This time it is SACOM, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, that is charging
The statement from SACOM is here and you can download the full report from the same site.
Biel Crystal, who started its business by producing glasses for watches, is one of the biggest suppliers of the world’s touchscreen cover glasses. It shares 60% of the total world’s supply. Its factories in Shenzhen and Huizhou produce annual revenue of around 30 billion Chinese yuans and are hiring 80,000 workers. It supplies 60% of the total Apple products’ cover glasses as well as 20% of the total of Samsung products.
HTC , Huawei, TCL, Lenovo,Nokia , Motorola, LG, Seiko are its clients. Biel Crystal is still supplying to 1/3 of European watches cover glasses. However, behind this glorious achievement, SACOM investigation in this summer discovered the following labour rights abuses:- Blank work contract: Workers complain about the factory asking to sign blank work contract and the factory ask worker to turn in their work contract copy when they resign. This keep workers vulnerable to prove their working relation with the factory;
- Excessive working hours: Workers reflect they forced to sign a “voluntary overtime application form”. They have to work 11 hours every day, seven days a week during peak season. Only have a 24-hour break at the end of each month for shift change;
- Serious work injury: Worker reflect that work injuries are common in the factory and they could not get reasonable compensation from Biel Crystal as entitled by the Law;
- Military-style management: Workers complain about the unfair punitive system and massive use of security to control worker’s activities;
- Numerous suicides in the factory: It is reported that there are at least 5 suicides took place in the factory since 2011;
- Unpunctual wages: Workers accuse about the factory changing the wage day whenever suits them and do not follow the work contract clauses and conditions;
- Exploitation on workers’ social security rights: Huizhou municipal government accused Biel Crystal’s ignorance to enroll workers to social security system (Remark 1)
Reading through the full report there do indeed appear to be violations of China's overtime laws plus something not quite right with the entry of the workers into the social security system. But the changing of the wage day seems a bit trivial:
Pay day should be set through bilateral negotiation between the employer and employees.
However, Biel sets the date unilaterally and never negotiates with workers. The work
contract states that the pay day is every 25th day of the month. Yet, it in fact fell on the 7th
or 8th day of the month and later it was set as the 15th day. Recently it was again changed
to the 25th day of the month. And, the wage being paid only covers the past whole month,
i.e. the wage for 1 to 31 August was paid only on 25 September.Workers’ wages of the
current month are therefore not paid until the next 25th day.
The complaint is that wages were paid before they were contractually due? I have a feeling that we're getting worryingly close to First World Problems here (and I would note that delightful as the accounts department here at Forbes are the pay day does indeed move around a little, some months being earlier than others. This isn't something that I have not dealt with personally).
I also thought that this was a very First World Problem:
Since 7 August 2013, however, workers of plant D1 are required to report to work five
minutes ahead. Since workers have to wear cleanroom suit before getting into the
shop-floor, this means that they have to come 10 minutes earlier before work hour begins
which is unpaid.
10 minutes unpaid at the beginning of each shift? I really cannot get myself worked up about this, sorry, but I just cannot. It's also worth recording how much is being paid in wages here. SACOM indicate that it's about 3,000 yuan a month. And I agree, neither you nor I would be happy working on a production line for that sort of sum, $500 a month. However, note that this is after tax, social security, the fee for the dorm room and the cost of three meals a day. This is take home pay, not gross, and it's after most of the costs of living have been deducted. And $6,000 a year is above the average Chinese income and smack bang in the middle of salaries for industrial workers in manufacturing. China's still a relatively poor country and these are in fact good wages in that country.
But the biggest problem with this report is that mention of suicides again. Five suicides is five too many, of course. Each and every one of them a tragedy both for those who died and for those they left behind. But it is an unfortunate fact about our world that people do indeed sometimes commit suicide. In fact, in China as a whole, about 20 people per hundred thousand do, each and every year. There are 40,000 people working at this site, sometimes 60,000, they're talking about the past two years or a little more. We would expect, just based on the standard averages, to see 20 suicides among that number of people over that time. OK, this isn't quite exactly right because suicide is not evenly distributed by age and gender. But it's still a good guide to the incidence we would expect.
And the complaint is that there have been five suicides. As above, each and every one of them a tragedy but it's not a very strong complaint that the suicide rate in this factory is one quarter of that in the country generally now, is it?
So I'm afraid that I don't think a great deal of this latest investigation into the working conditions in Apple's supply chain. But I do think I can tell you why they are banging on about that suicide rate. It's to make sure that Reuters and the like write up the report and take it seriously. After all, suicide is a great deal more newsworthy than a report insisting that people have to turn up a whole 10 minutes early for their shift.
