'This American Life' Throws Mike Daisey Under Bus For Fabricated Apple Story...*

Ira Glass

As for Mike's findings, we have gone through his script and fact checked everything that was checkable. In one instance, we think that his translator may have misunderstood or mistranslated a fact for Mike. He says in his show that workers told him that the cafeterias at Foxconn seat 10,000 people, but based on press accounts, we think that it's possible that they serve 10,000 people, but seat only 4,000 at a time. Foxconn wouldn't answer the question for us directly.

When it comes to the suicide rate at Foxconn, there were about 12 suicides at the Shenzhen plant in 2010. It was actually hard to get the exact number. Some people have pointed out that 12 suicides for 400,000 workers is actually much lower than China's suicide rate as a whole, as China has an unusually high suicide rate of 22 suicides per year per 100,000 people. That would work out to 88 suicides for 400,000 workers. Mike Daisey points out that we don't actually know if these were the only suicides at Foxconn.

Ira Glass

Overall, we checked with over a dozen people. Those would be journalists who cover these factories, people who work with the electronics industry in China, activists, labor groups, about the working conditions that Mike Daisey describes in his show, and nobody seemed very surprised by them.

Ira Glass

This is Ian Spaulding, who estimates that he has been in or worked with about 1,000 factories throughout China. The company that he founded and runs, INFACT Global Partners, goes into Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility standards that are set by Western companies so those companies are ready when outside auditors come and check on working conditions. He has a staff of 45. They do hundreds of factories a year, including electronics.

Ira Glass

Now don't get the wrong impression. Ian Spaulding did have a few quibbles with Mike Daisey. He said that if a worker gets injured and then is fired by his company, he or she can sue the company, and he said that lots of people were doing that these days. He said electronics companies have been improving their handling of toxic chemicals.

And his only real objection to anything that Mike Daisey found had to do with child labor. Ian Spaulding said yes, there definitely is child labor in China, but not at the top tier electronics manufacturers. Other people who we talked to agreed with this. Even people who are critical of Foxconn for all kinds of things agreed with this. He said maybe a stray worker here and there might get in on a borrowed ID, but it is not a widespread problem.

Ira Glass

Again, Mike Daisey. He says sure, maybe it's not prevalent.

Ira Glass

The one source that I could find that backs up Mike on this one at least a little bit is Apple. Apple has released a report stating in the year that Mike was in China, 2010, Apple's own auditors went into 127 facilities around the world that make its products and say they found 91 underage workers. It doesn't say which facilities the workers were at. The report states that Apple helped install systems to verify ages, educated suppliers on recruiting practices, made them return underage workers to school, and made them pay for the kids' education. And then it stopped doing business with one supplier that has 42 underage workers and showed no commitment to addressing the problem.

All this research that we did did fill in some interesting details about working conditions at Foxconn that are not in Mike Daisey's show. There's an advocacy group called SACOM, which is Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior. They're based in Hong Kong. And since the suicides at Foxconn in 2010, they have put out three reports investigating conditions at the company. Each report surveyed over 100 Foxconn workers.

And they even had a researcher go undercover and take a job at the Shenzhen plant. Debby Chan Sze Wan is a project manager at SACOM. The surveys that she did of workers depict a company where many employees have to stand all day long.

Ira Glass

According to SACOM's surveys and reports, the wages at Foxconn are not much more than the Chinese minimum wage. SACOM claims that it's only with tons of overtime that the money approaches what SACOM calculates is a decent living wage for a family.

But probably the most surprising thing I learned about Foxconn and other Chinese electronics manufacturers from Debby and from Ian Spaulding had to do with the turnover rate. Ian Spaulding says that it could be 10% to 20% turnover per month. He says it's a huge business problem these days in China.

Ira Glass

When Apple turned down our invitation to come onto today's radio show, in a rather Orwellian gesture they told us that they are 100% transparent-- as they refused to come on the air. They referred us to these reports that they've been issuing every year since 2007 on working conditions in the factories that make their products overseas.

And these reports, I have to say, are remarkable documents. You can find these online at Apple's website. Apple, like many companies, has a code of conduct that suppliers have to commit to before they can do business with them, and each year Apple audits many of the suppliers to make sure that they are complying with the code. If they don't, then there are corrective action plans, and there's training, and there's follow-up audits. It's very elaborate. And if it all fails, Apple stops buying from the supplier. Or that's what they claim, anyway.

Apple monitors pretty much all the working conditions that Mike Daisey talks about in his show. The report covering the period that Mike was in China. Talks about what Apple did in the wake of the suicides at Foxconn. They say they did an independent review. They asked for mental health counselors and other changes, which Apple says Foxconn has implemented.

The report also has a whole section on n-hexane, which workers, not from Foxconn but from another plant, told Mike that they were exposed to, and he talked about it on his show. Apple says that it found 137 workers had adverse health effects after exposure to n-hexane. It says that the supplier using the stuff was told to stop using the chemical, and it's been audited since then to make sure it has happened. Mike Daisey has read these reports.