>Western companies doing business with China and other 3rd world countries should demand compliance with the client countries’ OSHA regulations, ditto when looking at things like labor laws (minimum age for instance) and so on
I think part of the difficulty here is that supply chains are often very long and complex, across many countries. Companies often have no idea where their parts or materials really come from, although this may often be wilful ignorance. They do seem to have some legal obligation to know where things are coming from[1]. George Monbiot wrote a couple[2][3] of articles recently about trying to find out where the materials in smartphones are really coming from:
Of the manufacturers, Nokia appears to have gone furthest, and its efforts are quite impressive. Since 2001 – long before most other companies began to take an interest – it has tried to remove illegally mined tantalum from its supply chain. It now instructs its suppliers to map the routes these metals take before they reach the company. The problem is far from solved: it tells me that "there has been no credible system in the electronics industry that allows a company to determine the source of their material"
Apple's response was less detailed and less persuasive. To give you an idea of how complex the problem has become, it has discovered that its metals are supplied by 211 smelters, liberally distributed around the planet. Any of them could be using minerals seized by militias in Congo.
As you can probably guess, he ended up not buying a smartphone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd_Frank_Act#Disclosures_on_...
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/search-s...
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/25/smartpho...