Microsoft workers paid $10 a day
By Sandhya

Microsoft dominates the PC software market and so it was no surprise that in the last quarter it earned revenue of $19 Billion.  This revenue for 3 months was an increase of 14% from last year.  Net income was $6.66 Billion up 60%.  Even as the Microsoft founder Bill Gates donates billions to charity, the company is underpaying some teenagers in Asia.

US-based National Labor Committee was set up to ensure that transnational corporations do not exploit the poorest of the poor.  The National Labor Committee believes that this lack of accountability on the part of some US companies has become the great new civil rights movement of our time.  The National Labor Committee had successfully pressurized companies like Gap, Wal Mart and Walt Disney to improve the lot of their workers outside USA.

The National Labor Committee has just released a report about how Microsoft is recruiting Chinese teenagers and sometimes paying them only 65 cents an hour. The executive summary is

-Over the past three years, unprecedented photographs of exhausted teenaged workers, toiling and slumping asleep on their assembly line during break time, have been smuggled out of the KYE factory.
-KYE recruits hundreds-even up to 1,000-"work study students" 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week.  In 2007 and 2008, dozens of the work study students were reported to be just 14 and 15 years old.  A typical shift is from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m.
-Along with the work study students-most of whom stay at the factory three months, though some remain six months or longer-KYE prefers to hire women 18 to 25 years of age, since they are easier to discipline and control.
-In 2007 and 2008, before the worldwide recession, workers were at the factory 97 hours a week while working 80 ½ hours.  In 2009, workers report being at the factory 83 hours a week, while working 68 hours.
-Workers are paid 65 cents an hour, which falls to a take-home wage of 52 cents after deductions for factory food.
-Workers are prohibited from talking, listening to music or using the bathroom during working hours.  As punishment, workers who make mistakes are made to clean the bathrooms.
-Security guards sexually harass the young women.
-Fourteen workers share each primitive dorm room, sleeping on narrow double-level bunk beds.  To "shower," workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket to take a sponge bath.  Workers describe factory food as awful.
-Not only are the hours long, but the work pace is grueling as workers race frantically to complete their mandatory goal of 2,000 Microsoft mice per shift.  During the long summer months when factory temperatures routinely reach 86 degrees, workers are drenched in sweat.
-There is no freedom of movement and workers can only leave the factory compound during regulated hours.
-The workers have no rights, as every single labor law in China is violated.  Microsoft's and other companies' codes of conduct have zero impact. 

Expect Microsoft to apologize and scramble to improve the conditions of its workers in China.

Techgoss note: Photo is of living quarters of Microsoft workers in China.