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Apple Faces New China Worker Abuse Claims
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."
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."
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.
4 foot 11, really? So they don't hire midgets that can't grab parts off a shelf... discriminatory and evil! Well my grandpa at 5 foot 11 was not allowed to fly fighter planes because the Air Corps said he was too tall. Where's the outrage? My poor grandpa was discriminated!
Dorm room that can accommodate 12 people, but not saying how big that dorm room is. Is it the size of a closet, or is it a big dorm room? Because our servicemen sleep in dorm rooms with hundreds of beds, and I don't hear much whining from the press.
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.
No Tibetans or Uighurs. Is it because Pegatron hates Tibetans, or is it because there aren't any Tibetans showing up at Job Fair? Shanghai is pretty damn far from Tibet and there aren't that many Tibetans in existence to begin with.
Are any of these things illegal in China? Would the average Chinese bat an eye hearing these accusations? I'm no expert on Chinese labor laws or Chinese culture but I'm guessing No, and that these are pretty typical in the Chinese workplace.