Behind the Scenes With Samsung's Factory Workers

itwbennett writes "The young women working at Samsung's factory in Tianjin, China like their jobs about as much as factory workers anywhere. The work is boring and tiring, but it pays ok and there are perks (like air conditioning in the dorms), says 19-year-old Zhao Caixia. One 23-year-old woman, who assembles 200-300 camera lenses a day, told the IDG News Service's Michael Kan: 'You just keep doing the same thing over and over. There is nothing really to like, but nothing to really dislike either.' Labor rights group China Labor Watch tells a different story (PDF). One day after Samsung said it would audit its suppliers in China, the group reported cases of excessive overtime (exceeding 100 hours per month) and exhausting working conditions, with employees being made to stand for up to 12 hours for a single shift."

Comments

Re:I might be out of scope here

[drhank1980]

I work in the USA for a company that makes chips for Samsung amongst others. Our normal shift is 12 hours on your feet in the fab. (on a compressed schedule, 4 days on 3 days off and then 3 days on and 4 days off, and yes I know China is doing 6/7 days a week as the norm but I also know the quality can/will suffer as we are still cheaper than our outsourced competition for their lack of quality and consistency on a cost per good die metric). Its great money for those of us who work it and many of us sign up for overtime on our days off.

Also more to the point of the article, if you are doing inspections for 12 hours in a row on anything complex, you will suck as an inspector and I would hope Samsung would not accept this as a practice in China (or anywhere for that matter) for the interest of QA for their products but maybe I am asking too much.

Re:Are you sure?

[hawguy]

I worked construction for a few summers after high school -- 12 hour shifts weren't uncommon (on my feet the whole time)

Come again, buddy??

I worked in construction sites every summer during my college years, for I desperately needed money to pay for books and food and shelter

From scaffolding to steel framing high rises, never did I have to be on my feet for the entire 12 hour shift

Which job were you in, buddy?

I worked for a heavy construction company, primarily doing road construction - doing things like shoveling asphalt that fell out of the paver, raking down stone to level it, pressure washing mud off the heavy equipment before loading it for transport to another job site, directing trucks to dump their load where it was needed, subbing in for flagman when needed, etc. About the only time I got to sit down was when I had to drive to pick up parts or, when I was lucky, get a cushy job escorting heavy/wide loads.