Apple's senior vice president of operations, Jeff Williams, has written to around 5,000 staff in the UK in reaction to an investigation by the BBC's Panorama programme which filmed poor working conditions at Apple assembler Pegatron's plants outside Shanghai. The film also highlighted the problem of illegal tin mining employing children in Indonesia. Williams said he and CEO Tim Cook were deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to workers in its supply chain or to mislead consumers. He defended the company's record in monitoring working conditions at its suppliers' manufacturing operations and said it deliberately chose to use tin from Indonesia in its products to stay engaged in the effort to improve working conditions in the country. Citing several examples of Apple's actions to identify and correct problems, Williams said the company would investigate every allegation.
