The president of a nonprofit group hired by Apple to inspect its suppliers' factories has begun praising the Chinese plants of Foxconn, Apple's largest supplier, just days after his group began inspections there.
According to reports by several news organizations, Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association, said Foxconn's "facilities are first-class" and "Foxconn is really not a sweatshop."
Mr. van Heerden's apparent praise of conditions at Foxconn came despite previous reports of employees committing suicide, dying in factory explosions and complaining of sometimes working more than 70 hours a week.
Mr. van Heerden, who is traveling with the Fair Labor Association's team in China, could not be reached for comment on Thursday. But the group's No. 2 official, Jorge Perez-Lopez, said, "The work we're doing at Foxconn is not about first impressions or whether something has a paint job or not."
"The proof," Mr. Perez-Lopez continued, "will be in the pie, will be in the eating. It will be when the report comes out."
When Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, announced the inspections earlier this week, he said, "We've asked the F.L.A. to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers." According to Reuters, Mr. van Heerden said Foxconn's "physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm" for factories in China. "I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," Mr. van Heerden said, according to the Reuters report. "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."
He said his team of 30 monitors would interview tens of thousands of workers at Foxconn, which assembles major Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad at three huge factories in China.
In an NPR report, Mr. van Heerden said, "Workers are very outspoken and they're not intimidated at all."
Human rights advocates have long said that Foxconn City's 230,000 employees are subjected to long hours, coerced overtime and harsh working conditions, all of which Foxconn disputes.
The working conditions at Apple's suppliers were the subject of articles published last month by The New York Times.
Officials from several labor groups said on Thursday that they were surprised and dismayed by Mr. van Heerden's comments.
"Generally, in a labor rights investigation, the findings come after the evidence is gathered, not the other way around," said Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium, a university-backed group that monitors apparel factories worldwide.
"I'm amazed that the F.L.A. would give one of the most notoriously abusive factories in the world a clean bill of health - based, it appears, on nothing more than a guided tour provided by the owner," he added. "If the F.L.A. wants to convince people that it can somehow conduct an impartial investigation of Apple, despite being funded by Apple, this is not a good way to start."
Heather White, the founder of Verite, another monitoring group, said Mr. van Heerden's remarks appeared hasty. "That he would make any comments prior to workers being interviewed off-site in a confidential environment is somewhat premature, to say the least," she said. "He doesn't speak Chinese and he is not a trained auditor qualified to make quick assessments."