Samsung is exploiting Child Labor in China

China Labor Watch (CLW) has announced that it has collected additional evidence to support the allegations that child workers and student workers from the Chengdu Urban Construction Vocational School in Sichuan Province were employed at Samsung supplier factory HEG Technology this year under exploitative working conditions.

In August 2014, CLW once again found evidence of child labor and student labor at a Samsung supplier factory, this time at a company called HEG Technology. On August 21, CLW provided lists to Samsung of 117 student workers and 14 child workers who were employed at HEG. A number of child workers on the lists worked on a Samsung production line called the Production Second Assembly Storage Group .

Samsung responded to CLW on August 25, claiming that Samsung’s follow-up investigation did not discover any student workers or child workers on Samsung’s production lines at HEG.

According to multiple sources, Chengdu Urban Construction Vocational School sends out students for work via two methods: “work-study” and “practical internship”. When the school recruits students, it immediately waives tuition, but while they are still enrolled at the school, the students are arranged to work, and wages earned from work pay for tuition at the Vocational School. This is the so-called “work-study”. In the third year, students work full-time while still being enrolled as a student; this is called a “practical internship”. In the cases of both “work-study” and “practical internship”, a student retains enrollment status at the school.

In the wake of this new evidence, Samsung told China Labor Watch it would carry out a follow-up investigation