By Cho Ji-hyun
Samsung Electronics on Monday announced a set of measures to improve its working conditions at the firm’s Chinese partners.
The world’s top smartphone maker acknowledged that some of its workers had to work extended hours and that some were not given a copy of their contracts that state their working conditions.
The company said that it did not find any minors under age 16 employed at any of its 105 partner firms. Samsung Chinese plants were exempted from the report.
The results were unveiled as Samsung conducted a study on 105 partner firms from Sept. 3-28. A total of 121 experts, including lawyers, environment safety specialists and certified labor attorneys, took part in the process.
Samsung said it has introduced a rule against hiring underage workers at all of its partner companies and included it in future education sessions offered to its partners.
It also plans to draft measures on issues that involve excessive working hours and increasing employment of dispatched workers and interns by 2014.
“We will put our utmost efforts into enhancing the employment environment of not only our own factories but also those of our partnering firms to protect their human rights,” said a Samsung official.
The measures were devised after a New York-based labor group called China Labor Watch claimed in September that Samsung plants and suppliers in China employed underage workers.
The labor group also said the companies forced the underage employees to work overtime ― more than 100 hours a month ― and exposed them to unsafe working conditions.
Such findings were revealed as the group was monitoring the working conditions of electronics factories in Asia working for Samsung, Dell and Hewlett-Packard following suicides at a China plant of Apple supplier Foxconn Technology Group in 2010.
(sharon@heraldcorp.com)