hankyoreh

By Lee Jeong-hoon and Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporters

Fourteen-year-old Wu Xiaofang wept as she described being kicked out of the company. She had no idea why she’d been fired from the job she’d started in February. In March, she was on her way to work from her dormitory when she tripped on the stairs and hurt herself. The company refused to allow her time to receive medical care or any paid leave from work. All she could do was rest up in the dormitory. Ultimately, she ended up with six days of work docked from her wages. Her injuries remained painful, and in May she requested sick leave again. The company refused. Back to the dormitory it was, with another three days taken out of her wages that month. Her workplace was HEG Electronics, a Samsung Electronics subcontractor based in the Chinese city of Huizhou, Guangdong province.

China Labor Watch, an NGO based in the United States, announced on its home page on August 7 that the company had at least seven minors under 16 years of age doing dangerous labor.

In a telephone interview August 8 with the Hankyoreh, the group’s founder, Li Qiang, emphasized the responsibility of subcontractor employers like Samsung for the poor working conditions at Chinese factories.

“Foxconn may be notorious for its poor working conditions, but at least they didn’t hire children,” Li said, referring to an electronic manufacturer that contracted with Apple. “Companies like Samsung need to root [these practices] out through rigorous investigations of their subcontractors.”

Li said he was stunned when he saw the report from an investigator who was employed at the factory for a two-month period beginning in June. “This person wasn’t able to see the whole factory, but they had enough underage workers that you didn’t have to look very hard to find them,” he said.

Li added that the situation was even more serious than the one at Foxconn, which was the subject of recent attention for its treatment of workers.

“Things have gotten better at Foxconn with all the social scrutiny, but there is a lot that still needs to be improved at Samsung Electronics subcontractors,” he said. As an example, he noted that Samsung subcontractors have their employees working 66 hours a week compared to Foxconn’s 60, and pay just 750 RMB (US$118) a month, half the wages at Foxcoon.

During the months of June and July, China Labor Watch had one of its investigators working at the factory and another two interviewing workers on the outside. The company’s work involves producing mobile phone parts and assembling DVD players for Samsung Electronics. The investigation found a total of seven workers under the age of sixteen, a violation of Chinese labor law. The group also said child labor was a routine practice, though precise figures were unavailable.

Machines on HEG’s main production line bear labels reading “fixed asset of Samsung.” There are around two thousand workers there, some minors among them. Roughly fifty employees affiliated with Samsung Electronics also work there.

The underage workers blend in with professional school students who have come to do internships on their summer break. Teachers at the schools typically find work for both groups. According to the report, both students and workers confirmed that underage employees were working in packaging, and child labor is believed to be taking place at other factories as well.

Neither the underage workers nor the interns have contracts, either. The report quoted students as saying that the company prepared contracts with schoolteachers and did not check the students’ ages or identities.

All that awaits these workers at the end of the month is a thin envelope. Earning paltry wages of 8 RMB per hour (about US$1.25), they aren’t guaranteed any overtime pay. They also receive deductions of 30 RMB (US$4.70) for water and electricity at the dormitory, while minors have to pay 200 to 300 RMB (US$31-$47) in brokering costs. Workers are on the job eleven hours a day, six days a week, for a total of 26 to 28 days a month. Most have to remain standing while they work.

Samsung Electronics expressed consternation about the report. Two visits to the workplace earlier this yet had uncovered no examples of child labor at HEG.

“Obviously, the company in question must have taken precautions before they arrived for the survey,” said an official with the electronics company.

The report goes some way in explaining why Samsung would not have found anything. The company uses an investigator called Intertek to examine working conditions at its subcontractors, but that business is not entirely trustworthy. In its report, China Labor Watch said Intertek’s monitors had been found taking bribes from factories to look the other way on illegal practices, with one previous inspection report nullified for just this reason.

Some observers said Samsung was not aggressive enough in its workplace inspections. “Often, a subcontractor sees it as unnecessary interference when you are aggressive with your demands about working conditions or health and safety issues,” explained an electronics company official.

“We need to change the way we look at these things.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]