Lawmakers Ask Apple to Engage With CBP to Ensure Its Suppliers Don't Use Forced Labor
Co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. are asking Apple to engage with CBP to ensure that the company's supply chains are free of forced labor, and that they do not hire suppliers that accept "labor transfer" workers. According to press reports, Uyghur workers are being transplanted to other parts of China, in addition to their conscription at local factories and fields. CBP didn't comment.
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“The mounting evidence is beyond troubling. Despite persistent assurances from Apple that their supply chains were free of forced labor, we now have evidence that it is tainted,” Merkley and McGovern said June 8 in a statement. "We urge Apple CEO Tim Cook to divest from Chinese suppliers in Xinjiang who are implicated in forced labor in China. We also ask Apple to engage with U.S. Customs and Border Protection on their China supply chains to ensure that no Apple import is made with forced labor. There must be a concerted, tough, and global response to the atrocities being committed in Xinjiang. We again press our House and Senate colleagues to swiftly pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would impose real costs on any Chinese entity using the slave labor of Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minorities.”
Apple didn't comment but said in its 2020 statement on its efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery in its supply chain that it "maintains a robust governance structure and internal management system to enforce compliance with our policies to prevent human trafficking and the use of involuntary labor, and to implement supply chain human rights due diligence programs."