The report shows poor working conditions, lack of safety, discriminatory hiring policies and low wages, as well as environmental hazards. It follows an earlier report in 2014, which also highlighted many problems.
With the 2017 report, China Labor Watch brought up the issues at Catcher with Apple. The company responded by saying the the factory had undertaken and passed over 50 audits.
The investigation was started again after an incident of toxic gas poisoning at one of Catcher’s workshops in May 2017 resulted in the hospitalisation of 90 workers, five of which went to intensive care. CLW said it identified major issues at Catcher regarding occupational health and safety, pollution and work schedules. A committee then went to investigate. They discovered that the factory’s toxic wastewater was put directly into the public sewage system.
They also discovered a change in the scheduling system that meant workers had to work weekends, with no overtime, in a "seven shifts, six rotations" work schedule, costing them over USD 75 per month. Workers are responsible for paying for their physical examination and do not get one either when they resign, avoiding potential data on occupational disease despite very polluting and very loud working conditions.
Worker training lasts one hour instead of the stipulated 24, with little said on risk factors and little equipment for physical protection. For example, workers are provided only with cotton gloves for working with cutting fluid, resulting in the skin around the hand peeling off, or of cutting fluid getting in the worker’s eyes.
Resigning is difficult, and wages only distributed on the 5th of the following month, creating very harsh, quasi-slave holding conditions. Factory doors open narrowly (30 cm) creating another type of hazard. Workers are expected to work 10 hours per day, six days per week, with other violations covering social insurance, unsanitary conditions at the factory cafeteria resulting in illness, and extremely poor dorm conditions. Workers are not allowed to print out a copy of their attendance records.
Bloomberg also looked into the matter, confirming the poor working conditions, and the poor safety and dorm conditions. They also contacted Apple, with a spokesperson saying the company has its own employees at Catcher facilities, but sent an additional team to audit the complex upon hearing of the CLW’s impending report. After interviewing 150 people, the Apple team found no evidence of violations of its standards.
Catcher, which gets almost two-thirds of sales from Apple, said in a separate statement it too investigated but also found nothing to suggest it had breached its client’s code of conduct.
