主题：请大家为农民工做点举手之劳吧：投票富士康为最差的公司 -- 洗心

http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/foxconn/

Summary

The Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn produces high-end equipment for Apple, Dell, HP, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and other global brands. Working under miserable conditions at minimal pay in giant Chinese factories at least 18 workers committed suicide in 2010. All suicide victims were migrant workers in the 17 to 25 age group.

Employees are forced to work overtime on a regular basis and endure systematic repression. They are subject to approval even when they need to go to the toilet. The only labor representation permitted is the company’s own pseudo trade-union. Under massive public pressure, Foxconn promised to increase wages. However, research shows that working conditions have not improved and that, moreover, student interviewees report that at least hundreds of thousands “interns” are forced by their schools to work at Foxconn.

Irresponsible Corporate Behavior

Excessive mandatory overtime, miserable wages, military-style management, and humiliating punishments: despite the public outcry over employee suicides working conditions at Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics supplier, have not improved. In the report "Workers as Machines: Military Management in Foxconn" (October 2010), SACOM, GoodElectronics, and Bread for All conclude that working conditions at Foxconn range from unethical to illegal. The constant growth of the giant company can only be maintained because the pressure for faster and cheaper production exerted by brand name customers is directly passed down to the workforce in the form of increased workloads, rigid discipline and minimal pay.

After the public outcry over the wave of suicides, Foxconn raised the base pay of its assembly line workers to 1200 Yuan (137 Euro) per month—just barely 100 Yuan (11 Euro) more than the region’s absolutely insufficient legal minimum. Depending on the cost of living in different regions a basic living wage would have to be between 1684 and 2293 Yuan (192-261 Euro). After the suicides, Foxconn also announced an overtime limit of 80 hours per month, still more than twice the legal maximum of 36 hours. Attendance at meetings where managers read out production quotas, work targets, and disciplinary notes is mandatory but does not count as time worked.

Failure to meet production quota, assembly errors, or overlong toilet breaks will lead to harsh punishment. To further discipline workers bonus points are cancelled and confessions extracted in front of the assembled workers. Also, workers are verbally and physically intimidated by internal security forces on a regular basis. In meeting high-volume production, student interns are delivered to Foxconn by their schools and work the same overtime hours as regular assembly line workers.

Consequences

The extreme psychological and physical pressure on the young migrant workers and students continues.

Current Status and Demands on the Company

Like its competitors, Foxconn has shifted much of its production for major electronics firms to inner part of China where production cost is lower. Foxconn, other suppliers, and their brand name customers are equally responsible for the systematic and ongoing violation of basic workers’ rights and labor standards. The industry associations Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) must implement their ethical policies and make a joint effort to put a stop to these practices in global production. Guaranteeing workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining is a major first step.