From the just-released report by China Labor Watch:
> Pegatron is one of Apple’s major suppliers, employing almost one hundred thousand workers3 in Mainland China. Working conditions are terrible, and workers are subject to terrible treatment. Currently, Apple’s profits are declining, and the effects of this decline have been passed on to suppliers. To mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers. This report is based on interviews with Pegatron workers and a comparative study of 2015 copies of paystubs collected in 2015 and 2016. Through our investigation, we have found that Pegatron has taken some surreptitious measures to pass Apple’s audits. In addition, we discovered that Pegatron’s working conditions have worsened in 2016 compared to 2015.
And:
> Excessive and illegal overtime work is still prevalent in Pegatron. Pegatron claimed that their ID
check system could effectively control workers’ overtime hours, but this system did not have any effect in the departments where more overtime was needed. It is merely a tool for public relations. Paystub records reveal that the highest amount of overtime hours put in by a worker was recorded in March, which was a worker with 109 overtime hours. The worker was found to have put in a total of 293 hours of work in March.
And:
> Pegatron has recruited many student interns, who had overtime work amounting to 80 hours per month on average. This is roughly the same amount as full-time employees. However, the Chinese law forbids companies from asking interns to work overtime.
And:
> Workers are exposed to potential occupational injuries without proper protection. For example, in departments that have noise and the use of lasers, the factory does not provide them with protection equipment.
There is a lot more.
I keep seeing these stories crop up but in reality people don’t care. If they can buy some trinket for next to free they’re happy with that and the thought of tough labor in China or Syrian refugees and a bunch of other ills are given short shrift. Perhaps “not caring” is overly harsh but many people realize these issues are beyond their sphere of influence and thus how much attention are you really going to give these issues?
The value of these kind of reports is that it bringing it to the public attention means that it also catches Apple’s attention and then they have to go and do something about it.
That’s the hope, that people care more about humanity than low prices. Increasingly i’m finding my options limited with regard to buying products that don’t come from modern day sweatshops. I don’t purchase a lot of sports gear for this very reason.
Pegatron has taken “some covert measures to exploit workers” and “some surreptitious measures to pass Apple’s audits” and it is still Apple’s fault? How about we blame Pegatron?
nope, we gotta blame the one — perhaps only — company that has a comprehensive process for trying to keep asian contract manufacturers honest.
Reading this report, seems to me one could swap Walmart or Amazon and find very little difference. Consumers go for low price, and these companies are not NPO’s after all. I think Apple does as best it can to mitigate abuses. They have little choice but to manufacture outside the US for the most part.
Agree. We want to pay fast food workers 15$ an hour (i’m neutral in the matter) which is unthinkable in many other countries. As much as I want to wag a finger at China I realize that they have to feed 3x more humans than we do in the US. There is no simple solution.
I’d take this report a lot more seriously if it wasn’t so vociferously anti-Apple. Unless Pegatron ONLY make things for Apple or unless Apple is most of their business, why are we not hearing about the other companies for whom Pegatron manufactures goods? This reminds me of a few years ago when people decried conditions at a Foxconn plant as Apple’s fault despite the fact that the same plant made things for Microsoft and others.
It’s a nice hope, but the reality, is that most businesses care about the dollar first and foremost. If they didn’t our, manufacturing wouldn’t be overseas. My family is living this first-hand as we have a healthcare worker who is being bullied to quit because she has twenty-year seniority, and they’d rather pay a new grad half her salary. All of the experience that she brings with her that goes to her patients, you would think has value, yeah? No. They’re getting rid of the veteran workers, cutting the workforce in half, and hiring temps and new grads, and running them into the ground, all to make a buck. This, by the way, is a non-profit organization. Multicare. The execs are raping an pillaging, filling their coffers with millions, stating that they are earring what they “deserve”. I use this example because it is the one I am living, but I imagine it’s like this across the country/world regarding most corporations. Executives are all that matter, and the rest of us are just here to make them obscenely wealthy.
Their point of view, not mine.
The other side of this, is that the foreign workers are going through what US workers did before the unions were formed. Long hours with crap pay. “Shut up and produce. You’re lucky to be here”. Labor unions are just starting to gain favor from the workers in China, and if they manage to take hold, those conditions may change, just as it did here in the states. Salaries will increase, and work hours will decrease, and the companies, instead of putting up with this, will look for the new source of cheap labor in some less fortunate country, and it will start all over again.
I’m not sure what the answer/fix is, but I don’t see a positive outcome.
Yup that’s what I’ve seen and heard from others for the last 15 years. When you’re young you’re told you don’t have skills or qualifications so accept lower pay or keep it moving. When you finally get those skills and experience you’re too expensive and get replaced for the aforementioned youngster will burgeoning skills.
Americans have been sold wolf tickets about the benefits or inevitability of Globalization. The rank and file don’t benefit. It’s not going to end well because when I turn on the news all I see are a 100 deflections to issues that are distant in importance to fair housing, affordable education, employment or business generation. Favorite quote about this
Ronald Wright:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”