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Apple Exploits Chinese Workers With 72 Hour Work Weeks For Just $1.85/Hour
Apple’s supply chain workers are exploited with low wages and forced overtime.
Credit: File Hippo
Apple has claimed for years that they have worked to eliminate unsafe working conditions and the exploitation of workers in their supply chain, but an investigation into the labor practices of Chinese factories owned by Foxconn and Pegatron revealed that workers are being grossly underpaid and overworked.
China Labor Watch, a non-profit based in New York that increases transparency of conditions in supply chains to advocate for labor rights, conducted the investigation into Apple’s supply chain by analyzing more than 1,200 pay stubs from workers at a Shanghai Pegatron factory. Despite Apple’s public claims that their laborers work no more than 60 hours per week, the stubs revealed that more than 70% of the workers toiled more than 60 hours per week, some up to 72. The only saving grace for these workers is that China’s overtime regulations have a maximum of 36 hours of overtime allowed per month.
The report from China Labor Watch states that young production workers toil for six days a week with 12 hour shifts. They are only paid for about 10.5 of those hours, which also does not include the extra half an hour that they are forced to come in early and stay late for work meetings. The non-profit goes on to say that, “Before overtime pay, workers making the iPhone earn only the local minimum wage of $318 per month, or about $1.85 per hour. This is not a living wage. Even if the factory did not mandate overtime as it does, workers would still depend on their 60-hour workweeks to get by.” While most developed countries offer overtime as an option for workers to earn some extra cash, these factories force workers to stay for mandated overtime. In some cases, workers are allowed to refuse overtime, but are then told that they will get no other overtime for the rest of the month. They then must choose between no overtime or a gross amount of overtime with no control over the schedule.
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Source: http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=9241
