14 DAY TRIAL // Mere months after being accused of withholding worker IDs, exceeding work hour limits, and providing poor living conditions, iPhone assembler Pegatron is facing scrutiny over the death of five workers at one of its plants.
China Labor Watch keeps tabs on Pegatron and how it treats its workers at the factories that assemble iPhones for Apple.
At one of its iPhone 5c assembly plants, as many as five workers have died recently. One of them was a young Chinese boy named Shi Zhaokun, who had been with the company for only a month.
The labor rights watchdog said Pegatron failed to explain these deaths. Shi is said to have died of pneumonia, but it is unclear whether his death had anything to do with the labor and / or living conditions at Pegatron.
“[China Labor Watch says] workers interviewed by China Labor Watch, a nonprofit group that monitors working conditions, have complained about long working hours and harsh working conditions at Pegatron, including some of the same pressures that in previous years led to safety problems at Foxconn Technology, Apple's biggest contract supplier in China,” according to smh.com.au.
Li Qiang, who runs China Labor Watch, said, “Considering the sudden deaths of five people and the similar reason of the deaths, we believe there should be some relations between the tragedy and the working conditions in the factory.”
Pegatron says it forbids its factories from employing workers under 16, but Shi was 15.
“In his only month at Pegatron, he worked nearly 280 hours, often 12 hours a day, six days a week, according to work documents his family kept,” the report adds.
Pegatron reportedly “tried to resolve” the matter by paying his family 90,000 renminbi, which translates into $16,000 (€11,622).
Shi Zhaokun's uncle, Yang Sen, insists that a thorough investigation take place at Pegatron to uncover the truth behind Shi’s death.