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."

Comments

Are you sure it was China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it was a Chinese company? It could be mine...

Re:Are you sure it was China?

[Guspaz]

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:Are you sure it was China?

[xaxa]

>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?

[ewibble]

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?

Why focus on Apple?

[hambone142]

Several other computer manufacturers use Foxconn and Pegatron. H.P. is one of them for example. We get the behavior we measure. Cost cutting is the constant mantra of U.S. corporate management. We turn a blind eye to such practices. I won't even get in to the pollution issue they cause in China.

Re:Why focus on Apple?

[shutdown -p now]

Two reasons.

First, customer base. HP is a rather boring company, and most of their customers are medium and large businesses bulk-purchasing hardware. They couldn't care less about some workers in China, but they do care about the pricing. Apple, OTOH, has more individual customers, and in particular a large number of that type of vegan "fair trade" coffee drinking hipster. This is precisely the kind of audience that can be efficiently targeted with emotional appeal, and would respond to it by pushing back onto the company.

Second, finances. Apple is widely known as a wildly successful technological company. With the kinds of profits that they report every quarter, they can't say that their margins are too low, or something along those lines.

Apples to Oranges

[eldavojohn]

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

"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 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:Apples to Oranges

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Why is constantly Apple vilified for this?

[l0ungeb0y]

These are the actions of the Pegatron Group, a separate company from Apple that like FoxConn is a contractor. So why is it claimed that Apple that is mistreating workers? And why the exclusive focus on Apple when other high profile tech companies, including direct competitors who use these same companies with workers receiving the same treatment at those plants?

I suppose the most likely reason is because Apple is seen as the lead brand in consumer technology, and by slamming Apple in the press, they prompt Apple into action, but it also seems that by focusing on Apple, they unfairly saddle Apple with the cost of fixing this than the industry as a whole.

Re:Why is constantly Apple vilified for this?

[dwightk]

What is the difference in projected traffic volume for an article with the headline
"Pegatron faces China worker abuse claim"

vs.

"Apple faces new China worker abuse claim"

Re:Want to hurt Chinese workers? Improve Condition

[dkleinsc]

Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed.

That is far from an indisputable argument:
1. Working conditions in the UK were not all that different from working conditions in the US over the same period. For example, child labor was legal in both the US and the UK until well into the 20th century.
2. An overall growth in wealth does not necessarily create a middle class - you also need the distribution of that wealth to be even enough that those who are not members of the investor class are not living hand-to-mouth. If you want an example of a rising tide not really lifting all boats, look at what happened to GDP versus wage growth since 1975.
3. You're completely ignoring trade unions and government regulation, both of which changed policies dramatically.
4. I'm not sure which period of the middle class you're talking about, but if it's the one from the 1950's, you also have to factor in the lack of able-bodied men and the G.I. Bill.
5. There was another significant comparative advantage in play for the US in the 1880's: Many of the raw materials for the products of US factories were from the US, so manufacturing in the US cut transportation costs. If you're raising cattle in Colorado, it's far easier to make that into ground beef in Chicago than it is to ship cattle to Birmingham. If you're mining iron in upper Michigan, it makes more sense to do your smelting in Cleveland or Detroit than it does to ship it to Bath before smelting.

What is better, an attempt at truth or nothing?

[SuperKendall]

Yes, and they also have a vested interest in lying.

But the other companies don't have even that. Even if Apple is misleading in some respect, they are at least giving you SOMETHING. Other companies remain totally silent on worker care issues. They provide no documentation as to conditions. They impose no restrictions on companies they contract with for Assembly. Apple Does.

So even if Apple isn't doing some of it quite right, they are still vastly far ahead of other companies in trying to improve working conditions in China. Which is why if you actually cared about the Chinese, you'd be supporting Apple instead of attacking them.

Instead, you'll continue to use your non-Apple laptop and your non-Apple smartphone because you like them, totally ignoring the fact that the conditions they were made under are far worse than anything reported for Apple.

Myself, I have taken to buying some things like wireless routers from Apple that I used to purchase cheaper versions of before, because at least I have some idea of the conditions they are being manufactured under. Either you actually care or you don't, you can't just claim to care and then act as if the issue doesn't matter.

The hypocrisy here is just sickening.