Posted on 04/20/2010 8:45:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see.
Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks. For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.
This photo and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe.
The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room. They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.
The organisation said that one worker was even fined for losing his finger while operating a hole punch press.
Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, but it accounts for about 30 per cent of the factory's work, the NLC said. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech and Asus also use KYE Systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Scenes of America in a few years, if something isn’t done about this current administration.
I’ve never seen a factory where the workers were not allowed to talk to each other, and you didn’t see at least a pair of earphones (typically connected to their cellphone) blasting the latest Chinese pop on every 5th worker or so...
Like much of China, there are rules (like no talking and no music) and there are “real rules” which everyone abides by. The rules you ignore (such as crossing with the light, cars yield to pedestrians, no smoking in taxis, no spitting on the sidewalk) are pretty much a non-issue; you can break them in front of the authorities (police or factory managers) with pretty much immunity.
As far as 1,000 workers in a 105x105 space, that’s 10 square feet per worker, which is actually pretty decent for a high-volume/high-density production line. Typically 2 feet of line per worker, 2 feet deep, meaning you really need about 4 square feet for workspace per worker. Visit Israel sometime where the typical office cubicle is 4 feet by 4 feet - for managers...
I direct you to all the lies and fraud by the liberal “journalists” over the years. You don’t know the story. You read a biased article by a biased group of people and then think you know something.
Gullible is no way to go through life.
And THAT is the real crux of the matter. Most come to the Eastern factories in China to make a lifetime's worth of money. Most of those women work for 6-8 years, sending 90% of their income home over that time, before moving home, getting married, raising kids and taking over the family farm or business.
The reality is that earning 700-800 RMB per month is infinitely preferable to earning 50 RMB a month, considering you get a solid roof over your head (as opposed to the literal cardboard and sod shacks in your home town), 3 meals a day (versus maybe 1 or 2), and easier work (14 hours - with you earning State-mandated overtime for 6 of those hours - in a factory is better than 16 hours outside under the 100 deg F sun).
When your family used to make 300 RMB for an entire month for everyone, being able to get a job doing 2-3 or more times that is a miracle. That's why for every worker that's fired/moves home there are another 3 waiting to take the position.
China's going through the same industrial and labor revolution that the US went through 100 years ago; it's just doing it 3 times faster, and doing it building high-tech products for us.
I have stayed with Asians that had only a faucet, bucket and sponge and they were VERY clean.
Well, good.
After their nap they will be refreshed and can be more productive.
Chop chop!!!
” part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee”
You keep good company!
http://www.socialistaction.org/links.htm
Not the paper but the source. Your source is a socialist organization. But never mind, the socialists have to provide us with the truth, right?
Look, I am no fan of the New York Times. Their editorials from Maureen Dowd to Frank Rich to Paul Krugman are all filled with socialistic drivel.
But please, you are not going to make me believe that EVERYTHING they report is false.
I am not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Neither is stupid. In your head the universe is simply one big sandpit fight between Libs and Conservatives, but things are a tad more complex than that. You remind me of those stupid oafs who were claiming slavery and the like were not occuring in the Sudan (while I was organising aid trips to theSudan when I was in high school in Kenya), or the other myopic idiots who think Dubai is a worker's paradise for laborers. After all, the media is always lying, thus any story they print is BS. Right?
Idiotic!
I guess Microsoft is also biased since they have started doing investigations on that same plant, and the Chinese government must be biased in fining them? Must be the liiiiiiibbbbeeeral bias controlling their minds.
Geez, some FReepers can give the most asinine DUmmie a run for their money. Logic so atrophied Stonefish could outhink them.
WORKERS UNITE !!!!
OK the group is socialist, therefore their report is false ?
ALL FALSE ?
What about waiting a few more weeks for Microsoft’s and other investigation before making a judgment ?
Geez. I sure wish I could sleep at work ....
15 hour shifts????!!!!??? are these guys and gals friggin whimps???? I worked a 12 hour shift and a 4 hour watch when I was in the navy...as a project manager, when out of town on an install, the typical day is 16 hours, if things go right...do this for 3 months in a row with no days off...my assessment is that americans in general have it to damn soft, and do not know what work is or about...this is due to the union mentality... i do not want to live in france, yet this country is headed in that direction
“Stupid” is your argument? Man, you’re dumb.
“actually NAMING a Microsoft Executive who expresses concerns about the charges”
Has that executive SEEN those charges? Microsoft is full of stupid people every bit as much as the general population.
If Microsoft were to come out and say, “We visited these plants in China and found them to be doing the following things...” then I would beleive them to be true.
The press? I don’t trust them to tell me the time of day.
Oh now Microsoft is stupid too huh ?
And you’re smarter than the guys who developed the operating system and word processor you use. Yeah right.
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