their share price and employer brand will likely plummet alongside the morale of their staff and their long‐term chances of survival. On 25 January 2013, Juliette Garside, telecoms correspondent to The Guardian, wrote an article titled ‘Child Labour Uncovered in Apple’s Supply Chain’. In the article she disclosed how Apple’s own internal audits across 400 suppliers revealed that 106 children were employed by its Chinese‐based suppliers in the previous year. In one company, 74 children under the age of 16 were employed, some of them having been employed with forged documents.

The audit followed the reporting of multiple suicides due to poor working conditions at Foxconn, Apple’s Taiwanese‐based assembler of iPads and iPhones.

The internal audit also found evidence of mandatory pregnancy tests, wage confiscation to pay off recruitment agencies in addition to a list of other human rights abuses. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, who was previously involved in setting up Apple’s supply chain, has come under increasing pressure to bring changes. Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations at Apple claims, ‘Underage labour is a subject no company wants to be associated with, so as a result I don’t believe it gets the attention it deserves, and as a result it doesn’t get fixed like it should’. In vowing to purge the companies supply chain of this practice he also warned that it would take some time. Ten per cent of audited companies were found not to be in compliance with Apple’s child labour laws and were forced to return underage children to schools selected by their families and pay their debts. In addition, Apple claims that US$6.4 million was given back to contract workers. Apple also set in place a comprehensive whistleblowers program to protect those claiming intimidation.

QUESTION

Should Apple have been more aware of human rights abuses prior to the internal audits? How could Apple have acted prior to the audits to have improved the findings?