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Apple reaches deal with investors to audit its labor practices

Apple iPhone 14s are put on display.   (Nic Coury/Bloomberg)
By Noam Scheiber New York Times

Apple will conduct an assessment of its U.S. labor practices under an agreement with a coalition of investors that includes five New York City pension funds.

The assessment will focus on whether Apple is complying with its official human rights policy as it relates to “workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the United States,” the company said in a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The audit comes amid complaints by federal regulators and employees that the company has repeatedly violated workers’ labor rights as they have sought to unionize over the past year. Apple has denied the accusations.

“There’s a big apparent gap between Apple’s stated human rights policies regarding worker organizing, and its practices,” said Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, who helped initiate the discussion with Apple on behalf of the city’s public worker pension funds.

As part of its agreement with the coalition of investors, which also includes other pension funds for unionized workers, Apple agreed to hire a third-party firm to conduct the assessment, the coalition said in a letter to the company’s chair Tuesday. Apple’s federal filing did not refer explicitly to a third party, and the company declined to comment further. In its financial filing announcing the assessment, Apple offered few details, saying it would conduct the assessment by the end of the year and would publish a report related to the assessment.

Last year, workers voted to unionize at two Apple stores — in Towson, Maryland, and Oklahoma City — and workers at two other stores filed petitions to hold union election before withdrawing them.

Workers have filed charges accusing Apple of labor law violations in at least six stores, including charges that the company illegally monitored them, prohibited union flyers in a break room, interrogated them about their organizing, threatened them for organizing and that it stated unionizing would be futile.

Apple has said that “we strongly disagree” with the claims brought before the labor board and that it looks forward to defending itself.

The investor coalition that pushed for the labor assessment argues that Apple’s response to the union campaigns is at odds with its human rights policy because that policy commits it to respect the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which includes “freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.