For all the recent reports surrounding the harsh working conditions at the Chinese factories where Apple’s iPad and iPhone are assembled, it’s worth recalling an older problem: Back in February 2011, Apple admitted — and the New York Times further detailed — that 137 workers at an Apple supplier factory in Suzhou, China, suffered serious injuries from handling n-hexane, a toxic cleaning agent used to wipe off iPhone screens.
“Some workers said they were hospitalized for months with what doctors told them was nerve damage,” the Times reported, with one, a 27-year-old named Jia Jing-Chuan telling the newspaper that the nerve damage made him “hypersensitive to cold,” requiring him to wear winter clothes indoors.
Now Jia Jing-Chuan and another worker, Guo Rui-Qiang, have published a letter asking users to sign an online petition demanding Apple reform the conditions at supplier factories. The letter was posted on the website of SumofUs, an advocacy organization behind the new petition and behind one previously submitted in print to six Apple stores around the globe, also calling for supplier labor reform.
In the new letter, the workers explain that while employed at Wintek, a Taiwanese electronics screens manufacturer and Apple supplier, they “were hospitalized and treated” for n-hexane poisoning, “but our debilitating symptoms continue,” two years after they were admitted.
“Rui-Qiang still can’t find work because he can no longer stand for the long hours most jobs require,” the workers explain. “Jing-Chuan has to spend nearly $100 a month on health supplements.”
“If more people know about what we went through, Apple will feel pressured to change so other workers don’t have to suffer like we did,” the workers state.
The letter also targets Apple’s upcoming shareholder meeting on Thursday as a deadline for amassing 100,000 signatures, saying that CEO Tim Cook, who the workers accuse of ignoring their outreach to the company, “will listen to you as current or potential consumers.”
Rui-Qiang and Jing-Chuan were also among five former Wintek employees who wrote a letter to then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs almost a year ago to the date, in February 2011, asking that the Cupertino-based company compensate them for their injuries. After Steve Jobs resigned due to his declining health in August 2011, the workers updated and re-sent their letter to his successor, Cook.
Still, Cook has apparently yet to respond. As the new letter notes: “We have been pressuring Apple, and its new CEO Tim Cook, for years to compensate those of us who were injured working for them, and demanding reform of working conditions at their Chinese factories so that their workers don’t suffer like we do.”
Apple has also reportedly told Chinese and American environmental advocates that it will soon open at least two supplier facilities to investigations carried out by the China’s Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, an independent advocacy group, as USA Today reported on Tuesday. The investigations, which will assess Apple’s environmental footprint and look into allegations of toxic waste dumps, will be separate from one currently being conducted by the Fair Labor Association, a trade group Apple joined in January and which it is paying to audit the working conditions at supplier facilities where Apple says 90 percent of its products are made.
Carl Franzen
Carl Franzen is TPM Idea Lab's tech reporter. He used to work for The Daily, AOL and The Atlantic Wire (though not simultaneously, thankfully). He's never met a button that didn't need to be pressed. He can be reached at carl@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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