PITTSBURGH — The National Labor Committee is releasing a 30-page report documenting what it calls illegal and harsh sweatshop conditions at Jabil Circuit's factory in Guangzhou, China, where over 6,000 workers — many of them allegedly illegal temporary workers — manufacture products for HP, Whirlpool, IBM, Intel and Cisco.

The report, which comes on the heel of the contract electronics manufacturing services provider's better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter, is based on worker interviews, photographs and company documents smuggled out of the factory. Among the allegations:

• Workers work 12-hour shifts and are at the factory 84 hours a week.
• Assembly line workers are prohibited from sitting down and must stand for their entire 12-hour shift.  Workers report their necks, shoulders, arms and legs become stiff and sore, and their feet swell.
• Workers are allowed to use the bathroom just once in the regular eight-hour shift.
• Jabil hires a huge number of illegal temp workers and pits them against the full-time workers.
• Security guards and managers patrol the shop floor as if they are police overseeing their prisoners. Workers who make a mistake are forced to write a "letter of repentance" begging forgiveness — which they must read aloud in front of coworkers. They can also be made to stay after work — unpaid — to clean toilets.
• Six workers share each crowded dorm room, sleeping on double-level bunk beds.  Seventy-five percent of the workers say the factory food is "awful."
• Workers paid a base wage of 76 cents an hour through April, when they received a 17-cent increase, to 93 cents an hour, well below subsistence levels.

NLC director Charles Kernaghan, who authored the new report, said, "What happened to all the promises US companies made — that if they could set up operations in China, they would, by example, lift human, women's and worker rights standards for China's workers? Instead, US companies bought into the 'China model' of exploitation, pitifully low wages, grueling hours, miserable living conditions and zero rights."

"Corporate monitoring never works," he said. "Five out of eight of the companies on the board of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition have been producing their goods for years under illegal, harsh sweatshop conditions at the Jabil factory."

The report "paints a very accusatory but not very accurate picture, the St. Petersburg Times quoted a Jabil spokeswoman in a report today. The paper quoted a Jabil as saying the company saw the report for the first time on June 29, and that "Jabil takes employee working conditions and rights very seriously and has been vigilant about conducting employee surveys to be sure that we are proactively addressing any issues."

Jabil becomes the latest in a steady stream of companies in China accused of trampling worker rights. Others include Honda, and Foxconn, where at least a dozen employees have committed suicide this year.

The EICC is a group made up of leading electronics OEMs and EMS companies that agree to abide by certain corporate stewardship rules. See the EICC code of conduct here. See Jabil's Code of Ethics here.

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