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Article

9 Oct 2017

Author:
Kate Hodal and Peter Bengtsen, The Guardian (UK)

China: New SACOM report alleges student labour exploitation in supply chains of top laptop brands

“Chinese factory supplying major laptop brands accused of student labour abuses” 6 October 2017

A report claims Chinese students are being recruited in their thousands to work long hours in factories that supply some of the leading global laptop brands… student labourers as young as 16 … work 12-hour days on factory production lines, with their funding and graduation at risk if they fail to comply... Interns are believed to comprise about half of the workforce at Quanta’s Chongqing factory, where students’ three-month internships supply a steady flow of “cheap and disposable labour”... Qanta denied the report’s allegations [saying] “after internal verification, we believe that the allegations … are untrue and unfair to the company. There are serious mistakes in the information” … HP told the Guardian: “HP is committed to the highest standards of business conduct and maintains robust compliance programs to ensure our suppliers adhere to HP’s standards everywhere in the world. HP regularly monitors the performance of its partners to review their compliance. Failure to comply will result in appropriate action, including termination.” Apple [said] “it does not have any operations at the Quanta Chongqing facility”. Researchers say weaker law enforcement and labour monitoring by civil society in inland China… means that labour abuses are able to go largely unchecked.

[Refers to Acer, Apple, Foxconn, HP, Quanta Computer, Sony, Wistron]