
Another Apple supplier seems to be in the crosshairs of the China Labor Group, which is a New York-based labor rights watchdog that alleges wage and safety violations at multiple plants owned by iPhone and iPad partner manufacturer Pegatron. The non-profit detailed Pegatron’s alleged breach of Chinese regulations governing workplace safety, withholding of worker pay, and sub-par living conditions according to Reuters.
According to the CLW, the company is breaching Chinese and International Labor laws, as well as Apple’s own supplier standards, at three factories in Shanghai and Suzhou. From March to July, the workers’ rights group performed an undercover investigation inside factory walls and interviewed almost 200 employees to gather information for the report. The report claimed the following:
The Pegatron factories are violating a great number of international and Chinese laws and standards as well as the standards of Apple's own social responsibility code of conduct.
We strive to make each day at Pegatron better than the last for our employees. They are the heart of our business. That's why we take these allegations very seriously.
Their latest report contains claims that are new to us and we will investigate them immediately. If our audits find that workers have been underpaid or denied compensation for any time they've worked, we will require that Pegatron reimburse them in full.
The Cupertino California company has struggled to deal with reports of these unethical and sometimes illegal treatment of workers by its Chinese partners. This includes the recent accusations against Foxconn involving underage hiring. Recently, Apple has reportedly been looking to diversify its supply chain away from Foxconn, with Pegatron reaping the benefits. It was reported previously that the supplier would take on an additional 40,000 workers to handle production of Apple’s rumored low-cost iPhone model. Current estimates put Pegatron’s workforce to be around roughly 70,000 people. We’ll have to wait and see if Apple does anything with this recent report from CLW regarding Pegatron.
Source: Reuters, The Wall Street Journal
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