The National Labor Committee from the United States has released a report in which it reportedly calls Dongguan Kunying Computer Goods Company Ltd, a Chinese supplier for Microsoft, a bad place to work.
The U.S.-based organization claims that Dongguan Kunying employs hundreds of child laborers and asks them to work for up to 15 hours a day and seven days a week. NLC says that even before the global crisis, Dongguan Kunying's workers were asked to work up to 97 hours each week. NLC states that despite the long working hours, Dongguan Kunying paid the workers only USD0.65 per hour.
According to Chinese press reports, the NCL report reportedly shows that Dongguan Kunying forbids its workers to talk to each other, listen to music or even go to the toilet during the working hours, and it will ask the workers to clean the toilet (as a punishment) if someone makes a mistake. NCL says in the report that workers do not have any rights in the factory of Dongguan Kunying where China's labor laws are totally neglected, let alone the rules set by Microsoft.
Microsoft says that it has attached great importance to the matter and will take proper measures to correct the illegal behaviors of the Chinese supplier. Microsoft's spokesperson stated that Microsoft is committed to providing fair treatment to all employees, and to this end, the company has made a lot of efforts setting up systems monitoring the corporate social responsibility of its suppliers. What's more, it has entrusted a third party audit program to ensure that all its supplier behavior codes are duly implemented.
Dongguan Kunying is a mouse product OEM for Microsoft and is a supplier to many other electronics companies including Hewlett-Packard, BestBuy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logic and ASUSTeK.