iPod Factory ‘Slave Claims’ Reported Today

iPod Factory ‘Slave Claims’ Reported Today

Apple is investigating a newspaper report by The Mail on Sunday that workers in Chinese iPod factories work long hours for low pay and in "slave" conditions. The Mail article alleged that employees earn as little as $49 a month working 15-hour shifts. In a factory near Shanghai the pay for making the iconic product is said to be twice as high, but half of it goes to room and board on site. Apple said it does not accept violations of its supplier code of conduct.

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“Green Treasury?”

Amid speculation that the Bush administration has changed tact recently on a number of fronts, the new Treasury Secretary nominee, Hank Paulson, was touted in a May 30 White House press release as “a strong and consistent voice for corporate accountability. When the corporate scandals broke, Hank showed his leadership and character by calling for reforms that would strengthen the way America's public companies are governed and improve their accounting practices.”

Paulson brings environmental credentials from his days as Chairman and CEO of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Paulson is said to be quite the corporate environmentalist. He has chaired the board of the Nature Conservancy and was at the helm when Goldman signed onto the Equator Principles, a set of benchmarks for the financial industry to assess social and environmental risks of investments. Goldman issued a comprehensive environmental policy in November of 2005 that called for federal regulation on climate change that is stronger than the Equator Principles. He also served in the Nixon White House in 1972.

See the May 13^th Business-Watch post on the controversy surrounding another one of the more than 30 banks that signed onto the Equator Principles concerning its commitment versus its investments on the ground.

For more info read “The Greening of Goldman” in a June 2006 article in Fast Company, which calls the firm’s commitment “a mostly unproven promise” for now, while also stating that “even the promise is a big deal.”

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Exxon Mobil Postscript

That right of center but ever intelligent and well written magazine The Economist just ran an article -- "Can Business Be Cool?" that serves as a postscript to the Business-Watch June 2^nd piece “Exxon: Despite BIGGEST Profit Ever STILL Won’t Pay for Spill” and the May 24^th post “Carbon Dioxide Is Good For You.”