Stuff to Think About

High Tech Misery in China: The Dehumanization of Young Workers Producing Our Computer Keyboards →

dailymeh:

A description of the working conditions at the Meitai Plastics & Electronics factory in China:

Two thousand workers, mostly young women, produce computer equipment including keyboards and printer cases for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM.

Workers are prohibited from talking, listening to music, raising their heads, putting their hands in their pockets. Workers are fined for being one minute late, for not trimming their fingernails—which could impede the work, and for stepping on the grass. Workers are searched on the way in and out of the factory. Workers who hand out flyers or discuss factory conditions with outsiders are fired.

The young workers sit on hard wooden stools twelve hours a day, seven days a week as 500 computer keyboards an hour move down the assembly line or one every 7.2 seconds. Workers are allowed just 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, repeating the same operation 3,250 times an hour, 35,750 times a day, 250,250 times a week and over one million times a month.

The assembly line never stops, and workers needing to use the bathroom must learn to hold it until there is a break.

All overtime is mandatory, with 12-hour shifts seven days a week and an average of two days off a month. A worker daring to take a Sunday off—which is supposedly their weekly holiday—will be docked 2 ½ days’ wages. Including unpaid overtime, workers are at the factory up to 87 hours a week.

The workers are paid a base wage of 64 cents an hour, which does not even come close to meeting subsistence level needs. After deductions for primitive room and board, the workers’ take-home wage drops to just 41 cents an hour. A worker toiling 75 hours a week will earn a take-home wage of $57.19, or 76 cents an hour including overtime and bonuses.

Workers are locked in the factory compound four days a week and are prohibited from even taking a walk…

One worker summed up the general feeling in the factory: “I feel like I am serving a prison sentence.”

Notes:

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4. cittiiiii reblogged this from dailymeh and added:

   This makes me sad. I wonder how the people are that built my computer…

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