Apple is not giving new orders to the Taiwanese company Pegatron for the time being because it has violated its supplier policy. Pegatron let students work overnight, in violation of Apple’s supplier employment policy.
Pegatron wrongly did not classify employees as students, so that they could work through the night and work longer hours. In doing so, Pegatron faked the records to cover up the conflict with Apple’s labor policy. Apple comes to this conclusion after its own research, Bloomberg writes on the basis of reports from the Chinese newspaper The Paper. Pegatron does not receive any new orders from Apple until the company takes action and makes improvements.
Apple’s labor policy for suppliers is that students at companies should do work related to their studies and not be deployed as cheap labor for production lines. According to Apple, the individuals within Pegatron went very far in trying to get around Apple’s oversight. Apple did not find any cases of forced or child labor in the investigation.
Pegatron has fired the manager responsible for the student programs. Pegatron also took the students off the production lines and said they had ‘taken appropriate measures so that they can go home and school with an appropriate fee and the necessary support and care’. It is not known whether Apple already considers these measures to be sufficient.
A few weeks ago, Apple identified a violation of its Supplier Code of Conduct. Since then, Pegatron no longer receives additional assignments. Pegatron, together with Foxconn, or Hon Hai Precision Industry, makes iPhones for Apple, for example. Those and other existing production orders are not covered by the sanction, making it unlikely that the measure will affect supplies.
Image: Pegatron