Foxconn, an original equipment manufacturer for Apple’s iPod, has admitted that their employees work about 80 extra hours each month, which is against the law in China.
According to Chinese labor laws, a company breaks the law if it asks employees to work more than 36 extra hours each month.
It was reported earlier that Apple’s iPod OEM paid very little to the workers and provided very poor working conditions for them in their Chinese factories.
China CSR
State-run China Daily keeps repeating the old and inaccurate allegations, probably because Foxconn is not a true “Chinese” company.
Foxconn ($7B in sales) is a public company based in Kowloon (NT), Hong Kong, and is a part / subsidiary of a larger public Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, Ltd. (also trading on U.S. stock exchange - HNHAF). Hon Hai is by far the largest EMS contract manufacturer in the world, with annual sales over $60B.
Hon Hai’s list of customers include Apple, Cisco, Dell, Nokia (handsets), Sony (PS3, TV panels and assembly), Microsoft (Xbox) etc. Hon Hai / Foxconn has manufacturing plants in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan and many other countries as it expands its manufacturing capacity organically and through acquisitions; recently they bought PC-making plants in Hungary, Mexico and U.S. from large U.S. EMS company Sanmina-SCI, as well as 90% of Sony (which retained 10%) U.S. / North America LCD TV Bravia operations in Baja California.
Another subsidiary, Premier Image Technology has operations in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan; it’s one of the largest manufacturers of digital cameras for Japanese consumer electronics companies. In 1999 Premier established a “Camera Town” complex in Foshan, in China’s Guangdong province, encouraging suppliers to set up plants nearby.
Another Hon Hai subsidiary, FoxSemicon, is working with U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Applied Materials to develop products for solar energy manufacturing equipment. In 2007 the company announced plans to invest $5 billion over period of 5 years in production facilities in Vietnam.
Hon Hai is building automotive market in China (auto-connectors). Company also manufactures smartbooks and e-book readers - almost 80% of the e-book readers made in the world, including the Amazon Kindle reader, are made by Hon Hai.
In 2006 British newspapers reported the company was making iPods for Apple in a massive Chinese production complex where workers were paid less than those in similar facilities and were forced to work overtime to fulfill demand. Apple’s audit found that working conditions at the Hon Hai facilities in China were satisfactory; the contract manufacturer agreed to restrict work weeks to 60 hours. (Under Chinese labor law, maximum overtime currently allowed in China is 72 hours per week during peak production, not to exceed period of 90 days).
Also see my post #14 about “mental pressure” or “work pressure” and suicides at France Telecom, hardly a slave labor company.
Maybe the state-run China Daily can call to unionize the “low-paid” workers of Taiwanese companies in China who have to work overtime (which they can refuse by individual contract) to satisfy demand for delayed rollout of Apple products and other greedy capitalist imperialist Western companies.