Wall Street Journal:
According to investigations by the New York-based watchdog [China Labor Watch], the Shinyang factory hires children and underage students during busy periods and when in “urgent need of labor.” Shinyang makes cellphone covers and parts for Samsung.
The alleged underage workers are usually employed for three to six months, work for 11 hours a day and are only paid for 10 of those hours, the watchdog said in a statement.
The claims follow an annual sustainability report published by Samsung on June 30 in which the company said a third-party audit of 100 of its suppliers in China last year found “no instances of child labor.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether Shinyang was one of the 100 suppliers covered in the audit.
This accusation is in jarring contrast with this paragraph from Samsung’s 2014 Sustainability Report:
Already we hold our manufacturing facilities to the highest labor and environmental regulations worldwide. This year, we also strengthened supplier compliance by reinforcing our Code of Conduct and actively monitoring and managing our dynamic supply chain. Samsung has one top priority: To ensure the health and safety of our employees and the communities where we operate.
I don’t know why this is exactly, but people seem to take anything typed or written down as fact and true. I think it’s some primal evolutionary glitch, and it’s rather epidemic. Maybe people simply choose the path of least resistance.
Samsung has, and will continue, to distort the truth in their quest for self preservation. Unfortunately, I don’t think they possess many scruples. Ironically, however, this is in stark contrast to the Korean people in my life that I know and love. They are very moralistic and share many of the same values as most Americans.
Big companies lie. They all do it. Some more than others. All do it when it is in their best interest.
The media will report on it only when the story has sizzle. In the past they targeted Apple. Apple has a better record than most, but it is still a company (see above).
Now the media can focus on samsung for a while and see that ultimately, they are guilty too.
lets see if they do that. i have my doubts. that some korean company has child laborers has much less sizzle to our domestic US media companies than the story of another US company superstar having child laborers.