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Brazil Sues Samsung Over Worker Conditions
First time accepted submitter konohitowa writes "The Financial Times is reporting that the Brazilian government has filed a lawsuit against Samsung for working conditions that put workers' health at risk (both through repetitive motion injuries as well as excessive consecutive work days). Samsung has 'promised to conduct a thorough review and fully co-operate with the Brazilian authorities once it receives details of the complaint.'"
Samsung has 'promised to conduct a thorough review and fully co-operate with the Brazilian authorities once it receives details of the complaint.'"
And then they will move the plant to Mexico.
Why would /. allow a submission that uses a source that requires registration or a premium account to view?
Samsux is going too far imitating Apple. Get a grip.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
A copy of the story from The Verge.
Interestingly, Samsung paid out $200,000 in 2011 to Brazil for working conditions as well.
And China Labour Watch also has citations to Samsung.
and then you get the next hot phone from the same guy who sells drugs all under the table.
Yeah that's nice, that subtle racism you are showing.
Protip: lots of Mexicans are regular people, not gang members or drug cartel lords. Many Mexicans have a work ethic that I straight up admire in fact.
I'm not upset or offended. The answer to your kind of ignorance is knowledge.
In South Korea, work ethic is highly valued and people actually take pride in consecutive work days. Even a job as laid back as teaching usually requires 6 10 hour days a week. It's a ridiculous "hurry up and get it done but work all the damn time anyways" culture.
A copy of the story from The Verge.
Interestingly, Samsung paid out $200,000 in 2011 to Brazil for working conditions as well.
And China Labour Watch also has citations to Samsung.
I'm not familiar with the US law, but the Ministry of Labour in Canada will take a company to court if they believe the company to be violating worker safety laws.
... (and brazil is far more developed than many people think).
In other words, it's great to see that Brazil is enforcing labour laws... but not particularly surprising. As countries move to establish and enforce workers rights (and move away from manufacturing our junk), more lawsuits will occur.
It's how workers rights are enforced, and it isn't news in a developed country
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
I am sure that Foxconn would still be more than happy to open their new rumored plant in Brazil and help one of the most impoverished countries in the world better themselves after this!
http://saveie6.com/
I happen to know how Samsung builds products. And RSI is actually not an issue. This is a payoff fishing expedition from Brazil needing currency, now that they've closed down external bank transfers in US dollars, and shut down a large sector of their economy. Rather than admit their mistake and undo it, they are now looking to get their money a different way.
Strange, but Apple (contractors Pegatron and Honhai) have faced the same charges in other countries.
Could it be that Samsung manufactures phones so dramatically differently that all Brazil can do shake Samsung down for a couple hundred thousand?
I'm under NDA on the exact process; they consider it proprietary. It's very weird, but in the limit, it makes a lot of sense, even if it adds some overhead that a traditional RSI-prone process would not have.
It's either a fishing expedition on the payola, as I said earlier, or it's a fishing expedition on the assembly process. I think they could have just hired an independent auditor to ask about it, sign the same NDA, the auditor would have just said "Oh." and told them to drop the RSI claim.
They may still have claims on the ergonomic furniture and the breaks, assuming workers in other manufacturing plants in Brazil get more breaks and, say, Herman Miller or other highly ergonomic chairs. It looks like they've already agreed to a modification of the work hours, specifically regarding mandatory overtime.
Here's an article on the lawsuit not behind a pay-wall, since the original link in the summary is generally unreadable:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323455104579012712866922406.html
Note that they actually own up to the overtime policy and agree to change it.
PS: If you do a more than trivial look at the earlier China Labor Watch complaint, you'll see the same overtime issue, but that the basic labor rights issues were (eventually) admitted to be limited to the two third party suppliers, rather than the Samsung plants themselves.
Samsux is going too far imitating Apple. Get a grip.
Over work pressure over the iPhone 5
http://www.gongchao.org/en/islaves-struggles/revolt-of-the-islaves
"In the evening of September 23, a riot broke out in Foxconn's factory complex in Taiyuan, Shanxi. 2.000 Foxconn workers took part in the riot, many thousands looked on, and 40 people got injured. The rioters smashed shop-windows, set fires on the street, over-turned police cars and demolished company fences. 5.000 police were sent in but did not bring the situation under control until the early morning hours."
Criticizing American government is racism? If you are talking about the stereotype of Americans being ignorant dumb-asses, well that does exists, but is largely due to your allowing the said politicians to be in power, and yet having delusional beliefs about yourself to be a democracy. Normally the world wouldn't care btw, except for your insane laws and policies being exported out to rest of us as well eventually via treaties.
So, the Brazilian government is doing something positive to improve the conditions of workers and all people on here can do is complain? Wow.
Samsung’s Manaus factory, which has 6,000 employees, instructed workers to perform triple the amount of movements considered safe under ergonomic studies, prosecutors said.
So, umm, that's ok?
... while one [employee] worked 27 straight days without a day off ...
This is ok as well? I admit this one is a bit less clear cut because it doesn't say how many hours the employee worked each day, but... seriously.
You're all (ok, most) saying -- essentially -- "fuck Brazil" and that this is not right. What the FUCK?
You know what I say? Slashdot these days is populated by pre-pubescent fucktards. Seriously, get over your entitlement shit and grow a brain. If this was happening in "USA: Fuck Yeah" you'd all have the opposite opinion. Arrgh.
Actually, it is much harder for a domestic company (specially if it is not very large) to get away with this kind of behavior.
Brazil has very strict work laws, up to the point that even nannies and house cleaners are jobs under strict regulation. This case with Samsung is indeed very worrying, however it is not as common in companies as most people would expect in Brazil. We have hundreds of unions who have very resonant voices in politics.
Work conditions abuses in Brazil come mostly in two flavors:
i) Rural work in farms, specially up North. It is not uncommon to have people working under slavery regime in some farms, and some of the scandals involve even politicians who are also big farmers. The workers are usually very poor people who are deluded into getting a job in a farm and getting rich. Their travel costs are covered by the farmer, and so is living cost and food, and they stay in an eternal debt without ever leaving. They end up working 18 hours shifts for food, with no sanitary conditions, etc. This is taken seriously in Brazil, but more often than not the responsible for this are rich people, so they get away with fines and never see the inside of a jail cell.
ii) Manual labor done by foreigners, in particular by South Americans. In Sao Paulo city there are 200,000 Bolivians, 80% of them are illegal, and most of them work with sewing. They work under very poor conditions and earn very little. Since most of them are illegal, and most of them are in debt with people who helped them to get here, they are afraid to seek the police.
But in companies this is not the case. Even to me this news about Samsung came as a shock.
How can an NDA cover "work methods" and "work conditions"? Are you seriously that stupid?
An NDA can cover anything. If you hire me to organise your kid's birthday party, you can ask me sign an NDA so I don't tell anyone about it, and if I sign, I'm bound by the NDA.
Often NDAs cover trade secrets. In that case breach of the NDA might be criminal, not just a breach of contract. Work methods could be trade secrets, work conditions probably are not, and your kid's birthday party isn't a trade secret.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57559324/group-says-it-found-child-workers-at-samsung-supplier-factory/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/25/samsung-tin-mines-indonesia-child-labour
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-448.html - Samsung’s Audits Ineffective, More Child Workers Uncovered
http://www.change.org/petitions/samsung-stop-exploiting-child-laborers
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.