China Factory Controversies

There has been a great deal of media about overtime abuses in Chinese factories. Reports of Pegatron workers, one of Apple’s supplier in China and Foxconn, one of China’s largest employers with an estimated 3-400,000 employees in 12 factories in China manufacturing consumer electronic products. Many of the reports indicated that employees work over the legal limit of 36 overtime hours per month, some as high as over 100 hours per month since they work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

As a result of these media exposures, the large factories doing business with high profile multinationals have vowed to monitor their labor standards and adhere with China’s labor law regulations. However, this is not a simple issue, in our previous feature article on “The Mighty Migrant Worker”, the majority of factory employees come to these urban factories to improve their low economic standards. In most cases, they will only earn a few hundred RMB monthly at home and by taking a factory job as described above, they can earn as much as 2,000 RMB a month and with OT double or triple that amount.

As reported by Reuters, a Foxconn 24 year old employee from Hunan, Chen Yamei, has worked there for 4 years and is quoted: “We are here to work not play, so our income is very important. We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours of overtime a month. I tell you this, all lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be more reasonable and that 36 hours would be too little.”

You have to remember these migrant workers are willing to make sacrifices while they are young and with an opportunity to make sufficient money to start a better life, opening a business, supporting family and a large nest egg to get married. They will have no other interest than work for the next 5 years, living in a cramped dormitory with meals and going home once during Spring Festival. Probably saving over 250,000 RMB ($40,000 USD), which is unthinkable if they stayed in their rural village hometown.

So it is a fine line of between economic development and worker abuse and safety in China. In the white-collar sector, many lawyers and medical doctors, especially new interns are subjected to ridiculous working hours but these are not brought to light as an abuse as it is accepted as the norm for the profession. Just make sure that the surgeon that is operating on you is not at the end of a 12-hour shift. A top surgeon at a local Tianjin hospital for example shows up at around 7 am to begin routine rounds of checking patients. Then either handles new patient inquires or surgeries for the rest of the day. After everything is said and done it could easily be 7 or 8 pm before heading home, only to repeat the same routine the next day. Thus overtime is hardly limited to blue collar workers.

Overtime culture between East and West does differ. Money minded migrants may see overtime as the more the merrier. Keep in mind though they will likely say they are working as much as they are “for the family”. Western workers think less in terms of money and more in terms of quality of life. This very well could mean working less, thereby getting paid less, but enjoying more time off.