KEITH OLBERMANN: A company can and should be judged by how it treats even its least influential employees.
In our third story on the "Countdown" — under scrutiny for brutal working conditions at its factories in China, Apple has announced it would grant the Fair Labor Association, the F.L.A. — an industry-funded, labor-monitoring organization — unrestricted accent — access, rather— to inspect the company's suppliers.
F.L.A. inspectors are already on the ground in China. They began at the Foxconn City plant in Shenzhen yesterday, where iPhones and iPads are produced. The first findings expected sometime next month.
But some remain skeptical of whether the F.L.A. — which is a non-profit that is partly bankrolled by companies including and like Apple — can effectively conduct a full review.
Scott Nova, executive director of factory-monitoring group Workers Rights Consortium says, "The F.L.A. does some good work, but we don't think it's appropriate for them to call themselves independent investigators because they're, in part, funded by companies. Independent monitoring means you're generally independent of the companies."
In 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs — the late Steve Jobs — described the conditions he found at Foxconn facilities:
(Excerpt from video clip) STEVE JOBS: They've got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools. And I mean, it`s a — it`s a — for a factory, it`s a pretty nice factory.
OLBERMANN: However, according to the company's own Supplier Responsibility Report for 2010, of the 127 factories Apple inspected, included were "10 facilities where underage workers had been hired, two instances of worker endangerment, four facilities where records were falsified, one case of bribery." Also found "76 facilities had records that indicated workers had exceeded weekly working-hour limits more than 50 percent of the time." Conditions worsened the following year, according to the company's own reports.
Joining me now is Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the executive director and president of the consumer advocacy group, SumOfUs. Great thanks for your time tonight.
TAREN STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Thanks so much for having me, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Does Apple even have to do anything based on these F.L.A. reports?
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Well, let's be clear — the working conditions at these factories are abysmal. Workers are working, you know, 30-hour shifts straight and dying of exhaustion. They are losing the use of their hands after repetitive-stress injuries from polishing the glass for 15 hours a day for years on end.
And this is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. The F.L.A. is funded and controlled by the very corporations that it's monitoring. So, while Apple may learn something from these investigations, there's no reason to think that these investigations are actually going to improve the lot of any of these workers suffering from these horrible conditions.
Apple has no obligation to do anything the F.L.A. asks it to do, and, in fact, is most likely to control the recommendations of the F.L.A.
OLBERMANN: Did something just change on this entire front, where suddenly a measurable amount of American consumers are taking some responsibility for what happens to the people who make their stuff and, in that context, is Apple kind of put itself out for the most criticism here, because they're the one we know about that's even bothered to have a semi-questionable study done of their own plants?
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Well, you know, I think there has been a sea change over these last few weeks. The New York Times report — investigative article about the conditions — NPR had one of its most-viewed segments ever about these working conditions, and Americans really are beginning to pay attention, as are consumers all around the world.
But Apple is the 800-pound gorilla here. A lot of these companies have these problems in their supply chains. But Apple is the largest. It's the most profitable company in the world, that has $100 billion in cash sitting in the bank. It would be easy for Apple to solve these problems if they wanted to and if they were serious about it.
OLBERMANN: Have they managed to — at the worst possible time — turn what could have been a real public relations' bonanza — based on the fact that they were actually doing something about this — into something that looks more, at least at its outset, like a PR stunt?
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Well, we're waiting for them to actually take action. We know what they have to do here to solve these problems. They are systemic problems in the supply chain that Apple can solve. And we —
You know, I'm an iPhone user myself, I'm an Apple consumer. I love their products. I want to be able to buy their products with pride and not feel like I'm complicit in these abuses that are taking place. And I think that Apple can still turn this around. They can fix — what we are calling for is for them to fix these problems in their supply chain in time to make the next iPhone their first ethically-made product. And they still have time to do that.
OLBERMANN: Is there — you mentioned, obviously, in terms of volume, there's no comparison between Apple and the other manufacturers, even if we just restrict ourselves to American consumer electronics — but are any of them, without that element of volume considered, are any of them better than any other, or does the same tarp fit all of them underneath it?
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Well, you know, it can be very hard to tell, because we don't have access. NGOs — Non-profits and independent groups don't have access to the factories. So, it's hard to know.
But the other thing that Apple has — that sticks out — that stands out about Apple — is the fact that Apple has marketed itself to exactly the kinds of consumers who care about these issues. Apple's consumer base is an ethical consumer base. So this is a really big, long-term brand risk for Apple in particular.
OLBERMANN: I'm assuming, briefly, that one of your models — in terms of trying to get this changed — would have been divestment in South Africa in the 1970's, which seemed to work pretty well, pretty fast.
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Yeah. You know, we want to engage ethical investors around this issue. In order to solve it we're going to need communities to come together. We want Apple employees who care about this issue to be working on it from within the company. And we know that many of them do care.
And we also — you know, it's going to take a mass uprising of consumers to convince companies like Apple that this is just simply not appropriate behavior and, you know, we know that they can fix this and that they really need to.
OLBERMANN: Looks like you might be at the start of it.
Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the executive director and president of the consumer advocacy group SumOfUs. Great thanks for your perspective tonight and your time.
STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Thanks so much, Keith.
