The Economic Policy Institute criticized the FLA report for giving Apple and Foxconn 'undue' credit, despite ongoing issues including forced overtime and the continued use of underage labor. One of FLA's findings was that the Foxconn Trade Union failed to adequately represent workers. Apple responded by bringing in the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a US based NGO as an external auditor from 2012 to 2016. įoxconn made global headlines in 2010, when over a dozen workers committed suicide in iPhone factories, due to strenuous working conditions.
Despite being the largest 'unionized' company in the world, with over 90% of Foxconn's 1.4 million workforce registered the Foxconn Federation of Labour Unions ( Chinese: 富士康科技集团工会联合会), more commonly known as Foxconn Trade Union ( Chinese: 富士康工会) is by and large a company union dominated by management rather than workers. įoxconn workers are represented by a trade union. Pegatron workers are not represented by any trade union, according to a 2015 China Labor Watch report. Zhengzhou Technology Park alone employs 350,000 Chinese workers in Zhengzhou to exclusively work on the iPhone. In addition, one further million workers are contracted by Apple's suppliers to assemble Apple products, including Foxconn and Pegatron. In China, Apple directly employs 10,000 workers across its retail and corporate divisions. A prior strike happened in February 2013 over similar demands. After a 5-day strike in 2014 involving 3,700 workers, Foxconn made a collective agreement with the Metalworkers Union to match the salaries of the newer Apple contract workers with the better paid Foxconn workers of the non-Apple focused plant. The Brazilian Metalworkers Union ( Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores Metalúrgicos CNTM) affiliated to IndustriALL had previous experience organizing Foxconn workers at the first non-Apple plant that was established in 2007.
In 2012, Foxconn opened a second Foxconn factory in Jundiaí, Brazil, the first plant to focus exclusively on assembling Apple products. Other unionized workers in Australia are represented by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association and Australian Services Union. In October 2022, 150 retail workers from one of Apple's three unions in Australia, represented by Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, voted to strike over pay and benefits. The majority of assembling is done by Taiwanese original design manufacturer firms Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and Compal Electronics in factories primarily located inside China, and to a lesser extent Brazil, and India. As of 2021, Apple uses hardware components from 43 different countries. Īpple relies on a larger, outsourced workforce for manufacturing, particularly in China. The vast majority of its employees work at 500 retail Apple stores globally. Apple directly employs 147,000 workers including 25,000 corporate employees in Apple Park and across Silicon Valley. Since the 1980s, Apple, like other Silicon Valley companies, shifted assembly operations and other manufacturing services from the United States to countries with lower labor, overhead costs and flexible scaling. In the 2020s, a surge in new organizing took place in Australia, United Kingdom and the United States.Īpple was founded in 1976, and has become the most valuable corporation in the world, being valued over $1 trillion in 2018, and in 2020 becoming the first American company to be valued over $2 trillion. In 2021, Apple Together, a solidarity union, sought to bring together the company's global worker organizations. The majority of industrial labor disputes (including union recognition) involving Apple occur indirectly through its suppliers and contractors, notably Foxconn plants in China and to a lesser extent, Brazil and India. Employees have joined trade unions and formed works councils in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. Apple worker organizations have been made up of retail, corporate, and outsourced workers. workers around the globe have been involved in organizing since the 1990s. SACOM protests in 2013 at the opening of the first Apple Store in Hong Kong over labor rights violations in its supplier factories Foxconn and Wintek.
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