Young Women Make Microsoft Mice Under Inhumane Conditions

A recent report from the Pittsburgh-based National Labor Committee reveals hideous working conditions in a factory in China producing Microsoft products. The KYE Systems Factory in Dongguan forces its female workers to put in 15-hour shifts starting at 7:45 a.m. and ending at 10:55 p.m., six days a week, and it pays them 52 cents an hour after deductions for factory food. The women, between ages 18 and 25 but mostly 16-17 years old, revealed in the report that they are consistently sexually harassed and forbidden to talk, listen to music, or go to the bathroom during work hours.

Workers live fourteen people to a room with only a bucket and sponge for a shower, in factories that frequently reach temperatures in the high 80's in summer.

The KYE Systems Factory makes computer mice for Microsoft. Each woman worker is obligated to produce 2,000 mice per shift. Women compare the factories to prisons and state that anyone who can get out does within six months. The NLC smuggled photos out of the KYE factory which show the workers sleeping at their desks, sitting in close proximity assembling computer mice, and sharing packed dorm rooms. Other shocking photos of tech workers in China can be found at Computer Weekly.

Microsoft has begun an investigation, and a spokesperson offered this less-than-encouraging promise: "We take these claims seriously, and we will take appropriate remedial measures in regard to any findings of vendor misconduct."

Apparently, appropriate remedial measures do not include canceling its contract with the KYE Systems Factory or pushing for changes in labor laws in China. (The company said nothing when the American Chamber of Commerce in China, to which it belongs, discouraged the Chinese government from passing new, slightly more progressive labor laws. The Chamber threatened to fire thousands of workers if the government passed such laws).

It's appalling that a company like Microsoft has not immediately denounced such conditions and taken rapid action both to distance itself from the KYE Systems Factory and to come to the aid of these women workers. The irony of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's glossy photos of the Gates' embracing happy, poor, darker-skinned people the world over is particularly painful in this context. Even more cruelly ironic is the slide show on the website's front page, which features a book entitled Portfolios Of The Poor: How The World's Poor Live on $2 A Day. How noble of the Foundation to highlight such a work when they apparently seem either not to know or not to care about the fact that Chinese Microsoft workers are putting in 15-hour, 5-dollar days.

What can we do?  Take action: tell Microsoft to take action against KYE Systems Factory immediately and to insist that if humane working standards and labor laws are not met in China, it will no longer allow its products to be made in that country.

Photo credit: Robert Scoble's Gallery