The US giant Apple has learnt that the employers at several Chinese factories that manufacture different gadgets for iPod and iPhone employed teenagers under 16. It is against the Chinese law to employ people under age.
At least 11 teenagers worked at 3 Chinese plants, and to hide the fact the employers made false accounts. Apple has arranged reviews of the staff and announced that children do not work at such factories any longer. Analysts think that Apple managers may have been unaware of under-age employees. Here’s Sergei Vasin, an analyst of the Investment Сompany Metropole: “It is not unusual for Americans or Europeans to care nothing about who their suppliers employ. What they’re after is to get quality product, and that’s what the manufacturers are for. I don’t think that people at Apple knew about this situation.”
Meanwhile, from time to time violations of labour law in China are reported, even though the Chinese laws are quite severe. Investigating the situation Apple learnt that teenagers worked a 6-hour week instead of 49 hours. Employees at not less than 24
Chinese plants were underpaid. Mikhail Zhukov, a lawyer at the legal consultancy “Justice” thinks that the rights of both adults and teenagers are at times at peril: “Unfortunately, this is so. First, it’s the human factor with too much vacant workforce. Second, it’s the maltreatment of the rights of children and teenagers some businessmen place at their production lines.”
Apple has its own plants in Taiwan, Singapore, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and, of course, the United States. Quite regularly it investigates working conditions and accommodation of the staff of these plants. According to the company, that was not the first case of violations of labour laws and employment of teenagers in China.
Will it be the last one, we can all wonder?
By the way, violations of labour law is not the only thing Apple blames its eastern suppliers for. According to its president Steve Jobbs, it is now a proven fact that the Taiwanese HTC company, that claims that by 2013 it will be one of the three biggest smart phone and communicator producers in the world. But it illegally uses 20 of Apple patents related to the user’s interface of iPhones and iPods. Of course Apple will try to prevent counterfeit HTC products from selling on the US market.
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