International Business
Despite a Pledge by Samsung, Child Labor Proves Resilient
DONGGUAN,
China — After work, the three teenage girls giggle and pull at one
another’s hair. But when questioned, they admit their common secret:
They use false papers to work illegally here at the factory that makes
mobile phone components for one of the world’s biggest brands, Samsung.
They
are 14 and 15 years old, below the legal working age in China. A few
weeks ago, they were living at home with their parents in a small
village a six-hour drive from here, finishing middle school.
“We
also worked at a factory last summer,” said one of the girls, who all
spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of getting fired. “But it
was much worse. We were making Christmas ornaments, and some workers got
huge blisters on their hands.”
The
presence of at least three child workers at the factory in southern
China casts a cloud over the labor practices of Samsung and its
suppliers.
A
little more than a week ago, Samsung, the South Korean electronics
giant, said in an annual review of conditions at its manufacturing
centers that it had found no evidence of under-age workers or child
laborers in its global supply chain. In recent years, Samsung has
promoted its efforts to monitor and evaluate suppliers and manufacturing
operations around the world, noting that the policies were aimed at
protecting workers and preventing minors from being hired.
For
instance, even though the legal working age in China is 16, Samsung
considers that too young, and so its suppliers are instructed not to
hire workers under 18. To ensure they do not cheat, Samsung says, it has
forced all of them to install a sophisticated facial recognition system
on factory sites.
But
on Tuesday morning, the three young girls met with a reporter from The
New York Times after they were initially identified by the labor rights
group China Labor Watch. Near their factory here in Dongguan, they
explained how easy it was to work for a company that supplies Samsung.
According
to the girls, they were part of a “labor dispatch system” that often
funnels child laborers to factories during the summer to help meet a
surge in orders that comes just ahead of the fall and winter shopping
seasons in the United States and Europe. They were hired as temporary
workers, they said, and paid through an agency that has recruitment
channels in poor regions.
After
they told their story, the three girls locked arms and walked past the
security guards and into the Shinyang Electronics factory, which employs
more than 600 workers in Dongguan, one of China’s biggest manufacturing
centers.
“As
part of our pledge against child labor, Samsung routinely conducts
inspections to monitor our suppliers to ensure they follow our
commitment,” Samsung said in a statement. “We are urgently looking into
the latest allegations and will take appropriate measures in accordance
with our policies to prevent any cases of child labor in our suppliers.”
The
situation at the factory in Dongguan underscores some of the challenges
multinational corporations face in sourcing goods from here. Wages and
working conditions in China have steadily improved over the last decade.
But ensuring that supplier factories comply with guidelines set by
global brands, as well as China’s labor laws, is difficult, even though
larger factories are regularly audited by outside inspectors.
Many
global brands have struggled with labor problems in their Chinese
operations. In the last few years, Apple has come under scrutiny in
China over labor and safety problems, notably a spate of worker suicides
and unrest at facilities run by its biggest contract manufacturer, the
Taiwanese company Foxconn.
Apple
declined to comment for this article, but the company has said it has
taken steps to address labor issues in its supply chain, including
deeper audits on its partners and a program that punishes suppliers that
hire under-age workers.
Now, Samsung — whose smartphones are popular worldwide — is also the target of labor rights activists. In a report
released on Thursday, China Labor Watch, which is based in New York,
accused Samsung of allowing a supplier in Dongguan to hire under-age
workers, cheating those workers on pay, denying them overtime wages and
failing to give them government-mandated labor contracts.
“After
allegedly inspecting hundreds of Chinese suppliers, Samsung did not
find one child worker,” China Labor Watch said in a statement released on Thursday.
“Yet in just one Samsung supplier factory, C.L.W. has uncovered several
children employed without labor contracts, working 11 hours per day and
only being paid for 10 of those hours.”
For
the last decade, labor rights groups have tried to draw attention to
labor abuse and health and safety violations in some of China’s biggest
factories. They often send young activists to work undercover in the
workshops, document conditions, secretly interview workers and examine
their pay stubs and employment contracts.
In
the Samsung case, a young activist at China Labor Watch was hired by
the Dongguan factory and began collecting evidence and making friends
with workers suspected of being under-age. According to the account by
the labor rights group, the activist ate with the three young girls, and
also with two young boys who were believed to be under-age, and
secretly recorded their conversations.
The
activist also took photographs of conditions inside the Shinyang
facility, which is owned and managed by a company in South Korea. The
Dongguan factory now works exclusively for Samsung to produce plastic
components for mobile phones.
A
Shinyang spokeswoman, who gave her name as Ms. Fang, said in a
telephone interview on Wednesday that Samsung audited the company on
June 25 and that the auditors found no evidence of workers below age 18,
let alone 16.
Samsung
says in its own exhaustive audits of hundreds of factories in China
during the last two years that third-party auditors found not a single
under-age worker. But a Samsung spokeswoman says the company is now
conducting its own investigation into the Shinyang facility.
According to its annual sustainability report,
which includes a review of human rights and labor conditions at its
global centers, Samsung says it has “zero tolerance” for child labor and
could “suspend transactions” with suppliers that do not comply with its
rules.
In
its 2014 report, released on June 30, Samsung acknowledged weaknesses
in its supply chain. For instance, the report said that a majority of
the facilities Samsung had audited in China failed to comply with the
country’s law on the maximum hours of overtime workers are permitted,
which is 36 hours a month. The company said it was trying to rectify the
situation.
If
Samsung verifies that at least three young girls were working at its
supplier factory, experts say that would cast some doubts on what the
company considers stringent audits, including the use of facial
recognition software to determine whether the faces of workers matched
their government-issued identity cards.
According
to the three young girls, they began working at Shinyang on June 30,
just five days after the Shinyang factory says it was audited. They said
they were hired as “temporary workers,” given fake ID cards and asked
to work the most difficult shift, 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., and then to
put in an additional three hours of overtime, six days a week.
The
work was grueling but tolerable, they said. The girls complained that
they were paid about $1.20 an hour because they had been hired by a
middleman or “labor dispatch company.” A typical worker, they said, was
paid $1.45 an hour. Labor rights activists say this is an increasingly
common way factories reduce costs and skirt the labor law.
China
Labor Watch said the girls were allowed to avoid the facial recognition
system, which is supposed to help prevent under-age workers. And when
asked how the factory could provide them with false government-issued ID
cards, one of the girls said: “The factory can just borrow real
identification cards from other factories to register us. And the system
for checking employees as they enter the factory is not that strict.”
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