In recent months, the heat has been cranked up on Samsung over allegedly lousy working conditions in its assembly plants in China. Hey, if you’re getting to be a bigger player in personal electronics, there is going to be a bigger amount of scrutiny to go along with it. There’s no truth to the rumor that Apple is suing Samsung with a claim that terrible working conditions are an Apple patent.
Samsung has announced results of an audit of plants run by HEG and claims to have found problems, though no underage workers.
From the BBC:
While it acknowledged some of the workers were students and interns, it said their presence was legal since all were over the age of 16.
However, it said it was concerned workers did not have access to a medical clinic, some employees were doing more than nine hours overtime a week – in breach of local regulations, and staff were being fined if they arrived late for work.
So what happens now? Apparently a lot more inspections by Samsung:
The firm added it would complete on-site inspections at 105 Chinese suppliers who exclusively served it, by September. In addition it pledged to check through the paperwork of a further 144 suppliers in the country who made goods for both Samsung and others to see if additional on-site inspections were required.
Samsung also said it would issue new guidelines including codes of conduct and suggested management training for its suppliers.
Now, I really hope I don’t have to spell out the problem here, you guys. I hope that by now you have spotted that it’s SAMSUNG doing the inspecting and if anything was truly, egregiously horrific, would Samsung – trying to claw past Apple in an insanely competitive category – really tell us?
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