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WASHINGTON – Consumer watchdog group SumOfUs said it is doubling down on efforts to make the iPhone 5 Apple’s first “ethical iPhone” following remarks by the Fair Labor Association, the group Apple asked to investigate Foxconn factory standards.

Just days after announcing a partnership with Apple to discuss concerns regarding working conditions in the factories of the company’s Chinese suppliers, FLA president Auret van Heerden made statements regarding an organized walkthrough of Foxconn facilities, calling the factories “tranquil” and citing “alienation and boredom” for workers’ suicides, undermining claims of excessive overtime, workplace exposure to neurotoxins, and other dangerous working conditions.

 “It is inappropriate in the extreme for the FLA to be making any statements whatsoever this early in an allegedly independent investigation,” said Taren Stinkebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs. “So far all they've done is have a guided tour of the premises by Foxconn executives. What exactly were they expecting – that the company would voluntarily show them the dark underbelly of factory life on the first day?

“The FLA is funded and controlled by the same companies it is supposed to be monitoring,” Stinebrickner-Kauffman continued. “Moreover, most of the so-called ‘monitoring’ conducted by the FLA is actually outsourced to for-profit firms – and all of their incentives line up to provide a clean bill of health to factories.”

Over the past few weeks, 78,000 SumOfUs members have signed a petition calling on Apple to clean up labor abuses in their supply chain before the release of the next iPhone. In response to the remarks from the FLA, and in the lead-up to Apple’s annual general meeting in Cupertino, CA, next Thursday, SumOfUs said it would ramp up its campaign.

The organization announced today that it will do a “distributed” petition delivery, with hundreds of its members delivering the petition to managers at their own local iPhone stores around the world next week. This delivery ups the ante after SumOfUs.org and Change.org jointly delivered over 250,000 petition signatures last week to six Apple stores on four continents.

“Apple clearly took note of consumers’ concerns, but it responded with a whitewashing campaign instead of real solutions,” said Stinebrickner-Kauffman. “If hearing from customers at six stores isn’t enough, maybe hearing from them at a hundred will get the message across.”