Concerning the rumor of illegal employment at a factory in Hengyang, Hunan, the foundry giant Foxconn responded on June 11th: The company has conducted a thorough investigation. If there is any violation, it will immediately improve the disposal to ensure that all corporate social responsibility standards are implemented. carried out.
A Foxconn factory in Hengyang
On June 10, Reuters reported that after a nine-month investigation of the working environment of a Foxconn factory in Hengyang, a labor-protection organization based in New York, China Labor Watch Weekly, released a 94-page report. The factory is said to have illegally employed 8,000 employees, employees are paid low, and overtime hours are severely exceeding national laws. The factory produces electronic products for Amazon.
According to the report, more than 40% of Foxconn's factories currently employ employees, and the number is as high as 8,000. These people calculate overtime according to normal working hours when they work overtime, not Chinese law and Amazon's 1.5 times salary for suppliers.
The above investigation also found that the factory employees had overtime work for more than 100 hours per month and violated the Chinese legal regulations that the monthly overtime could not exceed 36 hours; the number of temporary workers used in the factory exceeded Chinese laws; employees did not receive appropriate Safety training; employees were asked to go to work 10 minutes in advance, but they were not paid for it; staff quarters lacked necessary fire safety measures such as fire extinguishers.
According to the official website, Foxconn has grown rapidly since it invested in mainland China in 1988. With more than one million employees and the world's top customer base, it is the world’s largest electronics industry technology manufacturing service provider. Since 2002, it has topped the list of China’s top 200 export enterprises. (In 2017, the total import and export volume accounted for 3.7% of the total import and export volume of the mainland). Since 2005, it has become one of the “Fortune” global top 500 companies (ranking 27th in 2017).
Foxconn is the main founder of hardware products of technology giants such as Apple and Amazon. It is known for hiring large groups of employees for large-scale manufacturing of high-end electronic products. However, Foxconn’s employment problems have also been disputed.
The aforementioned report by Reuters also mentioned that Amazon had inspected the plant in March and found that overtime and use of dispatch workers were 'provoking problems'. 'We immediately asked Foxconn to propose an amendment plan,' Amazon said in a statement. The manuscript stated that it is closely monitoring Foxconn's response and its 'compliance with our company's supplier code of conduct. We are committed to ensuring that these issues are resolved'.
According to a report by the British newspaper The Guardian on June 9, Amazon has admitted that it was suspected of illegally employing 8,000 dispatched employees in China and engaged in the production of Echo Smart Loudspeakers and Kindle.