The city of Huizhou just released a statement saying that HEG Electronics was not found to have employed child laborers, imposed excessive work hours or to have withheld workers’ wages. However, the situation the official statement described is not consistent with the facts.
1. As far as we know, the official investigators didn’t interview the relevant workers, they judged the workers’ ages only by their identification card. According to our investigation, these child laborers are either using falsified identification card or using the IDs of others.
2. The official statement also stated that the company did not forcefully impose excessive work hours nor withheld workers’ wages. This is contrary to our investigation findings. We found that the workers are often required to stand and work for 11 hours a day.
Our investigators told us that the factory is driving off the child laborers, as a lot of young workers are leaving the factory.
The government investigation statement further proves that one of the reason the factories could illegal employ workers is that they are protected by the local government.
The image on the right (click to enlarge) is the paystub for the female child worker we interviewed for this investigation— Wu Xiaofang (This is an alias as well as the name she used on her fake ID in order to get into the factory to work). She told our investigator that she was 14 years old. This paystub and its wealth of information is strong evidence in support of our report’s conclusions. According to the listed hours, salary, and overtime pay shown above, we calculated that her approximate overtime was between 70 and 84 hours in this month. The daily subsidy for night shifts is 7 RMB ($1.09), and she received a total of 77 RMB in subsidies for her night shifts in this month. So it can be easily concluded that she worked 11 night shifts during this month, each shift lasting from 8pm to 8am. This paystub clearly shows how the factory was treating this 14-year-old girl. In its statement, the factory alleged that Xiaofang made up a story about her terrible working conditions out of revenge for her dismissal by the factory.
The paystub for the female child worker