We’ve posted here about the Chinese factories run by Foxconn– a Taiwanese-based manufacturer of Apple iPods, iPads, and iPhones famous for its forced student “internships”, suicide nets and rioting employees.
Although Foxconn promised Apple it would improve working conditions at its Chinese factories in March of 2012, workers rioted at the company’s Taiyuan plant as recently as last September.
Now China Labor Watch reports on an investigation of another Taiwanese-based Apple supplier, Pegatron Group, which operates factories in China where “labor conditions… are even worse than those at Foxconn factories.”
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.
In short, the Pegatron factories are violating a great number of international and Chinese laws and standards as well as the standards of Apple’s own social responsibility code of conduct.
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Apple has zero tolerance for lapses in the quality of its products. If a quality issue arises, Apple will do everything it can to have it corrected immediately. But a lower level of urgency apparently applies in responding to labor rights abuses. Despite its professed high standards for the treatment of Apple workers, serious labor violations have persisted year after year. Apple must prioritize its efforts into halting the abuse of the workers making Apple products.
It should be noted that the Chinese regime– regularly glorified by trade union activist Andy Newman at Socialist Unity– appears no more anxious than Apple to correct these abuses.
You can read China Labor Watch’s full report here.
