Following the death last year of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, it was hard to escape the narrative that the Cupertino, California-based company was the greatest thing ever to happen to American commerce. Lost in the adulation were the sad facts about the labor conditions of employees who made Apple products in China.
But the growing awareness of such labor conditions is growing. On Tuesday, Apple chief executive Tim Cook did something I don't believe Mr. Jobs ever did: Cook said that he wanted to make safe working conditions at Apple's overseas plants a priority.
"Apple takes working conditions very seriously and we have for a very long time," Cook said during an on-stage interview at a Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.
Apple agreed in January to allow inspections by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) at a plant in China called Foxconn that makes products for the company, after a devastating New York Times story reported on the overworked and underpaid employees at such factories in China.
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2012.