Items tagged with working conditions
In response to a report by China Labor Watch last month, Samsung promised to look into working conditions at one of its suppliers, HEG Electronics in Huizhou, China. Now, Samsung is ready to release its findings from that field audit. Although the company didn't find any child labor violations, it did find some things at the facility that weren't up to its standards. More specifically, Samsung found "several instances of inadequate management and potentially unsafe practices" including a system of fines for lateness or absences (which is banned in China), inadequate access to a medical clinic, and instances of overtime that exceeded the legal limit. Samsung has demanded that HEG improve these...
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Another Foxconn employee decided to take his own life, the latest being a 23-year-old who jumped off his company-rented apartment outside of a plant in Chengdu where he worked prior to this death, Reuters reports. Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones, iPads, and tech devices for a number of high profile companies like Apple and Dell, suffered a black eye over working conditions in 2010 when a rash of employee suicides garnered media attention. The suicides continued to mount through part of 2011, though it's been relatively quiet recently following an agreement Foxconn reached with Apple earlier this year to improve conditions. Foxconn vowed to hired thousands to workers to ease the burden of...
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Apple has made available its "Apple Supplier Responsibility 2012 Progress Report" in which the Cupertino company claims it conducted a total of 229 audits, up 80 percent over 2010. More than 100 of those were performed at factories that Apple has never audited before. Facilities that were re-examined "consistently showed fewer violations," and most of them improved their audit scores year-over-year, the company said. That doesn't mean there wasn't any cause for concern. Many violations were still found, including a total of six active and 13 historical cases of underage labor at five facilities. "In each case, the facility had insufficient controls to verify age or detect false documentation,"...
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