Tim Cook is Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Tech Conference [Listen]

Apple CEO Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. You can listen to a live stream of the presentation here.

MacRumors is also transcribing some of the speech which can be read here.





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Q: What should investors know about Apple's relationship with the supply chain and the workers within it?

First thing I would want everyone to know is that Apple takes working conditions very seriously, and we have for a very long time. Whether workers are in Europe or Asia or the United States, we care about every worker. I've spent a lot of time in factories, personally. Not just as an executive. I worked at a paper mill in Alabama and an aluminum plant in Virginia. Many of our top executives visit factories on a regular basis. We have hundreds of employees based there full time.

We are very connected to the process and we understand working conditions at a very granular level. I realize that the supply chain is complex and I'm sure that you realize this. The issues around it are complex. Our commitment is simple: every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment, free of discrimination, where they can earn competitive wages and they can voice their concerns freely. Apple's suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple.

we also believe that education is the great equalizer and that if people are provided the skills and knowledge, they can improve their lives. We've put a lot of effort to supplying educational resources to our workers throughout our supply chain. We supply free classes in many place thoroughout our supply chain. More than 60,000 employees have attended these classes, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.


If you take all these employees and move them to one location, it would be larger than Arizona State -- which is the largest college in the United States. This is a powerful stepping stone for workers looking to enhance their careers and their lives.

You can read the details on problems we're looking to fix on our website, but I can tell you that no one in our industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple. We are constantly auditing facilities going deep into the supply chain, looking for problems, finding problems and fixing problems. We report everything because we believe transparency is so very important in this area. I am so incredibly proud of the work that our teams are doing in this area. They focus on the most difficult problems and they stay with them until they fix them. They are truly a model for the industry.

We think the use of underaged labor is abhorrent. It's extremely rare in our supply chain, but our top priority is to eliminate it totally. We've done that with our final assembly and we're now working with vendors farther down in the supply chain. If we find a supplier that intentionally hires underage labor, it's a firing offense.

We don't let anyone cut corners on safety. If there is a problem on safety, we seek out the foremost experts and set a new standard and apply that to the entire supply chain. We focus on the details. If there is a fire extinguisher missing from a cafeteria, that facility doesn't pass inspection until that fire extinguisher is in place.

We are continuing to focus on problems endemic to our industry like excessive overtime. Our code of conduct has a cap of 60 hours per workweek. We have consistently found violations of this code over the course of our time, so at the beginning of this year we announced that we are determined to drive widespread change. We have begun to manage working hour at a very micro basis.

In January, we collected weekly data on over a half million workers in our supply chain. We had 84% compliance. This is significantly improved from the past, but we can do better. We're taking the unprecedented step of reporting this monthly on our website, so it's transparent to everyone what we're doing.

The Fair Labor Association began an audit of our final assembly vendors. We started with this last year and in January we were the first technology company to be welcomed into their assembly. Their audit is probably the biggest audit in manufacturing in history. I'm looking forward to seeing the results. We know that people have a very high expectation of Apple. We have an even higher expectation of ourselves. Our customer expect us to lead and we will continue to do so. We are blessed to have the smartest and most innovative people on earth. We put the same kind of effort and energy into supplier responsibility as we do with our new products.

That is what Apple is all about.
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