wasnt there a story by an undercover reporter who got into the factory and reported that well it was pretty much ok and better than most other chineses factories!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/u...ng-conditions/
a few quotes
"Each employee would sign a 'voluntary overtime affidavit,' in order to waive the 36-hour legal limit on your monthly overtime hours. This isn't a bad thing, though, as many workers think that only factories that offer more overtime are 'good factories,' because 'without overtime, you can hardly make a living.'"
"This super factory that holds some 400,000 people isn't the 'sweatshop' that most would imagine. It provides accommodation that reaches the scale of a medium-sized town, all smooth and orderly."
"Each employee would sign a "voluntary overtime affidavit," in order to waive the 36-hour legal limit on your monthly overtime hours. This isn't a bad thing, though, as many workers think that only factories that offer more overtime are "good factories," because "without overtime, you can hardly make a living." For the workers desperate for making money, overtime is like "a pain that can breathe:" without it, the days without money make them "suffocate;" with it, the restless work would only add more "pain" to the body, thus aging quicker. Most of the time they staunchly choose the latter, but even the right to choose such isn't available to all. Only those with the seniors' "trust," with good connections, or those in key positions, can often get to work overtime."
heres a post in the comments that made me think
"I was waiting for the plot twist in this secret "undercover" article that was going to reveal some atrocity or gross neglect for safety. Yet it never came...
I think the author was trying to illicit a negative reader response to the disparity between workers' wages and the retail price of products they manufacture. There are numerous reasons this disparity exists, the most prominent being that China has fixed the value of its currency against the U.S. dollar. This results in Chinese companies being able to sell goods which 1.) Can enjoy high demand due to low costs while 2.) Incurring no risk of the Chinese Yuan strengthening in value and reducing the amount of product that foreign nations can purchase (specifically the United States). Unfortunately, I'm not quick to shed a tear for the price disparity. Buyers (across the world) are always looking for the best price and China is willing to make it happen - like it or not, this is THEIR culture to form and shape as they see fit. They are very hesitant to blindly embrace the norms and values of North America or Western Europe.
The conditions the author described actually sounded rather innocuous - were we supposed to be appalled because the workers moved at a brisk pace and squeezed between some boxes to read a sticker? Perhaps overtime is becoming offensive in certain cultures? I'm only 26 years of age yet I've worked at several jobs in the last 10 years where 20-40 hours of overtime per WEEK was normal. The workers in the article were waiving a limit of 36 overtime hours per MONTH and, unless I read the article wrong, they were being paid OVERTIME for those hours. Furthermore, it sounded as though these workers were EAGER to work the overtime.
China is having its own "industrial technology revolution" of sorts, much like America and Europe centuries earlier - a generation of citizens sacrificing their lives in the hope of a better future for their offspring. Nations like the United States, the primary buyer of the product mentioned in this article, do not gather their wealth in one generation. It takes years of personal and generational sacrifice to give their offspring just a little more than they had.
Perhaps the author should have visited a Chinese textile mill - that "undercover" mission would have dropped more than a few jaws.