Samsung Investigates Child Labor Claims at Chinese Factory
by Samsung is sending a team to investigate conditions at a supplier’s factory in China, following a report from a labor-rights watchdog that accused the factory of employing underage workers.
Samsung’s inspectors will be dispatched to Huizhou, China on Thursday to address the claims, which were made by China Labor Watch. CLW’s report alleged that HEG Electronics, a Samsung supplier, has been using child labor.
The company has already made two inspections of the facility this year, neither of which revealed any “irregularities,” according to a release.
“Samsung Electronics is a company held to the highest standards of working conditions and we try to maintain that at our facilities and the facilities of partner companies around the world,” reads the company’s statement.
Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in China, having sold 22% of smartphones purchased in the country in the first quarter of 2012. Its newest smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus S III, has already broke shipping records worldwide.
Apple, one of Samsung’s major competitors, previously came under fire for allegedly poor working conditions at supplier Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen, China.
Foxconn workers get paid $1.78 an hour.
Rent is about $17 a month for a dorm room shared with seven other roommates.
Despite low wages and grueling conditions, 3,000 people lined up at Foxconn for an opportunity to work at the factory. According to Nightline, Foxconn's need for more employees to help meet the demand for Apple products is so high that it planned to hire about 80 percent of those vying for a job.
It takes five days and 375 sets of hands to assemble an iPad, according to Nightline.
In only two shifts, workers can make 300,000 iPad cameras.
Foxconn employees use a raw piece of aluminum to form the iPad's exterior design, along with the Apple logo, at a rate of creating 10,000 each hour.
A worker carves the Apple logo for the iPad from the aluminum case for 3,000 devices every shift.
The worker shifts are 12 hours and include two one-hour long meal breaks. Lunch is $0.70 for meat and rice.
Nightline anchor Bill Weir expected most employees to be as young as 13, but noted most were in their late teens.
Suicide nets were installed in Spring 2010 when nine Foxconn workers killed themselves during a three-month time period.
Although 18 employees took their own lives or tried to in recent years, Nightline said Foxconn's suicide rate is well below China's national average.
All images courtesy of ABC Nightline.
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