Apple had to face many Corporate Social Responsibility challenges due to the reason that

Apple had its suppliers majorly working from offshore locations and found it extremely difficult to
implement sound working conditions and carry out fair labor rights. However, this was merely
just one of the reasons why Apple could not maintain the CSR up-to standards that Apple
promised. Apple was renowned for its price policy, squeezing the supplier to produce at lower
and lower prices. To support this statement, one of Apple’s ipad’s producers said, “The only way
you make money working for Apple is figuring out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper--
and they will come back next year asking for a 10% price cut.”

Nonetheless, one may argue that there are many tech giants who have similar working
environments but none of them were discredited in the Panorama documentary. However, this
is majorly due to the reason that Apple is the richest tech company among all the others. One
may as well support their argument that He/She would expect a little bit more towards this
matter from the richest tech giant of the world who promises to be “Transparent” and making
many various void promises or might as well call them “excuses” regarding the fact that they are
working hard towards this very concerning issue.

Furthermore, the lead major supplier of Apple’s products Pegatron were reportedly paying a
bare minimum wage of $1.5 which in accordance with the labor laws of the US was even lower
than minimum wage which is $7.25. However, in the due course of time, Foxconn, another of
Apple’s largest suppliers, did try to improve their working environment and solved other
conflicting issues which included paying higher wages, reducing the working hours, and
investing in safety programs. But Apple stole the spotlight in the media by moving towards
Pegatron for placing orders and leaving Foxconn in the process because Foxconn was now
having higher expenses towards per unit cost. Moreover, Pegatron was willing to work with
Apple by accepting “thinner” margins which Foxconn could not do because of their higher per
unit costs.

Apple in their defense went public that they needed supply chain diversification to reduce the
risks from a single supplier, but we all know that it was to defend themselves from the critics.
Due to the self-credited image and high stock values Apple faced scrutiny more than any other
companies in the world, which according to us is rather unfair because there are many other
tech giants who deserve investigations as well. Writing in an article Barry Collins argues saying
that, “Picking on Apple because it’s the only company that made a public commitment to
improving worker welfare seems a little perverse”. This was a sensible and almost fair argument
made by Mr. Collins because other tech giants also deserved the same heat that Apple got.

On this argument Mr. Rockman grabbed the attention of readers and other critiques by
commenting along the words that, Apple may be right but the issue is that Apple is the richest
company in the world and the difference is that people would want to hear more about what the
richest company in the world has said it would do and what it has achieved in reaching the
standards it set for itself.

Concluding the issues regarding CSR, we would want to make it clear that these issues are not
stated to prove that Apple is an evil company. It is just that everyone wants to insist their one of
the favorite companies to do better on issues of worker treatments especially because they
have repeatedly vowed to do so. Apple makes insane profit margins on its iphones and it can
certainly afford more resources to ensure that the people who manufacture them aren’t forced to
work 18 days in a row and are fairly paid as well.