Following a series of suicides by Chinese employees at the Foxconn (富士康) plant in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, more than 150 academics and researchers yesterday called for an end to sweatshops and urged the government to stop offering subsidies and economic incentives to companies like Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密).
The petition, which was initiated on June 6 by Lin Thung-hong (林宗弘), associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Daniel Yang (楊友仁), associate professor of sociology at Tunghai University, said comments by Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) that he “hopes everyone will give [Hon Hai chairman] Terry Gou (郭台銘) encouragement” was a form of complicity in corporate exploitation of human labor and encouraged Taiwanese companies to violate labor rights.
Six professors and researchers from the fields of sociology, public policy and others yesterday attended a press conference to petition the government not to turn a blind eye to violations of workers’ rights to avoid harming Taiwan’s international image in the name of economic growth.
“When Yahoo provided its lists [of personal information] to the Chinese government, they were grilled at a congressional hearing [in the US],” Lin said. “However, throughout the entire Foxconn crisis, the people who acted with the most indifference are Taiwanese government officials.”
Lin said Foxconn’s treatment of its workers constituted a form of financial crime, but rather than getting punished, the government is offering subsidies and favorable policies to allow Hon Hai to bring its production facilities back to Taiwan and continue to expand its operations.
Huang Te-pei (黃德北), professor and director at Shih Hsin University’s Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, called Gou “the shame of Taiwan” and said that all advertisements that feature endorsements by Gou should be taken down.
“The Taiwanese government should not encourage Hon Hai to bring its factories back to Taiwan, along with all the social problems associated with its treatment of its workers,” Huang said.
He said that even though Hon Hai had announced wage increases in response to the suicides at the Shenzhen plant, the root of the problem — the almost perpetual overtime that workers must put in if they want to earn enough to support the high cost of living in the city — persists.
Consumers should boycott goods made by companies like Apple, which buys Hon Hai’s products and indirectly contributes to workers’ exploitation, until Apple’s suppliers can make significant improvements in labor conditions, the petition said.
Academics also said that Hon Hai should open its factories to independent academics so they could conduct investigations into working conditions there.
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