Bloomberg: FLA is finding ‘tons of issues’ at Apple supplier plants

Despite reports from Reuters earlier this week profiling Fair Labor Association CEO Auret van Heerden’s positive reaction to the early inspections of Apple’s suppliers in Shenzhen, China, Bloomberg announced today van Heerden’s comments actually “reflected his previous interactions with Foxconn.” In contrast to Reuters original article, during a phone interview with Bloomberg, van Heerden said, “We’re finding tons of issues.”:

“We’re finding tons of issues. I believe we’re going to see some very significant announcements in the near future.”

Bloomberg explained van Heerden’s initial comments to Reuters, where he claimed iPad plants are “far better” than most other factories in the country, were based upon his reflections from earlier experiences with Foxconn and Apple:

Van Heerden said the comments reflected his previous interactions with Foxconn… Apple had commissioned the FLA to carry out smaller projects in the past two years, in order to try out some of the inspection techniques used by the group to more effectively root out workplace problems.

The FLA will report its findings in the coming weeks and publish them to its website. As for the inspection process currently taking place at Foxconn, Bloomberg detailed the process from van Heerden’s perspective:

Van Heerden said that FLA’s 30-person inspection team will interview 35,000 Foxconn employees, via meetings with small groups of randomly picked workers, chosen to reflect the demographics of the campus in terms of age, gender and skill levels. As part of the process, workers log answers to questions on tablets connected to FLA servers so they can be tabulated.