Chinese teens 'like prisoners' in Microsoft tech factory

[n2doc]

Thousands of Chinese teens and young adults work 15 hours a day at 65 cents per hour, prohibited from talking or listening to music, in abysmal conditions at the KYE Systems factory where they assemble Microsoft hardware that is exported to the United States, Europe and Japan.



So reports the National Labor Committee, which on Tuesday released the culmination of three years of incognito interviews and photography inside the infamous Dongguan, China, gadget factories. Though Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, it accounts for about 30 percent of the factory's work, the NLC said.

"We are like prisoners," one worker told the NLC. "It seems like we live only to work. We do not work to live. We do not live a life, only work."

Microsoft said it is taking the claims seriously and has "commenced an investigation."

The workers – mostly women aged 18 to 25 – work from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. They eat horrid meals from the factory cafeterias. They have no bathroom breaks during their shifts, and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.

They sleep in factory dormitories, 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28-inch-wide plywood boards. They "shower" with a sponge and a bucket. And many of the workers, because they're young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC alleges.

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http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/201685.asp

[Ron Green]

1. Slavery is as natural to the Free Market as

addiction.

[Toucano]

4. +1

Outright slaves became share croppers who became wage slaves.

Same shit, different name.

[Dreamer Tatum]

2. Too bad they don't make Apple products - then it would all be worth it

:sarcasm:

[meegbear]

6. +1

[Sherman A1]

12. ?

:shrug:

[Dreamer Tatum]

14. Slavish buyers of Apple products will excuse anything so long as it doesn't slow delivery

of the shiny new Apple toys.

That's my point.

[n2doc]

15. Provide proof or go jump in a lake

This Apple user doesn't excuse their problems. But please, please show me the Wintel machine made (not assembled, made) by good hardworking US Union folks.....

[Dreamer Tatum]

18. So you hold Windows crap to a standard Apple can't meet?

Is the Apple logo the new Union label? I didn't realize.

[n2doc]

19. Sidestepped the question

You implied in your comment that Apple users were more likely to ignore Chinese manufacturing abuses than Wintel users. I want to see the proof.

[Dreamer Tatum]

20. Just a feeling I get when I see 20% real unemployment yet hundreds of people in line

to buy the latest Apple toy...I just get a feeling.

Can you show me where in Ohio they put those little toys together, using unionized American labor?

Maybe it's in Pennsylvania? Michigan?

[Sherman A1]

21. Really?

You have been bestowed with special mind reading abilities?


BTW typed on a Apple (but as a mind reader you already knew that, I am certain)

[virgogal]

3. Isn't this just terrific !!!!! Go,Bill Gates,go.

:sarcasm:

[Speck Tater]

5. The glories of unregulated capitalism. nt

[Toucano]

7. Sickening. n/t

[Brickbat]

8. Frankly, I assume everything that says "Made in China" is produced under conditions like this.

And thinking about that when I'm holding an impulsive purchase helps me put it back on the shelf. There's a lot of shit I don't need, especially if it's put together by slaves.

[arikara]

9. All of the manufactured commodities that come out of China

or any other country where there are sweatshops is made by people working under those conditions. The corporations do not intend to pay a living wage for those making their cheap useless crap period. That includes most everything now from clothing to household to tools to computers. They pretend to have codes of ethics like Microsoft here, then if they get caught slaveholding they just shrug it off and pay any slap on the wrist fine or throw a few more million into whitewashing their image. They don't care, its part of the cost of doing business.

They brainwash the gullible into believing that globalization is raising the standard of living for those people who are working 15 hrs a day and not earning enough to live on, as they are shutting down the industries here, lowering wages and killing off the middle class. Globalization does not help anyone but the corporations and the already wealthy. The entire global system is corrupt and foul, and it can't die soon enough for planet Earth.

/rant

[Brickbat]

10. Right on.

:thumbsup:

[earthboundmisfit]

17. K&R and If I could rec this response, I would.

Well said and spot on.:thumbsup:

[Mari333]

11. knr

[DCKit]

13. The RW's response? "They're lucky to have jobs." n/t

[Brickbat]

16. You'll see that one from free-market apologists here, too. Makes me sick.

[Jkid]

22. My response to the RW:

"Why not you try working in those factories? Try surviving on that wage for at least one month."

[no limit]

23. Sickening. But apple does the same shit, so does virtually every other computer company

and we all still buy their shitty products. How many of you ran out and bough an iPad? On my desk the mouse and keyboard I am using at work is made by microsoft and an iTouch is sitting on my desk. We are all to blame for this.

[Heywood J]

24. Bullshit, Microsoft.

Nobody who makes their products in China should ever be surprised that this is happening in their factories. It's why they chose China to make it - because the use of forced child labor makes the products cheaper for them, and that it's a necessity to hit those price points.