Study finds horrible working conditions at Microsoft, Dell ODM factory
By Laura June 
posted Feb 11th 2009 9:46AM
posted Feb 11th 2009 9:46AM
Despite the fact that the world economy is suffering from cutbacks in nearly every job sector, factory workers in places such as the Meitai factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong, China -- which assembles and produces keyboards for companies including Lenovo, Microsoft, Dell, HP and IBM -- have been relatively insulated from the downturn, and their jobs secure. The National Labor Committee has conducted a covert operation to investigate the working conditions at the factory, however, and found them to be less than acceptable. The workers -- who arguably are not compensated very well to begin with -- are cheated out of wages for negligible wrongdoing, forced into overtime, fed food that even a Dickens character would refuse, work twelve hours a day seven days a week, and sleep in dorms which are "primitive" (yes, workers live at the factory). The report that the NLC has compiled is quite long, detailed, depressing, and begins, ironically, with a Bill Gates quote. Hit the read link for the full story.
Update: It looks like the source material at the read links is only working intermittently.
[Via Boing Boing]
Update: It looks like the source material at the read links is only working intermittently.
[Via Boing Boing]
You people have to get one in on every story, huh?
When i first read the headline, i was thinking of the horrible working conditions for people in msoft, such as small cubicles, etc..
Not how much people in china are getting paid for making keyboards (rolleyes)
Yeah, engadget's title-relevance suxxor factor just went up another notch - that's 3 horrible title's in the past 2 weeks... Who put them on a strict apple juice diet?
Normally I wouldn't bother to be annoyed by the headline but... Jesus, come on. How about "keyboard factory" instead of MICROSOFT as the first culprit. Damn.
As bad as things sound, remember decades ago when China began pushing industrialization and seeking lucrative Western manufacturing contracts one of their primary cheap labor sources was prisons. Many people were arrested on bogus charges or for minor infractions and sentenced to prisons, which were nothing more than free labor camps (with conditions even worse than these factories).
Reluctantly, the communist government in China has begun to approve limited labor laws to extend some protections to workers. At the same time, you've seen rights of US workers (as well as their salaries) eroding and extremely lax enforcement (if any) of labor safety laws by OSHA. Makes one wonder if, as we sink to 3rd world status, the US may become the cheap labor market in 40 years time. At that time, will the headlines in Asia be about jobs being shipped to the cheap US labor market?
They put on t-shirt uniforms?
shhh, I dont want the price of my keyboards to go up.
Im sorry baby jesus, that was a horrible joke.
I know you were making a joke (I hope), but I personally wouldn't mind having to pay more for a product to know that the people making it are being treated as human beings and not slaves. It is a sad reality that this happens, and the human condition has been so prone to cheap this cheap that, that I don't know if this problem of what I call slavery will ever be corrected. People don't care how the cow was treated just as long as the steak tastes fine, out of sight out of mind.
Then how come iPods and sneakers cost so much? It's not labor.
@Rocketboy,
marketing. they have to pay for the ads and celebrity spokesperson.
I don't feel sorry for these people. There's no shortage of horrible working conditions across the globe...and these people can quit whenever they want.
so you're saying that because it's a global issue, we shouldn't try to address it?
No.... You are the horrible joke, except you are real so that just makes you horrible.
@Brutalgeuse, "and these people can quit whenever they want."
Quit and starve to death? If there are other, better job opportunities available for them, or they can survive after quitting, then I'm pretty sure they will quit or at least strike.
@Brutalgeuse
You're an apathetic idiot.
Yeah, their keyboards are made in the factory across the road and are paid $0.001 more per month!
You know why this hasn't come to light before? Because the company was so secretive, and contrary to belief there are in in fact very few ODM manufacturers and most if not all are in the same area of the same country and will be run in similar conditions.
Is that .001 dollars or .001 cents?
lol @Jim C
I love that video :P
Misleading subject for the win..
Exactly, these are not "Microsoft, Dell, ODM factory" but really oem type factories. These people sell to "Microsoft, Dell, ODM" and others... and this is not new.
Talk about mis information.
Don't get me wrong, those conditions suck and should be fixed, but before we get holier than thou, lets get the facts straight first.
M
everyone understands that this is OEM manufacturing, but should companies stamp their logo on it as a badge of quality and assurance without researching into things, personally I wouldn't want to buy products from factories where people aren't allowed to "whistle why they work". Happy people are productive people AFAIK.
Exactly.
Also, it's not like this is shocking. Everyone knows how workers are treated in those Asian countries and everyone turns a blind eye. If these countries didn't allow labor for so cheap, then companies wouldn't be outsourcing in the first place. These governments are the ones that don't give two shits, so why target these companies as the bad guys.
http://www.eicc.info/membership.html
so I guess this is situation normal, nothing to see here move along.
so is Logitech still cool because that's all l buy?
Calm down, Logitech do NOT posses such an embarassing factory!
They have an entire city of workers (China based).
It is like a Nazi camp minus the gas chambers and "Arbeit macht frei" arches.
/s
Yay?
"Arbeit macht Tastaturen?"
"Horrible working conditions" based on what metric? The American standard or the Chinese standard?
How are their working conditions compared to a factory in a 5-mile radius?
"forced overtime, bad food, worker living inside the factory" is some sort of slavery if it is not slavery at all.
based on the metric of human decency. Since likely all the factories in a 5 mile radius are making cheap crap for western consumption, they are probably all quite similar. This does not, however, mean that that is OK. Common practice is not OK just because it is common.
Working overtime: check doing that here as well 12 hours a day regulary
Sleeping in office: check doing that as well on a regular base
Working in the weekends: check doing that as well thanks my laptop with HDSPA
Being paid shitty: well salary is good... but if I look at the hours its bad
So the problem is the crappy food? Always funny to see crap like this which is rather normal even in the West though we prefer to pack crappy conditions with a nice salary/car. Oh and we like to talk about it, but refuse to quit buying products from the companies who produce this..
Exactly. The place where I work has a facility in China (in Tangxia, a 'suburb' of Dongguan City actually), and most of the conditions are the same. This is -normal- for China. (And yes, I have been there and can speak from firsthand experience.)
-12 hrs 7 days a week-Standard
-'Primitive' dormitories-standard large open area with bunk beds/cubbies and shared bathrooms.
*Side note...they live at the factory because for most of them, their homes are a 10-20 hour train ride away. Rural workers come to earn what is very good pay to them (opposed to farming) and send it back to their families.
-Forced overtime and docking pay-Normal. Hell we have mandatory overtime as demand requires at our stateside facility.
-Food-Okay, not really sure on this one...this could vary. Half the food I ate in China kind of worried me even at nicer restaurants, hehe.
Now, remember, even in China, no job is forced on anyone. The workers do sometimes enter contracts, but never more than a year. This time a year is when most people of the turnover happens, they go back home to the rural provinces for Chinese New Year and don't come back. But filling the empty positions is easy, there are always hundreds of applicants in line (and our facility is just shy of 1000 workers).
I will second Kamokazi's post. I've been over to our suppliers' factories twice (Shunde area).
They have dorms, because the labor comes from rural areas.
At my suppliers, the workers are not required to work 12 hour days, but many actually work longer than that (as work permits). Several of them told me that if they aren't working, they're spending money, and they would rather earn more to be able to send more home.
I am intregued by the food issue, too -- The workers where I went were fed, but it was more of a communal effort, supported by the factory. Perhaps they need to elect someone else to cook - Who knows how to do it.
To people in countries like China, it is preferable to have that job to doing some other things. Check out this article on the New York Times about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html
I'm typing on the exact keyboard they are manufacturing in that picture lol.
-News Flash- These conditions are pretty much a standard in any Chinese factory. Whether the product be shirts to DVDs. Watch the High Cost of Low Prices to get an understanding.
Anytime you buy something made in China, you are essentially paying for government induced slave labor. Feels good doesn't it.
Actually, we're paying for people to get financial freedoms, which in turn, generates social freedoms.
So yes, it sucks that we are more or less paying for slave labor, but with that slave labor that we are paying for, they can increase their education, increase their ability to communicate outside of their immediate region, and in turn, their ability to redress the gov't. Education in villages is a MAJOR issue in China. Also, it's easier to repress an isolated, poor, uneducated populace than it is to repress a connected, financially stable, educated one.
Unless you're willing to go to China yourself, and start fighting for the rights of the workers, ironically enough buying the goods that they made is one of the best things that you can do for them.
@Rocketboy
My thoughts exactly, I hate it when all the hippies start shouting wolf because of the working conditions in third world countries without even trying to offer a solution or an alternative to those "hell jobs". I live in Guatemala and although many people work in conditions that are far away from being considered humane in many developed countries, at least give those workers the opportunity to send their kids to school instead of staying at home working the land with their parents remaining ignorant and uneducated.
A minimum wage of US$8 an hour in the US, Canada or Europe may seem low, but in Guatemala, where 60% of the population live with less than US$1 a day, earning US$8 a day seems like a fortune. So, to all the hippies out there, if you think our minimum wages are inhumane and offend you, please, you're welcome to come to our countries and start generating jobs that earn their workers US$50 a day or STFU!
@Rocketboy: [...] ironically enough buying the goods that they made is one of the best things that you can do for them.
I'm not very sure about it. The point is that only governments - of developed countries - profit most of the voluntary /slavery/.
Do not forget that if some good costs $0.01 to produce in China, after paying import duty suddenly becomes $1 (if not more) ware here.
Essentially the taxes and protectionism common place here forces cost cuts over there. In part because our politicians are afraid to change obviously unsustainable economical model and rigid policies, we are developing now lethal dependency on flexibility of economy somewhere else.
Dummy.. If you start looking upstream, of course it's not a great deal. But the type of changes I'm talking about, in the situation that the workers in China are in, will come from the bottom, not dictated from the top. The amount of money, although worthless here, is enough for someone TO want to volunteer to do this work knowing what the conditions are. It is of value for that person to 'sell' their time. They do this to gain some amount of financial freedom. So, as far as improving the conditions of the worker, the best for them the average joe can do, is help to transport some of our wealth, to them.
The best way to do this is through capitalism.
Additionally, most of these cut corners and massive savings end up in very few pockets.
Click on read site wouldn't even load to read the story.
Apparently is better to work illegally in USA instead to work legally in China.
I read an article yesterday saying that lots of Mexicans are going BACK to Mexico because they can't find jobs in the US now that theres been so many job cuts.
Apparently is better to work illegally in USA (if you can find a work) instead to work legally in China.
:-P
American workers are in a pinch, they are losing jobs cause illegal workers, they are losing jobs because those H1B guys, they are losing jobs because their offshoring and there are closing jobs because the unfair working condition in China.
Welcom to capitalism. Its the American dream - to swim in piles of money you've extorted from others.
...from someone who made their avy using mspaint.
!?
that was to the iEye jerkoff before his comment got deleted
I agree about the "how does their situation compare to a 5 mile radius" and also "does it not meet American standards or Chinese standards". Those are both good questions.