Apple Supplier Work-Hour Compliance Hits 99% for 60 Hour Workweeks

Apple this morning updated its Supplier Responsibility page to update how the company has been successful in tracking excessive work hours throughout its supply chain, which their Supplier Code of Conduct limits work weeks to 60 hours “except in unusual circumstances”, with voluntary overtime.

The company now tracks over 1 million employees as of January 2013 (compared to 500,000 in January 2012), where it was able to achieve 99% compliance to the 60-hour workweek across all employees Apple tracks, an all-time high, as seen below in the updated chart:

Screen Shot 2013 03 06 at 11 16 56 AM

Apple published its 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report back in January, where it noted it was able to uncover more than 93 facilities where 50% of employees exceeded the 60 hour maximum work week limit. In response, the company started to track these hours themselves and imposed companies to revise their shifts and training.

Even with its unrivalled level of transparency in regards to its supply chain workers, critics are still skeptical of Apple’s claims it is making working conditions better, as the Student & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a labor watchdog group in Hong Kong, claimed last month Chinese workers are still being exploited.

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