Party and State: CLW Gets a New Dead Horse and a New Stick to Beat it With

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

CLW Gets a New Dead Horse and a New Stick to Beat it With

Apple bashing from China continues as China Labor Watch releases more accusations of worker exploitation at one of it's factories. Amongst the heinous crimes mentioned, student workers haven't been paid, their rights have been violated. The report details the shocking working conditions that the students are forced to endure.

"As of September 9, 2013, about 100 student workers have already confirmed with CLW that while working at Pegatron Shanghai, they were not paid for 20 to 30 minutes of daily mandatory overtime meetings, had wages deducted, or only received 80 percent of the wages of normal workers despite doing the same work," the report says. "Many other student workers, who have not yet been reached, likely have suffered the same unfair treatment."

20 or 30 minutes? That is a major violation of their rights? Seems like even in one paragraph we're pretty unsure about what we're actually talking about, but let's continue.

Buried at the bottom of the report is the admission that Pegatron did actually pay back some of the 600rmb deposits that had been collected when the students signed up. Also, students don't have the most committed work ethic (like most students) taking a deposit sounds like rather a sensible thing to do. Since more than a few students change their majors in the first or second year of university, have multiple email addresses because of China's shaky Internet, and often have cell phone numbers that only work in the province that they're bought in, it's not a huge surprise that some student workers can't be contacted easily.

Accusing the factory of pulling a fast one by deducting wages because the students can't complete three month probation period because the summer breaks are only two months long, the report bemoans the "inhumane treatment" of the student workers.

The report that had been released earlier this year on July 29th had similar horrific stories of disgusting abuse. Among the infractions that Apple was found guilty of, a 17 year old worker got his wages 5 days late and the number of showers available to workers wasn't quite up to the investigators standards - there were 10 shower heads per 120 workers.

CLW also accused Pegatron of paying Shanghai's minimum wage of 1650rmb per month. Rather than including in a report that purportedly details abuse of Chinese worker's rights, this is surely an issue that should be taken up with Shanghai's municipal government.

Since their founding in 2002, the organization has been headquartered in New York, where CLW's program director Kevin Slaten is based. Obviously the workers at the Pegatron factory live quite different lives to the new media set in Manhatten.