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Article

17 Nov 2009

Author:
Jonathan Adams, Global Post [USA]

Silicon Sweatshops: Shattered dreams

For Filipina workers at the export processing zone here, complaining too loudly about your employer can get you fired...Southeast Asian migrant workers...pay huge fees to brokers and take out crippling loans for a job in one of Taiwan's high-tech parks...They'll clock as many hours as possible, to send money to the families they've left behind in the Philippines...they sleep six or seven to a room in soulless dorms...Wintek...supplies...Nokia...Motorola and Apple...Filipina migrant workers at Wintek reported placement fees, deductions, passport "safe-keeping" and "forced savings"...Apple said it had made such practices a "core violation,"...forc[ing] its suppliers to return to workers $852,000 in illegal placement fees...average placement fees are equivalent to 10 months' salary.