Apple Faces New China Worker Abuse Claims 158
AmiMoJo writes "Technology giant Apple is facing fresh allegations of worker rights violations at Chinese factories of one of its suppliers, the Pegatron Group. China Labor Watch has alleged that three factories of Pegatron violate a 'great number of international and Chinese laws and standards.' These include underage labour, contract violations and excessive working hours. Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, claimed that 'our investigations have shown that labour conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories.' The campaign group said that it had found that average weekly working hours in the three factories investigated by it were approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively."
Apples to Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
If it wasn't for all the false reporting about conditions at Foxconn, I might take this seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey [wikipedia.org]
"All the false reporting" was one nutjob who was confusing journalism with stage performance. A stark difference between Mike Daisey and China Labor Watch is their falsifiable report [chinalaborwatch.org] that, unlike Daisey's heart wrenching anecdotal stories, can be checked.
Examples:
At Pegatron, over 10,000 underage and student workers (interns), from 16 to 20 years of age, work in crowded production rooms, doing the same work as formal, adult workers. But some students are paid lower wages because schools deduct fees for the internship, while other students will not have their wages paid to them on time.
CLW’s investigations revealed at least 86 labor rights violations, including 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations. The violations fall into 15 categories: dispatch labor abuse, hiring discrimination, women’s rights violations, underage labor, contract violations, insufficient worker training, excessive working hours, insufficient wages, poor working conditions, poor living conditions, difficulty in taking leave, labor health and safety concerns, ineffective grievance channels, abuse by management, and environmental pollution.
Did you read the report? It's got hard numbers and straight up accusations with defined conditions that can be checked. It's not like "I met a little girl who polished my iPhone." Instead it's like "A dorm room at Pegatron can accommodate 12 people. From Monday to Friday, residents have to clock-in within 24 hours or else they will be considered checked out of the dorm." or "The Pegatron factories had a list of discriminatory hiring practices, including refusing to hire people shorter than 4 foot 11 inches tall, pregnant women, those older than 35, people with tattoos, or people of the Hui, Tibetan, or Uighur ethnic groups."
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:5, Informative)
The company (Pegatron) isn't Chinese. They're Taiwanese. The factories, however, are in China.
Pegatron used to be the manufacturing division of ASUS. They spun them off, but still do a lot of manufacturing for ASUS and just about everybody else. This isn't really an Apple problem: everybody uses these companies for manufacturing, it's an industry-wide problem.
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:2, Informative)
Didn't read the report, but if that's the worst you can dig out of the report then it sounds like this China Labor Watch is trying really hard to attract attention to itself when there's not much there worthy of attention.
Good because if you did you would realize how fucking ignorant the rest of your post was.
From the first fucking sentence of TFA: China Labor Watch, has alleged that three factories of Pegatron violate a "great number of international and Chinese laws and standards".
Turns out there _are_ laws in China, as well as laws to which China must abide in order to export goods internationally. These are the laws they are alleged to be breaking, including discrimination and imposing excessive/overcrowded work conditions.
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:2, Informative)
"All the false reporting" was one nutjob who was confusing journalism with stage performance.
No, that was just one example. Another is for example the reports of suicides at Foxconn factories. Very widely reported. Except none of the reporters checked the numbers. If you you divide the number of suicides by the number of employees, you get the suicide rate. ANd it turns out that the Foxconn suicide rate from those figures is lower than the suicide rate for not only CHina as a whole, but also it's lower than the US suicide rate.
All in all, the facts are that Apple enforces higher ethical standards on it's suppliers than any other tech company. Yet because anything Apple is newsworthy, we have a mix of muckraking and click-baiting claiming things that are the opposite of the truth.
And I'm sorry, but there's nothing about "Child Labour Watch" that raises it above the rest of the noise.
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:5, Informative)
>This isn't really an Apple problem: everybody uses these companies for manufacturing, it's an industry-wide problem.
Isn't this always the case? Apple is a well-known and envied brand, so they get the blame for something that's a problem with the entire industry.
But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better".
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:2, Informative)
But Apple's image and brand is of a better, more responsible company -- that's part of the justification for the higher price. "Everyone else does it" might be true, but the statement was "we thought you were better".
Apple ARE better.
http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/accountability.html [apple.com]
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:4, Informative)
4 foot 11, really? So they don't hire midgets that can't grab parts off a shelf... discriminatory and evil!
In a factory with many workers they can easily assign people to appropriate tasks, or provide a step. In the west this kind of discrimination is illegal, and it is also supposed to be in China.
Not hiring pregnant women. I'm guessing if they DID hire pregnant women, we would be seeing in this report much outrage about the exploitation of pregnant women in sweatshop factories that jeopardize their health.
Pregnant women need employment and are not invalids. Legislation prevents even asking if a woman is pregnant. If you think it is due to health and safety or something you are deluded, it is simply because they don't want them to quit or take maternity leave.
No Tibetans or Uighurs. Is it because Pegatron hates Tibetans, or is it because there aren't any Tibetans showing up at Job Fair?
Your reading comprehension skills are pathetic. The quote you are replying to quotes the report directly, which clearly states that they discriminate deliberately. The fact that they needed to create this discriminatory rule suggests that they were in fact getting applications from those areas and ethnic groups.
Are any of these things illegal in China?
Yes.
Re:Are you sure it was China? (Score:3, Informative)
It says it is "designed and assembled in the US."
to me that means Designed in US, built in China, they put the case lid on in the US.
May be I am a bit cynical?