I'm sure you've caught at
least a glimpse of those TV programmes where the boss goes undercover to find
out what it is really like working in their firm. Wouldn't it be interesting if
there was a buyer version, where the buyer goes undercover to find out what it
is really like working in their suppliers firms? A good start would be if
those who award 'best of bred status' did the same.
For example, it was only in
May
that Gartner crowned Apple king of the supply chain. At the time I was puzzled how,
given Apple's
supply chain problems,
particularly with Foxconn, they could be positioned as the exemplar.
Now we learn that Foxconn's peculiar style of human resource management does not appear to
be isolated to China but is also being applied in the Czech Republic. The Sunday Times reported on the research of Andrijasevic and Saccheto. We learn of accommodation in which 80 workers
share a dozen showers and two bathrooms, 12 hour shifts punctuated with only a
30 minute lunch break and two 15 minute breaks, excessively low pay and fines
imposed for sitting down.
And one of Foxconn’s three
Czech factories, in Kutna Hora, no longer makes products for Apple according to
the reports. Why? Quite simply because Foxconn reacted to increased demands
from their workers - “when the workers started getting together to demand better working
conditions, the division was closed”.
Is it really appropriate
for Apple, an exemplar, to put up with these working practices and such
behavior in one of their key suppliers?
Our memories seem to trick
us very quickly into forgetting too quickly the working conditions which led to
the deaths in Bangladesh and how supply chain management can make a
difference. Nobody
is accusing Foxconn of putting its workers in the obvious danger we saw in that
terrible Bangladesh factory collapse, but perhaps we need more 'walking in the
shoes' of the factory workers if we really want to understand what it is like
to be a supplier to some of our brand leaders.
Previously published as a guest blog on Spendmatters, 16 July 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment