The Fair Labor Association has given an initial assessment of the working conditions on Apple's Foxconn manufacturing plants and found that the working conditions are far better than other manufacturing plants in China.

The FLA's president Auret van Heerden told Reuters that Foxconn's operations were "first class" and that working conditions in the factories were "way, way above the average of the norm." The FLA is assessing the working conditions of Apple's top eight suppliers in China after reports of the hazardous working conditions at the Foxconn manufacturing plants in China led to a high number of worker suicides. The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen's "Foxconn City" with the assessment continuing to other facilities, including Quanta Computer Inc, Pegatron Corp, and Wintek Corp.

"I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," Van Heerden said. "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."

The FLA will continue its investigation and representatives will interview thousands of factory workers about living conditions, compensation, work hours and health and safety conditions. The results will be posted on the FLA's Web site in March.

Working conditions at Foxconn have long been the subject of much criticism for Apple. In 2009 reports surfaced about a string of worker suicides at Foxconn, which manufactures Apple's iPhone and iPad. A New York Times piece about the brutal working conditions inside Apple's Chinese factories proved to be the catalyst for activist groups to protest against the software giant. SumofUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition to ask Apple to respond to the Foxconn reports. More than 250,000 people signed the petition.

"We were hoping for a quick response, but I don't know if we were actually expecting such a fast response from Apple," said Sarah Ryan, a human rights organizer at Change.org, one of two groups responsible for the protests outside Apple stores. "It's especially exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public."

Representatives of SumofUs.org called the Fair Labor Association a "public relations mouthpiece." Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs.org told Wired, that while the FLA audit is the first step towards a solution it's not even close to ending the problem itself.

"The FLA was created in response to student protests around the sweatshop issue in the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with Nike as a founding member," Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops said. "Ten years later, we see little to no reform of sweatshop conditions in Nike's supply chain, and no positive changes can be attributed to the FLA."

The FLA is a brand accountability system that investigates and reports on working conditions in companies but it doesn't have any power to ask those companies to instigate change. Any real change for Foxconn worker will have to come from within the company itself or from pressure from the Chinese government or Apple.

"This is at best a decent first step," said Stinebrickner-Kauffman. "At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign."