Without free unions can Foxconn improve?

Over the last week, coverage has intensified on Apple and conditions at its manufacturing supplier, Taiwanese-owned Foxconn. Foxconn, China’s largest private-sector employer, makes an astounding 40 percent of the world’s electronic products.

On March 29, the Fair Labor Association released its widely anticipated report on labor conditions inside Foxconn factories, based on 3000 staff hours of investigations and 35,000 anonymous interviews. According to the FLA, they found “…excessive overtime and problems with overtime compensation; several health and safety risks; and crucial communication gaps that have led to a widespread sense of unsafe working conditions among workers.”

The following day, Foxconn “pledged to sharply curtail working hours and significantly increase wages inside Chinese plants making electronic products for Apple and others.” However, “Foxconn did not reveal how much it would raise wages or details on how its promises would be put into place.”

The most encouraging analysis in The New York Times was that “…impact of Foxconn’s hour and wage reforms could signal a new, wide-reaching change in working conditions throughout China.”

An article in the Times focused on Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has spearheaded the company’s response to investigations and publicity over the continuing hazardous and exploitative conditions in the plants. Cook, unlike Apple founder Steve Jobs, knows how products are made. “I spent a lot of time in factories personally, and not just as an executive,” he was quoted. “I worked in a paper mill in Alabama and an aluminum plant in Virginia.”

Yet increased awareness of conditions and empathy will not be enough, even if policies are put in writing. As the Times and others admit that the improvements rely heavily on the companies involved to fulfill their promises and maintain better wages and conditions.

Decent conditions in vast and far-flung factories difficult to maintain under the best of circumstance. But without worker organizations constantly monitoring and advocating, improvements depend on the whims of local managers. A blog post by Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute makes it clear that the problems at Foxconn are embedded in the lack of labor rights.

Improvements are up against, “China’s refusal to permit free, fair and independent trade union elections (although the report does acknowledge that company officials dominate local unions in Foxconn plants and it calls for open, democratic elections of union officials, it fails to address the  fact that all unions in China must belong to the All China Confederation of Trade Unions, which is controlled by the government).”

In short, he says probably accurately that “Without the protections afforded by free, independent trade unions, it is unlikely that Apple or Foxconn will ever make good on the promised improvements in wages and working conditions in these factories.”

Independent Investigation of Apple Supplier, Foxconn (Mar., 2012)

Electronic Giant Vowing Reforms in China Plants (NY Times, Mar. 30, 2012)

Apple’s Chief Puts Stamp on Labor Issues (NY Times, April 2, 2012)

Who’s guarding Apple’s Foxconn chicken coop? (EPI blog, April 2, 2012)