Labor dispute erupts at Apple’s factory in Shanghai, thousands protest
Apple’s foundry in Shanghai, a Taiwanese-owned company “Chang Shuo Technology” outbreak of labor unrest. Thousands of temporary workers, worried that the transfer would affect their subsidies, gathered at the factory last Saturday (19) to protest, and the scene was once chaotic. Some legal professionals condemned the Chinese Communist authorities for being biased in favor of enterprises and even for not complying with the law, forcing workers to take radical measures to defend their rights.
A large number of temporary workers put on masks and braved the cold weather to gather outside the factory of Chang Shuo Technology in Shanghai. As the number of people joining the demonstration increased, a large number of police officers arrived to build a human wall to maintain order, during which the two sides once collided.
It is understood that the Changshuo factory is the main manufacturer of the PEGATRON Group’s iPhone. The workers were dissatisfied with the announcement issued by “Chongshuo”, asking them to transfer from Shanghai to PEGATRON’s factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, or they would be dismissed. The workers were worried that they would not get the job-seeking allowance, commonly known as “return fee”, so they gathered to resist and demanded the management to issue the allowance.
Due to the difficulty in recruiting workers, the mainland factories will give a certain amount of recruitment fees to the agencies, and the agencies will share part of the fees with the job seekers in order to achieve performance. According to the agreement published by the netizens, someone agreed with the agency to clock in at “Chang Shuo” for 55 days, and the return fee reached $11,000.
The protest was temporarily put to rest after PEGATRON’s senior management came out to negotiate. ChangShuo also issued an announcement, promising to re-investigate the will of employees; employees transferred to the Kunshan plant will maintain their original salary and benefits.
Temporary workers who were forcibly transferred worry about the “return fee” without a solution
Li Qiang, head of the international organization China Labor Watch, said that the four-month period starting in September is the peak production season for Apple’s foundry.
Li Qiang: “They have to recruit millions of workers in a short period of time, and they can’t find them, so they have to use many dispatch companies and agencies to help them recruit workers on their behalf, and make promises that if you work here, my salary will be higher, for example, if you work for 55 days, during this period, in addition to the normal salary, I may give you 10,000 yuan, or even 17,000 yuan. Wait for this kind of bonus.”
Li Qiang, who is concerned about the incident, expressed his understanding of the workers’ actions.
Li Qiang: “The workers who want to claim their wages are the ones who entered the factory before September and have been working for more than 3 months. 1 month is 22 working days, 55 consecutive working days equals 3 months, that is, by 3 months, the workers found that they could not leave. The factory wants the worker to stay inside the factory, in which case he will not get the ‘return fee’, but also the difference, which is the extra wage per hour. For the worker, 10,000 yuan is not a small amount.”
Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer familiar with mainland labor laws, said that although the labor contract is a mutual agreement between labor and management, it actually contains a lot of “trap clauses”.
Wang Shengsheng: “He has a clause: you have to submit to my work and job deployment. I want you to go from one city to another. He is a living, breathing person. He works in one place. He has his life, his family, and the cost of living. You ask him to go to another city, or even another district in the same city, it will cause him inconvenience in his life and his cost of living will be much higher.”
Wang Shengsheng believes that the scales are often tilted toward the corporate side when Chinese judicial authorities handle labor dispute cases, from the time they are filed to the time they are heard.
Wang Shengsheng: “The court, as a judicial body, sometimes enforces policies much more strictly than the law, for example, ‘the economy is in decline, we have to protect the enterprises’, and the enterprises are already in a strong position in labor lawsuits, and the judiciary enforces the national policy in such a way that the enterprises feel that I have violated the law. The cost is very low. Even if a worker succeeds in initiating judicial proceedings, the outcome is not expected to be good, and this is very demotivating for the worker.”
She said that the inability to organize unions and the lack of independent media make it difficult for Chinese workers to restrain those in power and defend their rights.
Recent Comments