Amazon Not Paying Workers in China

Amazon China
Amazon China (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
By M. GraceJune 11th, 2018

Amazon has admitted that thousands of agency workers in China were hired and paid illegally.

The US giant company issues a statement regretting the issues following the investigation of Observer and US-based China Labor Watch into their unethical and illegal working conditions in their supplier factory in Hengyang.

Amazon admitted and revealed that their auditors visited Foxconn factory in March and found out that it had hired an illegally high number of agency workers and was not paying them properly for working outside duty hours.

Agency staff in China do not get holiday or sick pay and can even be laid off without wages during lulls in production. It can be recalled that China changed its labor laws in 2014 to limit their use to ten percent of any workforce attempting to stop companies exploiting them to cut their costs.

The China Labor Watch investigation was published on Sunday stated that more than 40 percent of the staff in the Foxconn factory were agency workers.

"Amazon takes reported violations of our supplier code of conduct extremely seriously. In the case of the Foxconn Hengyang factory, Amazon completed its most recent audit in March 2018 and identified two issues of concern," Amazon said in a statement.

"We immediately requested a corrective action plan from Foxconn Hengyang detailing their plan to remediate the issues identified and we are conducting regular assessments to monitor for implementation and compliance with our supplier code of conduct. We are committed to ensuring these issues are resolved," the company added.

Li Qiang, Executive director of China Labor Watch wrote to Amazon's chief executive setting out the findings. Kara Hartnett Hurst, Amazon's head of worldwide sustainability replied and said that they will ensure the well-being of the factory workers.

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