FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK –Recent news reports in China last week revealed that dozens of female child workers were discovered in a Shenzhen-based factory called Click Technology Limited (hereafter “Click”). Upon investigation, local labor officials found great differences between the girls purported ID information and what the girls said during interviews on December 27. The child workers were subject to a number of legal violations, including not being given formal labor contracts, working 12 hours per day, not receiving overtime pay. It is suspected that the girls, most of them around 12 years of age, had been trained by a hiring agent not to reveal either their personal information or that of the agent himself.
More information on this case can be found in China Labor Watch’s summary of a Chinese language article
After learning of the news, CLW visited the Click factory in question to conduct an investigation.
According to the information that CLW investigator obtained, Click mainly produces transformers. Apart from manufacturing its own brand products, Click also produces or used to produce for LG, Lenovo, Skyworth, and ZTE. The factory currently has more than 1,000 workers. They work seven days a week, 11 hours each day, in violation of Chinese labor law which requires no more than six days of work per week and 36 hours of overtime in one month.
CLW discovered that there about fifty to sixty workers from Liangshan Yi Ethnicity Autonomous Prefecture at the factory. Based on what a labor contractor said, the child workers at Click, who came from Liangshan, had been sent back to their hometown on January 1 by the labor department and local police officers. The rest of these Liangshan workers would be sent by the labor contractor to work in another company in Dongguan’s Houjie Shilong area, and they had left the Click on the day that CLW visited the factory.
Because of previous media reports, Click workers were very cautious during interviews with CLW. They said that they knew nothing or responded “I don’t know” to all questions. They were also unwilling to give their phone numbers to CLW. While CLW was talking with the labor contractor about related issues, he was suddenly called away by workers after just a few minutes and never showed up again.