Foxconn, a large technology manufacturer in China has a cluster of suicides. This issue is getting more attention than normal in Western media because the company manufactures products for Apple and the Apple iPad went on sale around the world at the same time news about the suicides broke.
The question that must be asked is “is this a Foxconn problem or an Apple problem?” Continue reading “Suicides in China – is this a Foxconn problem or an Apple problem?”
A media report in The First Post on 1 March 2010 includes some good news and some bad news.
Apple has addressed some child labour concerns in several Chinese factories that manufacturer its products – the good news. The bad news is that children were allowed to work in these factories in the first place.
This illustrates not only the importance of policies on contractor management, supply chain responsibility and corporate social responsibility but the vital significance of auditing and enforcement.
Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report is available online.
A curiosity in the media report is the mention of maximum working hours. Apple sets a maximum working week at 60 hours. The Chinese Government applies a 49 hour week. To which “law” does a company comply? Should a supply company be in a position of choosing? Should Apple even consider setting a working hour for its workers that exceeds the limit set by a country’s government?
Australia has been a major supplier of asbestos to the world for decades. It has also been a major corporate beneficiary of the revenue for the sale of this poisonous material.
The latest situation in Melbourne is a good example of all that is wrong with asbestos and worker exposure. According to reports in The Age newspapers in late October 2009, a property developer has allegedly offered $A57,000 to a safety officer on a hospital redevelopment project, allegedly, in order to turn a blind eye to the issue of asbestos at the site. According to the newspaper reports, some in the industry have described this payment as a bribe.
In February 2006, the developer received a report from an independent consultant advising that asbestos be removed prior to demolition. The developer removed most but not all. It is in this patch of remaining asbestos that two workers dug through the concrete with a jack hammer and concrete saw, generating considerable dust from the concrete and the asbestos. The workers were not wearing any protective masks.
Australia is dealing with the corporate immorality of James Hardie Industries, although there is much more that can be down. Wittenoom is closed and has almost disappeared. Companies are required to have an asbestos register for their properties. Tasmania is to become free of asbestos by 2020. There is a lot of activity, so much that the control of this poisonous material should not be handled in an ad hoc manner. Governmental vision is required to commit to the removal of asbestos and the clean-up of contaminated sites.
It is an easy moral call for governments – the toxicity of asbestos is indisputable, the public health risks are known. But it will cost. Governments are in a similar bind as with climate change policy – decades of prosperity at the same time as not considering the health legacy of that wealth.
There is no such thing as an emissions trading scheme for asbestos. It is suspected that, if at all, the government will need to apply surcharges or tax incentives for companies to support any initiative. This always flows back to the consumers paying ultimately. Anti-asbestos advocates can rightly feel angry at the fact that companies have benefited greatly from knowingly selling a toxic material, and the same companies are likely to benefit again through the clean-up. This may simply be the price we must pay for living in a society based on capitalism. God help the new “capitalist” nations like China.
SafetyAtWorkBlog hopes to finalise a podcast with journalist and author, Matt Peacock, by the end of this week. Peacock is the author of Killer Company
Several years ago I met an OHS professional from Singapore, Daniel LO. Daniel relocated to Australia and has continued his OHS career. Last month Daniel conducted a Certificate IV OHS course for the Sinopec Corporation. As China becomes even more important to the world economy, pressure is increasing to show an acceptable commitment ot workplace safety. We, in the West, have seen this most in China’s coal mining industry and some of its manufacturers, particularly for some global brands.
In talking with Daniel last week, he offered a short article on the training course he instigated and conducted. Daniel is an asset to Australia and will be one OHS professional to watch. Here is his contribution:
An OHS Professional Report on Safety Developments in China
Since China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, there has been much pressure from the international community for China to raise its Occupational Health and Safety standards. The introduction of the Safe Production Law in 2002 and more recently the adoption of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases in 2008 is the response of a determined government, to ensure that its regulatory framework catches up with the nation’s unprecedented economic growth.
Heeding this call to protect workers’ safety and health by investing in OHS training is state owned enterprise – China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation – one of the largest state-owned major petroleum companies in China, The company has made it to the top ten ranking by Fortune Global 500, is also known as Sinopec Corp, and is listed in the Shanghai, New York and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges.
In July 2009, as an OHS professional with bilingual ability, Daniel Lo personally negotiated, prepared and delivered the first ever CertIV in OHS in Sinopec (Beijing). This flagship competency-based training and assessment is also part of Sinopec’s policy of “Safety First, Prevention Foremost, All Involvement and Comprehensive Control," to achieve a better Health Safety and Environment (HSE) performance. Participants for this training are project managers, safety managers and supervisors from various oil fields in Saudi, Sudan, Ecuador, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, and China. The key success of this program has been the training and sharing of occupational safety and health management system in context of China’s language, culture and history.
Daniel LO is presently engaged as a senior OHS consultant by IFAP. He has an MBA, BSc in Mechanical Engineering, Specialist Diploma in OHS, CertIV in OHS, Diploma in Information Technology, Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment. He is also a Certified lead auditor for OHSAS18001.
A good safety manager is one who is aware of the social context of the job and the social consequences of injury on employees. The manager also needs to consider the operational parameters of the company. This is a difficult balancing act that many spend their careers trying to attain. But what if morality or legislative obligation was removed from the workplace, or was never there in the first place. How would employees be treated then?
GHOSTS is a movie, ostensibly, about one person, Ai Qin, who travelled illegally from China to England in order to earn a living, a living that she believed she could not achieve in China. As the opening scenes of the film show, she, and many others, are drowning in Morecambe Bay when the tide comes in rapidly while they are picking cockles. The reality behind this fictional film radically changed England’s approach to gangmasters and resulted in prosecutions of the operators of the cocklepicking business. Those operators were found responsible for the deaths of 23 cocklepickers in 2004.
As with many memorable films, the story of a single individual can fascinate and shame us at the same time. GHOSTS is not an enjoyable film as the hardship and the choices faced are uncomfortable to watch but it is an important film for many reasons. One is that gangmasters, and immoral companies, do not exist in a vacuum. Minor bribery, institutional ignorance, laziness and a disregard for human life are shown by various characters throughout the film. There are combinations of these elements which push Ai Qin into certain decisions where others would be provided with options.
Another is that we need to be reminded of these events. Often workplace tragedies fade as quickly as the media’s interest in them. People often follow events only as long as they are on the telly but this habit provides an extremely skewed view of reality. People are not expected to follow all issues, or be passionate about all the issues. That way lies madness, confusion and inaction. It is necessary to filter our ideological passions while retaining an interest in other related matters. We categorise our priorities in relation to our resources, emotions and circumstances at one particular time.
But investigations take time and the truth often appears years later, sometimes when the heat in an issue has diminished, or we have had to reprioritize, or the media is looking elsewhere. Outrage is always more attractive to the media than reason but we need to follow issues to their conclusion. This is why families revisit the heartache of a fatality by sitting through coronial inquests or prosecutions. They need to know the truth and find some answer to why the world has turned out as it has.
The conditions for trafficking, illegal migration and unregulated work continue in England today, just as they do in most countries. GHOSTS is not a film about sex trafficking. But whether people are being trafficked for sex, fruit picking, working in supermarkets or in take-away kitchens, is irrelevant. Trafficking is inhumane and must be actively discouraged.
The issue will grow in its economic, human rights and political significance.
It may be heresy to apply the hierarchy of controls outside the workplace safety domain but if safety professionals investigated the contributory factors behind trafficking, it would be hard to argue against the elimination of the hazard for a lower order control measure. If all physical journeys begin with a single step, then cultural change can begin with a single thought.
Victim support fund – http://www.ghosts.uk.com/
Safety At Work magazine has been reporting on the seemingly endless deaths in the Chinese mining industry for many years. Many of the mine fatalities are of multiples that would generate huge investigations in the west. Many deaths are compounded by the attempts of mine managers to minimise the scale of the disasters by delaying reporting the incident, not reporting at all, or disposing of the bodies.
These incidents have occurred mostly in privately-run mines and over the last couple of years the government has had regular crackdowns on the industry.
China is a good example of a country that manages safety in reaction to disasters. Poor safety management is often ignored as long as production is guaranteed. This is evident in its manufacturing sector as much as it is in mining.
John Garnaut in The Age newspaper on August 4 2008 reports on the actions of the Chinese government in the mining sector in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. Garnaut reports that migrant workers were sent home weeks ago without pay. At one mine he attended, work was stopped by management, ostensibly due to his presence as a journalist.
The closure of these mines has had a heavy impact on the coal supply and coal prices and Garnaut says that the action of the government has come about to
“prevent the Olympic Games from being marred by embarrassing reports of mine disasters.”
China’s decision shows how sensitive it is to criticism from other countries. The mess over internet access is a further example.
China does not only manage safety reactively, it manages through diversion, concealment and censorship.
What Garnaut’s reporting and China’s censorship shows is that safety of workers, and accountability of business owners can be improved through the attention of outsiders. For over seven years, in my experience, China has been experiencing almost monthly fatalities in its coal industry. I have been publishing whatever reports I can obtain (legitimately) from the wire service, however similar reports have not been appearing in the mainstream, or event the trade, press. The community is generally unaware of the cultural negligence that the Chinese system of production and regulation allows.
Perhaps it is a truth that few of us really care but one of the major threats to any management process is hypocrisy. The Chinese government may be comfortable with that but our own governments should not be hypocrites in our trade negotiations with partners like China.
UPDATE
The Associated Press has reported a gas explosion in a coal mine in at the Baijiagou mine in the northeast of Liaoning province on 18 August 2008. Twenty-four workers are trapped but fifty-six other miners escaped without injury. The story came through the Xinhua News Agency in China, so it will be worth seeing, during this Olympics fervour, what attention this disaster receives from the West