“Apple Inc’s suppliers in China have violated local labor laws when they imposed excessive overtime and skimped on insurance, a New York-based labor rights group said,” Lee Chyen Yee reports for Reuters. “Apple and its suppliers such as Taiwanese tycoon Terry Gou’s Foxconn Technology Group have been the target of labor rights groups, which say the world’s most valuable technology company are making iPhones and iPads in massive sweat shops.”
“‘From our investigations we found that the labor rights violations at Foxconn also exist in virtually all other Apple supplier factories, and in many cases, are actually significantly more dire than at Foxconn,’ China Labor Watch said in a 133-page report released on Thursday,” Yee reports. “A four-month investigation through April showed workers work up to 180 hours of overtime a month during peak periods, exceeding the legal limit of 36 hours per month, the group said, citing Riteng, a unit of Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp, as an example.”
Yee reports, “China Labor Watch interviewed 620 workers at 10 factories run by Apple suppliers, including Toyo Precision Appliance and BYD Electronic (International) Co. The group also spoke with workers at factories run by units of Quanta Computer Inc, Wintek Corp and U.S.-listed Jabil Circuit Inc. ‘As part of our ongoing supplier responsibility program, our team has conducted thorough audits at every facility in China Labor Watch’s report,’ Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman based in Cupertino, California, said in an e-mail. ‘In some places, our auditors found issues similar to those described by China Labor Watch, including overtime violations,” she said, when asked to comment on the report.'”
“The report singled out Riteng for dismal work conditions, saying workers work almost 12 hours a day, longer than 10 hours a day at Foxconn, Apple’s main supplier. Half of Riteng’s workers described safety conditions as “bad,” more than Foxconn’s 2 percent, according to the report. The average hourly wage at Riteng is 8.2 yuan ($1.29), well below the average rate 10.2 yuan at Foxconn,” Yee reports. “The Pegatron unit was not immediately available for comment.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like the problem lies mainly with Riteng’s Pegatron which, like Foxconn and other assembly factories in China, has a number of clients, including Asustek Computer, Acer, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Toshiba, to name but a few. Once again, Apple very unfairly gets not only blamed, but is practically assigned ownership of these foreign companies with which they simply contract for product assembly. With supplier audits, thirid-party independent audits, on-site CEO visits, annual progress reports, a website (Apple Supplier Responsibility), and more, Apple has already gone above and beyond every other one of these companies which basically sit around doing nothing whatsoever to improve the situation.