By Ralph Litzinger PhD

Dear C.E.O of Apple Inc.,

For many years I have been a loyal customer of Apple.  I have bought many of your products:  the iTouch, iPhone, iMAC, and new MacBook Pro, to name just a few.  Like many Apple users, I was an avid fan of the wonderfully witty commercials that pitted cool, hip and trendy Mac users against the staid and blasé conventionality of Microsoft users.  I embraced Apple for its brilliant operating system, its commitment to making user-friendly tools, and its aesthetic sensibility.  Apple crafts beautifully designed machines, which is one reason your market share continues to grow.

But it seems there is another Apple that few of your customers know about.

Recent reports in the press – in China, and indeed throughout much Europe and North America – about Apple’s poor environmental and labor record in China have begun to erode my loyalty.   These reports indicate that Apple does not directly own or directly manage any of its own factories in China.   Rather, you have chosen to outsource much of the manufacturing, assembly, and finishing work to companies operating in China.  On your own corporate social responsibility page, you explicitly state,

“Apple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility wherever our products are made.  We insist that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally
responsible manufacturing processes.”

There is ample evidence Apple is no longer committed to this code of ethics.  You are failing to properly monitor the companies that make and supply parts for your products.  You are turning a blind eye to environmental and labor violations, accidents, and human tragedies along your supply chain.  Moreover, you are systematically ignoring community organizations, concerned workers and labor groups, and academics and public intellectuals in China that have invited you to join them in dialogue about your environment, health, and labor record.  Your refusal to engage these groups, to remain silent in the face of concerned citizens in China and elsewhere, is eroding the Apple brand, and may soon result in the loss of your expanding consumer, in China, East Asian, and throughout the world.

Throughout the long spring and summer of 2010, your customers endured report after report of miserable working conditions, labor law violations, and twelve tragic suicides at the Foxconn plant, one of your major suppliers.  Now reports are reaching your customers of another round of unacceptable labor and environmental practices, suggesting that Apple is committed less to the people and places that make its products and more to maintaining its stylish image of a benevolent and hip company.  Why did Apple allow one of its supplies, the Taiwan-based Wintek Corporation, to illegally make its workers use n-hextane, a known poison, as a cleaning devise for your touchscreens?  How are your loyal customers to respond when many workers at the Wintek factory in the Suzhou Industrial Park go sick, must be hospitalized, or may indeed suffer neurological damage for the rest of their lives?  Why did Apple ignore the poisoned
and disabled supplier employees who wrote to seek your help in arranging a fair and appropriate compensation?   With
these evasive maneuvers, can we believe that Apple is committed to ensuring safe working and environmental conditions in the factories that supply your parts?  How many more deaths, suicides, hospitalizations, and ruined lives will it take before you begin to live up to your own stated commitments to corporate social responsibility?  Is it possible the Apple brand has been built on a lie?

The Apple Corporation has a responsibility to answer the questions posed to you by concerned social and community groups in China.  Contrary to some reports and comments in the western press, these groups do not want to harm Apple; nor are they advocating that people stop using Apple products.  Rather, they are calling on Apple to become a leader in creating healthy, humane, and just working conditions in the factories where its products are made.  Continuing to ignore requests for dialogue from people in China committed to promoting fair and humane working conditions and safe environments is a no win situation.  Apple needs to break the silence.  Show these concerned citizen groups, and your loyal customers around the world, that you truly are committed to a just, healthy, and humane production cycle.

Sincerely,

Concerned Apple Users

Ralph Litzinger, a professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, does research on migrant labor and education in China, including work on health, environment and development issues in China and globally.