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PROBLEMS FACED BY LOW COST LABOR IN CHINA
Workers are routinely forced to work excessive hours, labor under terrible conditions, suffer frequent injuries, are exposed to dangerous chemicals, and live in dormitories that are firetraps. Some work twelve-hour shifts, seven day work weeks, with only two trips to the bathroom a day. Some aren’t allowed to leave their factory compound. Some female workers are sexually harassed by their bosses.
A group called the National Labor Committee reported that the Dongguan-based KYE Systems Corp factory, which produces web cams, mice and X-Box controllers for Microsoft, treated its workers poorly. A report by the group claims that the 16- and 17-year-olds work 15-hour shifts for about 50 cents an hour, are prohibited from talking or going to bathroom while working, sleep in cramped 14-person rooms and only allowed to leave factory grounds at certain times.
Many factories have enforced overtime that goes late into the night on the weekend that defy a 1995 law that limits the work week to five days. Workers are routinely defrauded out their wages, fired if they try to organize a union, forced to work double shifts, and denied benefits that were promised them. In January 2007 a Japanese-owned light manufacturing factory closed, owing the 800 workers that were laid off $625,0000 on in overtime, insurance premiums and severance compensation.
One study showed that 61 percent of the workforce in Guangdong province routinely works seven-day work weeks and many workers work 10- and 12-hour days. Even when wages are fair they barely enough to live in China's increasingly expensive cities. Workers who get paid $160 a month in cities where new apartment can cost $300,000 or more are understandably having a hard time just paying their expenses. Chinese labor activist Han Dongfang wrote in Global Viewpoint, “Many factory workers have to put in more than 60 hours of overtime each month just to get by, performing the same robotic task time and again for hours on end without a break and no social interaction . No one can stand this mind-numbing and dehumanizing work 12 hours a day, six days a week.”
There are also many people that prey on the new arrivals: unscrupulous job brokers, fraudulent training programs and numerous scams aimed at cheating the poor and naive or even kidnaping women into prostitution. Migrant workers are often hired at the bus and train station by recruiters who promise them good wages which often don’t materialize. Some quickly become disillusioned by how little money they get for such long, hard work and return home. Some people get trapped, earning so little they can’t leave. Other get fried because of injuries or illnesses sustained in the job and the make their living mugging people and extorting money or some other criminal activity.
Also see Separate Article, DANGEROUS CHINESE FACTORIES AND MINES
You want me to blanjah you Chi Ki Tua Lanjiao also? We are 1st World Cuntry ok! :oIo:
