The Good Electronics Project (http://goodelectronics.org/) is a coalition of NGOs committed to human rights and sustainability in the electronics industry. It utilizes audits to evaluate the conditions of workers in factories which produce electronics and their component parts as well as the environmental sustainability of electronics corporations. The process of audits, usually conducted by SACOM (www.sacom.hk) are conducted in an ongoing fashion in order to evaluate progress (or lack thereof) made in the working conditions of electronics suppliers. While often difficult to determine, SACOM relies on identitifying the multinational companies whose brands are well-known but whose suppliers are obscure. Companies can claim ignorance over the conditions under which the products which bear their brand are produced because they are supplied by hundreds of different factories geographically dispersed and distant from the company headquarters, which themselves supply many different companies. It is answering questions like, "Where are iPods actually made?" that allows SACOM and the Good Electronics project to put pressure on powerful companies such as Apple to insist on better working conditions at the places where their brands' products and components are produced. If the suppliers' buyers are identified, the buyers (like Apple, Samsung, and Nokia) can be held accountable for the conditions of workers at the suppliers' plants. For more information on the environmental and human rights and labor practices of multinational electronics, phone, and computer companies, see the Global Corporations Portalon SourceWatch. There you can find information about the companies under investigation by the Good Electronics Project, their suppliers, labor, environmental, human rights, and other practices, and related resources.
South China Morning Post, October 5, 2008
Human cost of a trendy phone: A Dongguan factory that makes iPhones is hardly the Apple of workers' eyes.
Simon Parry reports
His company is the talk of the town and its newest product is turning Hong Kong's mobile phone market on its head. But Apple executive Tim Mohin is reticent when it comes to talking about a meeting he had in Hong Kong 11 days ago to discuss the iPhone.
"I'm just the guy doing the work," Mr Mohin said by phone from his room at the Grand Hyatt shortly before flying back to Apple's California headquarters last Thursday. "I need to tell you I'm not really authorised to speak to the press, unfortunately."
His reluctance to speak is perhaps understandable. After all, the meeting he had over dinner the evening before was not to discuss the huge success of the iPhone 3G in Hong Kong since its July launch, or the prospect of greatly accelerated sales now that Apple is making unlocked handsets available.
Rather, it was a more sensitive encounter held to discuss allegations of labour abuse in a Taiwanese-owned factory in Dongguan where labour rights groups say the cameras for iPhones and other Apple-branded iPhone accessories are made.
Mr Mohin is Apple's senior manager for supplier responsibility. On the other side of the table were two representatives from the Hong Kong-based pressure group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM).
*PRESS **STATEMENT** ****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ** *
*Workers Silenced While We Talk*
HONG KONG
September 24, 2008
Every second, 36 mobile phones are manufactured. Half of them are made
in China. Most of the mobile phones we buy are produced by female
workers aged 16 to 30.
MakeITfair, an international coalition of SACOM, SOMO, Germanwatch,
Verbraucher Initiative, FinnWatch/ Finnish Association for Nature
Conservation, Karat, IRENE, SwedWatch, Church of Sweden, Fair Trade
Center, ACIDH and Cividep, has investigated labour conditions at six
factories that produce components for *Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG,
Sony Ericsson and Apple’s iPhone* in China and the Philippines. The
research revealed that working conditions there violate national laws,
conventions of the International Labour Organisation as well as the
mobile phone companies’ own codes of conduct on issues such as wages,
working hours and use of hazardous chemicals.
The study, /Silenced to Deliver/, shows that low wages for full-time
work at the factory mean that workers must put up with inhumane overtime
hours in order to make ends meet. The workers often work 10 to 12 hours
per day, six to seven days per week. Some workers fall asleep on the job
or make mistakes because they are exhausted; this in turn leads to wage
deductions. The quick pace of work forces some workers to forego
protective equipment even though they are handling chemicals that may
harm their health.
Health and safety is not only about providing the right equipment,
but also about giving the employees the possibility to use it. Workers
we have interviewed for this report show symptoms that are typical for
mishandling of chemicals. Education and a reasonable work pace are
urgently needed if their health is to be protected, says Jenny
Chan at Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate
Misbehavior (SACOM), which coordinated the research in
China.
In China, the number of strikes and the reports about violations of
labour rights to the authorities has increased significantly the last
few years, a trend that the government has tried to counter by
introducing more thorough labour laws. However, labour inspections and
monitoring are few.
“The whole concept of audits, where an auditor is looking for things
that are not right, creates a difficult situation. The natural
reaction for the audited party is to try to pass the audit and
therefore not to show eventual issues to the auditor. This is a result
of the psychology of audits and not a sign of distrust. Audits can
also never be more than, at best, a snap shot of the situation,”
writes Mats Pellback-Scharp, Head of Corporate Sustainability
Office at Sony Ericsson.
More far-reaching and permanent changes will not come about until the
employees are allowed to organise and openly express their opinions.
Mobile phone companies need to take corporate responsibility for the
conditions at contract manufacturers and sub-tier suppliers. Factory
managers interviewed by makeITfair complain about the inconsistency of
the demands from the mobile phone companies. On the one hand, suppliers
are asked to lower production costs. On the other hand, they are
required to improve working conditions and environmental aspects of the
production, investments that obviously raise costs. The larger suppliers
can often handle these competing demands, if they want to, but smaller
factories further down the supply chain are unable to reconcile them.
Are workers silenced while we talk?
Download and read the full 76-page report, */Silenced to Deliver: Mobile
phone manufacturing in China and the Philippines (September 2008)/*, at
www.makeitfair.org <http://www.makeitfair.org> and www.sacom.hk
<http://www.sacom.hk/>.
Information for consumers who want to take action is available at
http://makeitfair.org/take-
SACOM PRESS RELEASE
On the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) Meeting, California, June 10 - 12, 2008 High Tech - No Rights? A One Year Follow Up Report on Working Conditions in China’s Electronic Hardware Sector (May 2008) by Jenny Chan, the Research Team of Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) and Chantal Peyer (Bread for All)
HEWLETT PACKARD: Setting the Pace
DELL: Slowing Down
APPLE: Ripening to Maturity
FUJITSU SIEMENS: Lagging Behind
ACER: Changing Course…
Keep Watching! From the perspective of supply chain labor responsibility, the research team has been most interested in determining whether workers’ daily lives have improved. Between January 2007 and March 2008, the researchers conducted independent surveys with 102 workers in seven factories in the cities of Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Zhongshan in Guangdong Province, southern China. These factories belong to FSP Group, Primax Electronics, Lite-On Group, Tyco Electronics and Volex Group. For our survey, we identified 32 major buyers of various electronic hardware products, namely, Acer, AOpen, Apple, Brother, Canon, Cisco, Compaq, Dell, Epson, Ericsson, Flextronics, Foxconn, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, LG, Logitech, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Nortel, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Siemens, Sony and Toshiba. One year after the launch of the “High Tech – No Rights?” campaign, the research team also asked five premium brands (Hewlett Packard, Dell, Apple, Fujitsu Siemens and Acer) to respond to a questionnaire about social responsibility measures implemented in China in April, 2008. We found that the brands’ responses show widely varying levels of commitment and transparency regarding their production chain social responsibilities. To promote continuous improvements at the surveyed factories in China and to advocate sustainable development in the electronics industry worldwide, we believe the brands and the supplier factories should take the following pro-active steps:
1. Provide regular reports on the progress of corrective actions for public monitoring;
2. Raise workers’ awareness and understanding of corporate codes of conduct through participatory workshops and other effective forums;
3. Engage in social dialogue with the concerned public to facilitate workers’ participation in corporate social responsibility monitoring at the workplace level; and
4. Adopt responsible purchasing practices that enhance labor and environmental standards.
Last but not least, individual and institutional consumers (such as universities and governments) are encouraged to leverage their consumer power to improve working conditions in supplier factories. Consumers can request detailed corporate information from the brands to find out how they use global outsourcing and subcontracting systems to produce their products. National and local authorities also have a special responsibility: by modifying their public procurement policies, they can give crucial support to the fight for improvements in labor conditions.
FOR ONLINE VIDEO, VISIT Switzerland TV (20 MAY 2008) http://www.tsr.ch/tsr/index.html?siteSect=500000&broadcastTypeId=43#program=43;vid=9114024
Emission du 20 mai 2008, 20:10
1. Made in China: les ordinateurs de la honte [26:17 min.]
2. Voyage à Hong-Kong et en Chine [17:06 min.]
3. Ordinateurs: le test [03:50 min.]
4. Entretien avec Christian Fehlbaum, journaliste à ABE [02:38 min.]
For enquiries:
Jenny CHAN Chief Coordinator, SACOM Website: www.sacom.hk Tel: (852) 2392 5463 Fax: (852) 2392 5463 Email: wlchan@sacom.hk Skype: wlchanskype Mailing Address: P.O.Box No. 79583, Mongkok Post Office, HONG KONG Chantal PEYER Pain pour le prochain - Brot fu"r Alle - Bread for All Avenue du Grammont 9 1007 Lausanne Switzerland Tel: 0041 21 614 77 10 Mail: peyer@bfa-ppp.chStudents and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) SACOM, a Hong Kong-based non-profit organization founded in June 2005, aims to bring concerned students, scholars, labor activists, and consumers together to monitor corporate behavior and to advocate for workers’ rights. SACOM originated from a student movement devoted to improving the working conditions of cleaners and security officers under various universities’ outsourcing policies. The movement created an opportunity for students to engage in activism surrounding local and international labor issues. SACOM is a steering committee member of GoodElectronics, a global network on human rights and sustainable production in the electronics industry. For details about SACOM research reports and campaign activities, please visit our website at www.sacom.hk.
Bread for All Bread for All, the Swiss Protestant churches’ development agency, empowers people to build sustainable livelihoods through over 400 development projects in more than 60 developing countries on three continents. Our aims are to inform and educate the Swiss public about North-South issues, to participate in development policy activities aimed at achieving more equitable international socio-economic structures, protecting Creation, and building peace. Fair trade and fair labor conditions have been a core area of work of Bread for All since 1999. Bread for All was a founding member of the Swiss Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and is still a member of the independent monitoring initiative, Fair Wear Switzerland. Every year, during the 40 days before Easter and in cooperation with Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund, Bread for All organizes a campaign aimed at Catholic and Protestant parishes and the wider public on development policy issues. In 2007, Bread for All launched the “High Tech – No Rights?” Campaign in Switzerland to inform the public about labor conditions in the ICT hardware production sector. Bread for All is member of the international GoodElectronics network.
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