“Dell suppliers in China work for up to 74 hours a week amid health risks, for as little as 66p an hour, according to a new report,” Alex Hern reports for The Guardian.
“Undercover filming by China Labour Watch and DanWatch reveals a number of apparent breaches of Chinese labour laws at Dell subcontractor Mingshuo Computers, which operates a 156,000m2 factory in Jiangsu province, south of Shanghai,” Hern reports. “The investigators entered and worked in Factory 6 at Minshuou, which builds computer motherboards for Dell, but the company also supplies other electronics brands including ASUS, Samsung, and Microsoft.”
“The report claims that ‘tens of thousands’ of underage workers are employed by Pegatron, Mingshuo’s parent company, and that over a third of the workers on the floor where the investigator worked were between the ages of 16 and 18,” Hern reports. “‘They are mostly hired through schools and recruiting agencies,’ [The report states]. ‘In order to get into the factory, each young person must pay an agency fee between 100 and 500 RMB ($16 and $82). The youngest of the workers had just reached the age of 16 before working. Student workers are another source of labor for Pegatron… [they] enter the factory under the auspices of an internship, for which they sign an intern agreement. No social insurance is purchased for student workers for the duration of the internship. Their intern wages are distributed in the same way as other workers’ wages. Student workers usually work 10.5 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Erik D.” for the heads up.]
Is today a holiday in the US for the media? I don’t see this news in all the papers and blogs, NYT, WP, WSJ…
May be because it is not apple?
Wow they actually said this about someone else besides apple?
Im shocked lol!
How much is 66p a hour in Chinese currency?
The same as 66p a day.
Uh? Welcome to china?
Remember the efforts that Apple made to force their suppliers and assemblers to comply with labor rules? Well, this is what happened to the workers who were purged from the manufacturing positions for Apple products. They were just moved over to the assembly lines for other companies. That is the way that the world works, and Apple cannot solve the problem on its own, no matter how much flak they receive from media and various organizations.
What about the human rights violation in America of Americans having to use a Dell?!
They’re covered:
It ought to be a human rights violation using a production process that smells like cat pee!
Dell’s Chinese workers don’t give a flying fsck about the products they’re working on. That’s the real reason why Dell computers these days royally stink of urine and poo.
Why does report smell like cat pee?
BUT, workers are allowed to bring their cats to work!