Tim Cook's Email to Apple Staff Regarding Supplier Responsibility Report

[ThunderSkunk]

All I care about is getting what I want cheap as possible. If some other countrys kids have to work 30hr shifts and suffer deformities from exposure to toxic materials with no safety protocols or health coverage to make em, that's their problem.

There. Better?


Hooray for consumer culture.

 

[Music_Producer]

If I'd have known China would have caused this much trouble I'd put together my own damn products!

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I'm done with this conversation. I'm moving to Mexico when I retire because the USA will be dead by then.

That's actually a good idea, because healthcare in Mexico is way cheaper than the US. I guess you're selling out your country because you're going to be spending your american dollars there, huh?

What do you call Americans who travel overseas for healthcare because it's just ridiculously expensive here? Are they traitors?

Getting back on topic..why do you seem hellbent on blaming corporations that offshoring manufacturing? Why don't you concentrate on what *CAN* be done to bring manufacturing to America?

How about starting with healthcare? Do away with insurance completely, make healthcare affordable for everyone. A root canal shouldn't cost $1500 for example. A CT scan shouldn't cost upwards of $2000.. I could go on.

Then you have lawsuits for just about everything. A worker slipped on the floor? Sure, let's slap a lawsuit for a million dollars. The list is endless. There are just liabilities for a company to do business here, ask me.. I know. I'm a small business owner and it's a nightmare.

Fix the system here - the corrupt, greedy system is the political system that has pretty much driven out manufacturing and jobs from America.

 

[Glideslope]

What a god damn lie this guy is going to hell.

Your way of solving suicide in your slave factories is to put up nets? scum bag

BTW Tim Cook personally toured the factories and found "nothing wrong" lol what a freakin joke

When you get a minute can you please share with us your personal observations from your recent trip to China?

You have been there right?

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You have no clue about the intricacies of running a factory of that magnitude in USA.

Some people with insight already made a few points.

This "produce in America" comes up all the time.

1) Apple is in the development and product creation business. They do not want or need to own a factory.

2) The labor forces mass assembly requires are not available in the US and would certainly not all go to US workers.

See Cato institute study.

3) What would happen if they produced here with say 50,000 people and a product tanks? Factory closes. 50,000 people on the street.

There is no guarantee that they will always have the next great product.

4) The US laws are totally business unfriendly, hence many US companies do not produce here and do not even bring their foreign profits back into this country. (Double taxation)

I could go on and on, but to simply state Apple should produce in the US is an extremely uneducated and simplistic viewpoint.

To the people who scream GREED, please note that the purpose of a business is to make money and as much of it as possible.
In that sense shareholders are all greedy, as they want the stocks to rise , get dividends etc.

And lastly, test yourselves honestly. Stand in front of similar products, one Made in America and one Made in a Foreign country.

You will always pick the American made item that is more expensive , right?

Thank You. There is hope.

 

[juliandroms]

Bah

Bah

 

[alephnull12]

If I'd have known China would have caused this much trouble I'd put together my own damn products!

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I'm done with this conversation. I'm moving to Mexico when I retire because the USA will be dead by then.

You will have your politicians, lazy ass unions, and lazy ass fellow citizens to thank for it.

You need to spend 50 million dollars in this country, just to pay enough lawyers to wade through all the paperwork and environmental regulations you will to get permits to build a factory -- millions upon millions of dollars just to figure of if you can even build it. And at the end of it, if the answer is no, not only are you out of money, you're out of valuable time that's needed to make your product according to a critical deadline.

Then you have to worry about being sued by labor unions, being pulled in front of the National Labor Relations Board, having an entire billion dollar project scuttled at the last minute because some lunatic at the EPA believes that a useless species of salamander might be obliterated.

You may spend a billion dollars on a factory to assemble vital components, only to have it shut down and interrupt your entire supply chain, just because of a strike, labor complaint, trivial infraction found on OSHA inspection, crazy nutso environmentalists protesting outside your factory, angry politician trying to shake you down for money, deranged journalist causing unwarranted fear in a local community, etc.. etc..

Then you have to worry about being sued by former employees with complaints, either real or imagined, who think you owe them for some ailment probably unrelated to anything you do. Or, twenty years from now, the US Federal government coming back at you after blowing money for the last 50 years on useless crap and running up an enormous deficit (buying votes) to pay for someone's retirement even though they haven't worked for you in 30 years.

Workers suing you because they feel another one of your employees -- who you can't really control all that well anyway, might have harassed them or passed them over for a promotion. Ordinary trivial day-to-day disputes blown into full-on labor tri-party legal wranglings between lawyers, union representatives, employees and management.

Worst of all, this eats away at valuable time. Valuable time to bring products to market before your products are made obsolete by all the stuff that is coming from China and elsewhere, regardless of whether Apple designs it or not.

Whatever, it's a waste of everyone's time and money. Just do it somewhere else (where your own elected officials don't repay you with hatred for doing someone else a favor).

Chinese people laugh at us because this country is a joke where the lunatics have the greatest say.

 

[laserbeam273]

Sorry your country can't come up with products the whole world wants. I can care less for what other countries want right now, ours is in trouble, so everyone else is not on my list of immediate concern. And yes, spoken like a true American.

Just did a bit of research, and turns out that fridges and the modern standard of wifi were invented in Australia - I think those are products most people want! Isn't it good that we've let other nations manufacture them!

But Australia's history of inventions isn't my concern at all. My concern is for the developing nations where millions of families can barely afford paying $100 a year to send their kids to school - not support a mortgage on a $300,000+ house. Does it really seem right to you that America should forgo helping poorer foreign nations develop just so that America can maintain it's own level of ultra-wealth? Doesn't that strike you as greedy or self-centred?

 

[quasinormal]

We consumers should have the choice to pay a bit extra to support our comrades in China.

 

[carlgo]

Its good to see more people debating this, finally! Clearly the heat is on and Apple isn't the only one squirming.

It would be good to spread out production all over the world, but I think people are really upset that every ***********g thing is "Hecho en China".

 

[cjbryce]

Good to see Tim caring about human atrocities, unlike his predecessor.

Bizarre statement on so many levels but to pick just one or two:-

1) Atrocity <> poor working conditions (cf Serbia, Somalia et al)
2) Poor working conditions > no work at all and thus extreme poverty (cf almost every developing country)
3) Apple have done their bit, Cook has just publicised it more than Jobs
4) All MNCs could and should do better, however US/UK standards <> other countries' standards - which is why it's cheaper to manufacture in developing countries

 

[thewitt]

Not sure why it took until Tim Cook was CEO to do this, but good on them.

Apple has been aggressively managing suppliers for more than ten years...

 

[thewitt]

Hey Tim, How bout bringing Apple back home to the USA instead of worrying about underage labor and living conditions.

Bring what part back?

Component manufacturing? Not possible.

Final Assembly? Are YOU prepared to pay $2500 for an iPhone?

 

[thewitt]

Now how about Apple do something really good and build a manufacturing plant in California and help the economy at home.

Only if you can find 10,000 people to work for $10 an hour. Even then the price of your phone will double.

 

[sfern]

It comes back to the simple question:

Your a business, who has made a product. You want to manufacture it and you have done your research, providing you with information about your target market, how much they are willing to pay for an item. You understand that to capture your market you need to sell at or below price A.

Lets assume options exist that factories already exist everywhere, but only offshore factories can meet your production cost and support your company's profitability. Do you
1) not launch product, even after investing heavily in prototyping and development?
2) launch product at high costs and risk losing the majority of your market, regardless of how good the product is?
3) Set your product up for the highest chance of success by controlling your production costs?

People claiming that Apple should pay more to their manufacturing partners to improve working conditions do not understand business at all. Paying more to the manufacturing partners means that they bank more. Period. Remember they are a business too working to minimise costs. Apples huge cash stockpile does not mean that their retail employees get paid exceptionally higher wages than any other retailer so why should it be different for any other company.

Apple does have a large stockpile of cash but they also have heavy investment from shareholders, increasing production costs significantly would severally cripple the value of such shares and I'm sure would cause many investors (both American and international) to sell stock further hindering investment in American enterprise.

Lastly, Foxxcon do not exclusively manufacture for Apple. They are, I believe, one of the largest electronics manufacturers world wide, so I don't understand why some people believe that it's Apple's sole responsibility to address all these concerns. Although I do applaud their efforts with the hopes that other companies follow their lead.

 

[JimWNC]

[deleted post]

 

[noverflow]

Is that why Ford Rangers are so expensive? Toyota has assembly plants here in the USA. Why can't Apple?

The honest reason. Is that robots make most cars now. Most electronics are almost completely hand made.

If robots made the iPhone we could make in america for the same cost or less. But it isnt. So we can't.

A quote from this american life story about the electronics factories:

How often do we wish more things were hand made?

Oh, we talk about this all the time. I wish it were like the old days.

I wish things had that human touch.

There're more handmade things now than there have ever been in the history of the world. Everything is hand made. I know. I have been there. I've seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair, one after another, after another. Everything is handmade.

We, for good reason, pay our workers too much to compete in electronics assembly.

This city in China where all the factories are for Apple, MSFT, Sony etc is a city of 14million people. One Foxconn plant has 400,000 people in it.

How do we compete with that. Seriously.

I went to school for industrial design, I have taken classes on manufacturing, I have worked with mold makes here in the states. We just can not compete.

 

[gnasher729]

Because Steve Jobs never caved into the "bragging" mindset that all expect. He knew Apple was doing the right thing and that's all that mattered to him. This is what infuriated Green Peace the most - that Steve Jobs never gave them what they wanted... an environmental roadmap, which is how Green Peace rates companies; not on what they do, but what they promise to do whether they do it or not, which seems really stupid.

There was a case where HP was rated very, very highly because they promised to get rid of some unhealthy stuff in their packaging within the next two years. Apple was rated down because they made no such promises. The reason why Apple made no promises was that the stuff was already long gone.

The other thing that infuriated Greenpeace was Apple's refusal to donate money to them.

 

[gnasher729]

Easy way to reduce underage labor to zero: Move the factories to the US. You can afford it.

********. When we are talking about "underage labor", it means that a company is allowed to employ 16 year olds, but not 15 year olds. 15 year olds obviously want to make money as well. And some will apply for a job, and some will get a job. In past reports, Apple noted that more than half the cases that they found happened with one of their suppliers who apparently turned a blind eye; they stopped using that supplier. There will always be cases where the age isn't properly checked by mistake, or where someone applies for a job and lies about their age and isn't found out. Since the previous year's report, the number has gone down by a factor ten roughly; due to the major offender being gone, and others having been told off and checking more carefully. There is _no_ evidence whatsoever that any of those employers does intentionally use "underage labor". Doing so wouldn't save them any money.

And of the cases that Apple found, most were now over 16 and employed completely legally. This actually happened to me at my first serious job when I told collegues that it was my 18th birthday two weeks into the job, and someone said "oh ****, if it is your 18th birthday today then we shouldn't have hired you". And that _was_ a US company. Since the company had been hiring about a dozen young people who finished school together with me, I didn't feel bad about it in any way; on the contrary I would been very annoyed if my slightly older schoolmates had got a very well-paying job and I didn't. (To explain the difference 18 vs. 16: The company could have legally employed 16 year olds but would have had to put some measures into place to protect non-adult workers, which they didn't. Therefore they could only employ 18 or older).

 

[divinox]

They may have just joined the FLA, but Apple has been doing supplier responsibility reports since 2007.

And look how well that worked out...

 

[rkahl]

What's the difference between hiring an illegal to mow your lawn or sending work for a Chinese Slave to make at a ridiculously low wage?

This is just not right!

 

[rdowns]

What's the difference between hiring an illegal to mow your lawn or sending work for a Chinese Slave to make at a ridiculously low wage?

This is just not right!

The first will disqualify you to be president but the second may qualify you in some people's minds.

 

[rkahl]

The first will disqualify you to be president but the second may qualify you in some people's minds.

Hopefully Romney will be disqualified then!

 

[ThunderSkunk]

********. When we are talking about "underage labor", it means that a company is allowed to employ 16 year olds, but not 15 year olds...

Actually no. In this case they're talking about having found people 12, 13, 14, & 15 also working there.

 

[deannnnn]

Or you could take some of those billions of dollars you're sitting on and those new billions of dollars in profits you make and work with suppliers to open some factories in the US.

Exactly what I was thinking. Why spend all this money reforming foreign facilities to US standards when they could be improving our struggling economy with new jobs here at home.

 

[kiljoy616]

More and more I really am liking this guy. He really is good for Apple and its future.

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All I care about is getting what I want cheap as possible. If some other countrys kids have to work 30hr shifts and suffer deformities from exposure to toxic materials with no safety protocols or health coverage to make em, that's their problem.

There. Better?


Hooray for consumer culture.

So true who cares lets bring back slavery in america but this time lets do it right and have all types of slaves. I will vote for that any time.

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That's actually a good idea, because healthcare in Mexico is way cheaper than the US. I guess you're selling out your country because you're going to be spending your american dollars there, huh?

What do you call Americans who travel overseas for healthcare because it's just ridiculously expensive here? Are they traitors?

Getting back on topic..why do you seem hellbent on blaming corporations that offshoring manufacturing? Why don't you concentrate on what *CAN* be done to bring manufacturing to America?

How about starting with healthcare? Do away with insurance completely, make healthcare affordable for everyone. A root canal shouldn't cost $1500 for example. A CT scan shouldn't cost upwards of $2000.. I could go on.

Then you have lawsuits for just about everything. A worker slipped on the floor? Sure, let's slap a lawsuit for a million dollars. The list is endless. There are just liabilities for a company to do business here, ask me.. I know. I'm a small business owner and it's a nightmare.

Fix the system here - the corrupt, greedy system is the political system that has pretty much driven out manufacturing and jobs from America.

Fix what, I make to much money in a broken system and as an American Capitalist I expect the sheep to pay as it should be.

 

[alephnull12]

Not to mention...

Not to mention... most products manufactured in the USA these days, quality-wise, are crap. A few foreign manufacturers are able to make decent stuff in this country if American companies are not ones owning the plants (e.g. Toyota), but the vast majority is crap.

****** US labor unions maintain a culture of complacency that stifles manufacturing improvements. Any changes made to a production line elicits complaints from employees who don't want to change anything, and they can easily use unions to passive aggressively impede progress. The workers are inflexible and will feign ignorance in order to avoid learning how to do anything new.

For a while, I tried very hard to buy American manufactured products, until I realized that the vast majority of products manufactured here are big, clunky, hard to use, ugly, and mostly over-designed (out of laziness) except for the one fatal part that breaks not long after purchase. Often the plastics are cheap and brittle with inconsistent color from batch to batch.

I gave up years ago. Nowadays, if I see a Made in the USA label, it mostly elicits skepticism, warranting extra careful scrutiny of the product before purchase.

American labor unions are the antithesis of quality workmanship these days. Many of them think other Americans will buy their products out of patriotic duty but little concern with little concern for what they are making or what people are buying. Utter crap.