Wednesday, 31 July 2013 21:53

Apple Supplier Facing Heat over Chinese Labor


Reading time is around minutes.
ApplePeg

Pegatron, one of Apples suppliers, is facing heat over the working conditions in its factories in China.  Some of the 86 alleged violations include failing to pay wages, mandatory overtime, and insufficient worker training. The full 60 page report by New York based China Labor Watch can be read here.

Pegatron is violating numerous international and Chinese laws and standards as well as Apple’s own social responsibility code.  Earlier this year Apple claimed their suppliers achieved 99% compliance with their 60 work week rule even though China has a 49 hour statutory limit. In three of the reported factories work week averages were approximately 66, 67, and 69 hours.  In one factory it was found that employees were forced to sign forms stating their overtime was less than it actually was.

Executive director of CLW Li Qiang said, “Our investigations have shown that labor conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories.”  Apple doesn’t seem to help the issue, he followed that statement with this one, “Apple has not lived up to its own standards. This will lead to Apple’s suppliers abusing labor in order to strengthen their position for receiving orders. In this way, Apple is worsening conditions for workers, not improving them.”

CLW has sent investigators into three Pegatron factories undercover to conduct interviews with nearly 200 employees outside the factories.  Those factories included Pegatron Shanghai (iPhone), Riteng(Apple Computers), and AVY (Pegatron subsidiary in Suzhou, iPad parts).  These three factories have a combined workforce of over 70,000 employees.

[Ed - As with Foxconn Apple is not Pegatron's only client. Pegatron also makes Google (Asus') Nexus 7 and Microsoft's Seurface tablets. This is not a good thing for any of the companies that are using Pegatron to produce their products. Pegatron is also the manufacturing arm of Asus with a primary focus on OEM parts and products. It will be interesting to see what, if any, impact this will have on Asus and the others...]

Tell us what you think in our Forum

Read 2718 times Last modified on Thursday, 01 August 2013 20:17

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter all the required information, indicated by an asterisk (*). HTML code is not allowed.