Tag: Dell

Foxconn Cheaps Out

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Foxconn says underage workers used in China plant | Reuters

Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, said it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.

“Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This is not only a violation of China’s labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions.”

China’s official Xinhua news agency, citing an unnamed Yantai government official, said that 56 underage interns would be brought back to their schools.

The students had been employed after Foxconn asked the development zone in which the factory is located to help solve a labor shortage last month, when they were needed to make up a shortfall of 19,000 workers, Xinhua added.

Foxconn is Apple Inc’s largest manufacturing partner, and also makes products for Dell Inc, Sony Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co among its other clients. It said the Yantai plant does not make Apple products.

Foxconn says underage workers used in China plant | Reuters

 

Underage workers in the corporate heaven of Foxconn

There is the funny thing in economics called supply and demand. It would seem to dictate that you raise pay or benefits to attract new workers. But Foxconn doesn’t believe in the free market. They appealed to the government (that would be the development zone) for a little help in the form of permission to use 56 underage “interns.” They took them out of school, an undoubted benefit. I mean, who needs school when they could work long hours at tedious jobs for little pay. There is certainly a kind of education there, right?

I could talk about the business ethics of this situation. But how much analysis can you do? Underage workers, children used to evade having to raise salaries, manipulating the government for private gain – what part of this requires an extended analysis?

James Pilant

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CSR statements are easy; sustainable procurement is harder (via Fair For All)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I have written before about my doubts as to China’s coming status as the number one economic power. These kinds of articles and posting tend to reinforce my beliefs.

My great thanks to “Fair For All.”

CSR statements are easy; sustainable procurement is harder As Dell and HP have discovered this month, it’s a lot easier to write a CSR policy than it is to ensure that it is carried through. Their plight is not uncommon and is the unfortunate result of treating CSR as a public relations function, focused on appearance and not on substance. To be credible, CSR needs to be built into the operations of a business, which r … Read More

via Fair For All

Dell Lawsuit Proceeds

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics2 Comments

Written by Erik Sherman at CBS Moneywatch –

The lawsuit is three years old and the story continues. When a company makes a colossal error, it can simply make a clear breast of it, take its lumps, and recover. Or, it can try to bury the story, protect itself by claiming innocence, and prolong the pain. That’s the route that Dell has taken.

In July, Dell tried to deny fault and simply ignore how it allegedly ignored customers who were having problems with computers plagued by bad parts. And some of the explanations in the past were real hoots. For example, Dell told the University of Texas math department that the machines went bad because intense calculations overtaxed them. Right, the machines were actually supposed to be coasters and were only missing the sign that said, “Warning, Don’t Use For Math.”

Apparently taking responsibility was too risky.

This seems to me to be an obvious case of thinking only as far as the next quarter.

Any kind of long term thinking or ethical thinking would have called for a different action.

James Pilant

Dell’s full scale ethical meltdown (via Minding the Workplace)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

David Yamada’s blog, Minding the Workplace, has a great post about Dell computers and the company’s ethical problems as revealed in a current lawsuit. I could say a lot but I’ll let the article speak for itself.

James Pilant

Here's one they'll be studying in business school ethics classes for years to come: The story of how Dell, one of the world's leading computer manufacturers, morphed from being an industry icon to the latest ethics-challenged poster company. As reported by Ashlee Vance for the New York Times, a major lawsuit against Dell is unearthing a corporate cover-up campaign that concealed from customers serious malfunctions in millions of computers sold be … Read More

via Minding the Workplace