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Activists press Apple on supplier issues (photos)

Watchdog groups deliver petitions to a number of Apple's retail stores around the world, including one in downtown San Francisco.

James Martin
James Martin is the Managing Editor of Photography at CNET. His photos capture technology's impact on society - from the widening wealth gap in San Francisco, to the European refugee crisis and Rwanda's efforts to improve health care. From the technology pioneers of Google and Facebook, photographing Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, to the most groundbreaking launches at Apple and NASA, his is a dream job for any documentary photography and journalist with a love for technology. Exhibited widely, syndicated and reprinted thousands of times over the years, James follows the people and places behind the technology changing our world, bringing their stories and ideas to life.
James Martin
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In a move to push Apple to improve poor labor and safety issues in its supplier facilities, watchdog groups SumOfUs and Change.org delivered petitions today with more than 250,000 signatures to a number of Apples stores around the world. In the petitions, people are asking Apple to "overhaul the way its suppliers treat their workers," ahead of the release of its next iPhone, which is expected to come out later this year.

Here, outside an Apple store in San Francisco, representatives from Change.org wear signs decrying Apple for what they say are human rights abuses in overseas manufacturing facilities.
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2 of 8 James Martin/CNET
Petitions were delivered to a number of Apple retail stores around the world today, including this one in San Francisco.
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3 of 8 James Martin/CNET

A mock text-messaging conversation, displayed in the iPhone's style, is meant to chronicle a factory worker's pleas for better labor conditions to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
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4 of 8 James Martin/CNET

Change.org founder Ben Rattray says that because of the iconic nature of the Apple brand, if Apple changes its policies, it will force other brands to follow and amend their manufacturing practices to be more fair and just.
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A stack of petitions is handed over outside the Apple store in San Francisco.
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Charlotte Hill enters the Apple store on Stockton Street in San Francisco to deliver the petitions.
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Representatives from Change.org hand over signatures to the Apple store manager in San Francisco.
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Apple store manager Larry Verter speaks to the press following the delivery of signatures in San Francisco.

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