Investigative report of Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City

Primary ethical and legal violations at Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City

Hiring discrimination against people that are age 30 or older, worked in KTVs, have tattoos, and males with long hair.

Pre-work training is perfunctory. All training, including only 10 minutes of safety training, lasts seven hours, falling woefully short of the 24-hour regulation. This is despite the factory having several harmful gases and chemicals involved in production processes.

Workforce composed of dispatch workers. Nine of ten workers are hired through dispatch companies, and these workers must pay illegal fees of between 50 and 300 RMB ($8 to $49) to be hired.

Difficulty resigning and taking leave. Workers’ requests for resignation and leave are often not approved. Even if living far from the factory, a worker must request sick leave in-person.

Quanta hires underage workers without providing specific protections for them; young workers are required to work the same hours and take night shifts like any other workers.

Pre-work physical examination is perfunctory. Items of the examination merely include a tattoo check, blood test, and color blind exam. For the tattoo check, males must take off their shirts in public.

Mandatory excessive overtime. Workers do 12-hour shifts every day, accumulating 80 hours of overtime work per month, over twice the statutory limit. Workers sometimes do not receive a day off in a seven-day workweek, which is illegal under Chinese labot law.

Workers are unpaid for at least 30 minutes of overtime every day, adding up to more than $1.8 million of unpaid wages per month.

Wage delays. Factory pays the workers 13 days after the pay period of has ended.

Factory gates are closed during 12-hour shifts, so workers cannot eat outside despite limited cafeteria food.

Dorms are crowded and poor. Each dorm room houses up to 12 workers, leaving only 2 square meters of space per worker. All male workers living in five dorm buildings must share one public bathroom that requires a walk.

Quanta does not proactively provide safety equipment to workers; workers must ask for it first.

Potential fire hazards. Workers never participated in fire drills or received properly training on fire prevention.

Lack of effective grievance channels. Workers have no idea whether there is a labor union in Quanta, and the group set up to help workers is ineffective.

Abusive management. Team leaders of production lines insult workers in order to pressure them.