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200 hrs overtime a month in Chinese factories..?
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Inside toy making plant in Guangzhou, China
China has enacted a land mark law about 18 months ago to ensure job protection and better conditions at the work place in a bid to insulate the workers from the effects of global melt down. Yet, job conditions have worsened across the country particularly in southern China’s export oriented factories, which produce many of America’s less expensive retail goods, say media reports.
Factories are ignoring or evading the new law with China’s exports reeling and unemployment rising. And the authorities fear that a crackdown on violators could lead to mass layoffs and even social unrest. Already an estimated 20 million have lost jobs due to global meltdown.
“The economic downturn has given regulators the perfect excuse to ignore the law,” says Zhang Zhiru, director of the Shenzhen Chunfeng Labor Dispute Service, a nonprofit group that supports workers.
But workers are fighting back, according to the New York Times. The number of labor disputes in China doubled to 693,000 in 2008, the first year the law was in effect, and are rising sharply this year.
Recently, 7,000 workers went on strike at a factory that supplies some of the world’s biggest technology companies, saying they were being cheated on overtime wages and fed unsanitary food. Such practices are common place in China, according to experts who said workers are often forced to put in up to 200 hours of overtime a month.
A flipside of Chinese boom is sub-contracts to shadow factories by many exporters to duck the law. Heather White, a consultant who has inspected factories in China for big American companies, said these shadow factories are untouched by the authorities.
China Labor Watch, a non-profit group based in New York, investigated conditions at one such factory. It found children as young as 13 working in the factory. Another distressing fact was not many workers signed the job contract with the management which could have given them job security and other benefits.
Factories are ignoring or evading the new law with China’s exports reeling and unemployment rising. And the authorities fear that a crackdown on violators could lead to mass layoffs and even social unrest. Already an estimated 20 million have lost jobs due to global meltdown.
“The economic downturn has given regulators the perfect excuse to ignore the law,” says Zhang Zhiru, director of the Shenzhen Chunfeng Labor Dispute Service, a nonprofit group that supports workers.
But workers are fighting back, according to the New York Times. The number of labor disputes in China doubled to 693,000 in 2008, the first year the law was in effect, and are rising sharply this year.
Recently, 7,000 workers went on strike at a factory that supplies some of the world’s biggest technology companies, saying they were being cheated on overtime wages and fed unsanitary food. Such practices are common place in China, according to experts who said workers are often forced to put in up to 200 hours of overtime a month.
A flipside of Chinese boom is sub-contracts to shadow factories by many exporters to duck the law. Heather White, a consultant who has inspected factories in China for big American companies, said these shadow factories are untouched by the authorities.
China Labor Watch, a non-profit group based in New York, investigated conditions at one such factory. It found children as young as 13 working in the factory. Another distressing fact was not many workers signed the job contract with the management which could have given them job security and other benefits.
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