Exploiting Workers

[Katherine Brengle]

>> snip

During off-site interviews with SACOM researchers in 2005 and 2006, 82 workers at five Wal-Mart toy factories in Guangdong Province gave detailed accounts concerning wage and hour violations, unsafe working conditions, unsanitary worker housing, harsh punishments and heavy fines, deprivation of labor contract protection, non-provision of social security, illegal firings and suppression by factory management. At four of these factories, some 80 percent of the workers are young rural women migrants aged 18-30, most from the interior provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Jiangxi, Henan, and Hebei. So the oppression and exploitation reported has a clear gendered dimension. All factories had a minimum 6-day, 11-hour regimen, increasing with overtime to 78 hours a week, and "in one month their working hours reached a record high of 336 hours." A 22-year-old female migrant worker described her workday:

We start our work at 7:30 A.M. and then we have our lunch break at 11:30 A.M. Then, at 1 P.M., we punch our time cards and resume work. We have a one-hour dinner break between 5 P.M. and 6 P.M. The long working day is not yet finished. We continue to do compulsory overtime work until 9 P.M. or 10 P.M. Every one of my sisters feels exhausted after working for almost 12 hours. (p. 11)

Most of these workers were earning 600-800 Renminbi monthly (at current exchange rate of 7.6 RMB per $US), despite excessive overtime work throughout the month -- overtime they were obliged to accept when ordered by their bosses. There is no paid sick leave or rest day. Their hourly wage worked out to 2.04 RMB, less than half the legal minimum of 4.12 RMB. Housing is deplorable and canteen food even worse: "Twelve male adults are squeezed into one dormitory room. There is virtually no private or personal space and the communal bathrooms are dirty. Worse still, workers report waiting for one hour on average to get into the shower." More than 30% of their earnings are normally deducted by the employer for accommodation and canteen provisions.

>> continued http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/templer220807.html

How do you feel about this?

[Katherine Brengle]

1. Not nearly as interesting as the porno threads I guess.