{"id":3578,"date":"2016-02-04T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinalabor.wpengine.com\/?p=3578"},"modified":"2022-09-02T20:09:15","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T20:09:15","slug":"dirty-frying-pans-an-investigation-of-labor-abuses-in-five-chinese-cookware-factories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinalaborwatch.org\/zh\/dirty-frying-pans-an-investigation-of-labor-abuses-in-five-chinese-cookware-factories\/","title":{"rendered":"\u80ae\u810f\u7684\u714e\u9505\uff1a\u4e94\u4e2a\u4e2d\u56fd\u53a8\u5177\u4ee3\u5de5\u5382\u7684\u52b3\u5de5\u72b6\u51b5\u8c03\u67e5"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload the report<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Executive Summary<\/h2>

People often seek out quality and durability when purchasing a frying pan, and they are willing to pay a hefty price for it. For example, even a moderately priced IKEA 365+ Series stainless steel frying pan retails for about $20. But in the Chinese factory where this product is made, workers earn only $0.06 to $0.14 for their work in manufacturing each pan, which is 0.3% to 0.7% the market price.<\/p>

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Left: Worker applying adhesive. Right: Metallic dust covers workers.<\/i><\/div>
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The global cookware market was estimated to be worth more than $18 billion in 2011.[1] <\/b>The U.S. cookware market alone was estimated to be worth around $4.5 billion in 2013.[2]<\/b><\/p>

The piece-rate wage system widely utilized in Chinese cookware factories is indicative of labor conditions in the entire industry. Without a guaranteed base wage, factory workers\u2019 income and job security fluctuates with seasonal changes in product orders. The manufacturing and brand companies have maximized their profit margins by effectively passing the cost of order fluctuations to workers.<\/p>

Piece-rate wages are only one aspect of the harsh cost cutting of cookware brands and manufacturers at the expense of workers, based on the findings of this report. The industry is plagued by illegal and unfair working conditions that include labor contract violations, a lack of paid leave or required insurances, mandatory overtime without overtime pay, unpaid wages, fines on workers, poor occupational safety measures, and insufficient living conditions.<\/p>

Cookware manufacturing is a dirty business, full of metallic dust and toxic chemicals. Yet factories fail to prevent exposure, properly train workers, or provide sufficient protective equipment. At factories investigated for this report, workers in some departments were covered in metallic dust. These are the same sorts of problems that precipitated the 2014 Kunshan auto wheel factory explosion, a tragedy which took the lives of 146 workers.<\/p>

From March until June 2015, China Labor Watch (CLW) and Solidar Suisse collaborated to carry out investigative research, including worker interviews and undercover investigation, into the labor conditions at five cookware factories in China’s Guangdong Province. Our investigation found that these factories supply products to a number of cookware brands and retailers, including IKEA, Walmart, Carrefour, Cuisinart, Tupperware, Nuwave, Zwilling, WMF, Oppein, Russel Hobbs, Stanley Rogers, Bergner, Paderno, Greenpan, Kuhn Rikon, and others.<\/p>

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Cookware<\/i><\/div>
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Many of these companies use social auditing to ostensibly ensure compliance with their labor standards or codes of conduct. But in the course of this investigation, we recorded documentation and conduct at each factory which influences the validity of those audits, including fraudulent training records, pay stubs, and safety measures. At one factory, Xinhui Ri Xing Stainless Steel Products, the investigator even witnessed a buyer inspection which resulted in the factory bribing the auditor for a passing mark.<\/p>

Even if the audits are sometimes accurate, the dismal working conditions detailed in this report clearly demonstrates a failure of corporate social responsibility when buyers do not institute sufficient reforms in their dealings with their supplier factories.\u00a0<\/div>
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The table below lists the factories included in this investigation and brands supplying from them.<\/div>
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Note: [3] Links between factories and brands were sometimes substantiated by the on-site investigation via product labels or interviews, and sometimes the links were evidenced by online factory profiles which mentioned brand partners. The cookware products examined in this investigation are ordered in batches or seasonally, so the factory producing a brand company\u2019s products does not necessarily do so every month of the year.\u00a0<\/sup><\/b><\/div>
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FINDINGS<\/h3>
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Our investigation brought to light numerous violations of Chinese law and\/or ILO Conventions. CLW investigators were hired at the five factories listed above as front-line production workers. Their personal experiences and hundreds of worker interviews provided evidence of 25 sets of violations, summarized below. Further chapters of this report detail findings at each of the five individual factories.<\/div>
1.Hiring discrimination:<\/b> Employment restrictions, primarily in regard to age, were imposed at four factories; some of them explicitly employed men only. Any discrimination of workers based on ethnicity, race, gender, age or religion is illegal according to Chinese law. At one factory, preliminary medical checks for hepatitis were carried out to eliminate hepatitis sufferers. In order to reduce theft-rates, another factory only hired workers who knew other employees.<\/div>
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2. Lack of pre-job health exam:<\/b> Two factories failed to carry out health checks before workers started work, making it difficult for anyone suffering from work-related illnesses to prove a link between work and illness.<\/div>
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3. Hiring and health-check fees:<\/b> In those factories that did carry out health checks, costs were passed on to the workers. One factory imposed a ‘factory card’ fee; it also imposed fees on non-local workers.<\/div>
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4. Withholding workers’ ID:<\/b> At one factory, without providing any explanation, workers’ personal ID cards were collected and withheld for a day, which contravenes Chinese regulations.<\/div>
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5. Lack of sufficient pre-job safety training: <\/b>Chinese law prescribes 24 hours of pre-job safety training, to occur before a company has any factory workers begin working. Four factories failed to provide any such training; one merely gave a brief Power-Point presentation.<\/p>

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Cookware polishing workshop<\/i><\/div>
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6. Breaches of contract:<\/b> Three factories made their workers sign blank employment contracts; elsewhere, workers were given very little time to read their contracts before signing. Very few workers received a copy of their contracts. In one case, an investigator signed his employment contract several days after work began. At three factories, contractual conditions differed from the actual situation. For example, while the contract stipulated eight regular working hours per day, or 40 hours a week, the factory actually imposed mandatory unpaid overtime.<\/div>
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7. Piece-rate wage system: <\/b>In four factories, workers had no guaranteed income. They received piece-work pay, and did not earn the legal minimum wage. Only if they worked overtime (without being paid the legal overtime premium) did these workers manage to make ends meet \u2013 and only just. In slow periods, they were forced to take unpaid leave and try to find work elsewhere.<\/p>

8. Lack of paid leave: Three factories paid no holidays or sick leave. A worker wanting a day off receives no pay.<\/div>
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9. Excessive overtime:<\/b> Each of the five factories imposed significantly longer working hours than the regular eight-hour days. In the peak season, workers were called in every day; there was no day off on weekends. Although the law only permits six days of work in a week and a maximum of 36 overtime hours per month, some of the workers put in up to 154 hours of overtime a month.<\/div>
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10. Mandatory overtime:<\/b> One factory imposed forced overtime; any worker failing to turn up when required had to pay a fine of 30 RMB ($4.50).<\/div>
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11. Lack of legal overtime pay:<\/b> None of the factories provided legal overtime pay. Even worse, one factory reduced pay for work exceeding the regular eight hours a day. According to Chinese law, any hours in excess of the eight-hour day are considered overtime and should be compensated at one-and-a-half times the regular wage rate on weekdays and double the regular rate on weekends.<\/div>
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12. Lack of pay stubs:<\/b> Two factories failed to hand out pay stubs, making it impossible for workers to check how their wages had been calculated and how much overtime had been paid.<\/div>
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13. Social insurance not purchased according to regulations: <\/b>None of the factories paid legally mandated social benefit contributions, such as housing, health, unemployment and pension insurance premiums. In some cases, any such payments were only made following government pressure, several months after workers took up their posts; the factories failed to pay either their full portion or the full range of benefits. Although social benefit contributions are by law compulsory for both the employers and employees, workers were wrongly told they were voluntary and many therefore opted out.<\/div>
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14. Poor or crowded living conditions: <\/b>Workers were provided generally unacceptable accommodation for rent: eight to twelve people had to sleep in small and dirty dormitories, and dozens of workers usually had to share one public bathroom. One factory put day and night-shift workers up in the same dorm rooms, which disturbed their sleep.<\/div>
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15. Insufficient sanitary facilities:<\/b> One factory provided just six cold-water showers for 200 people, who had to bring hot water along in pails.<\/div>
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16.Insufficient worker protection: <\/b>Although workers handle heavy machinery or hazardous chemicals (at coating, polishing or cleaning stations), or carry out welding work, none of the five factories provided adequate protective equipment; indeed, some provided none at all. Most workplaces were noisy, dirty and often covered with metallic dust. Ventilation was inadequate; many gloves or protective masks were provided only prior to inspections.<\/div>
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17. Insufficient fire safety: <\/b>Fire safety was generally inadequate. Fire extinguishers were inadequately inspected and were not exchanged at the date of expiry; emergency exits were sometimes locked or blocked. Insufficient ventilation of metallic and protection of workers from the dust causes an ongoing fire hazard.<\/div>
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18. Inspection fraud or evasion: <\/b>Numerous instances of fraudulent documentation or conduct aimed at changing inspection outcomes were recorded, including the following:<\/div>
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