“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.]