RCA and Action TVs are produced at: Shenzhen Action Electronics Zhong Her Industrial Park Baishizhou Nan Shan District Shenzhen City Guangdong Province, China

RCA and Action TVs

Mostly young women workers, 20 years of age.  However, some of the workers at the Action Electronics plant appear to be as young as 14. Working seven days a week during the busy season, 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.—or even past midnight. There is a special factory overtime premium of 36 cents an hour for work after midnight. Base wage for assembly workers is 25 cents an hour.  Fully loaded wage is $18.91 for a 7-day, 65-hour workweek, or 29 cents an hour.  However, workers must pay for their own food which lowers their weekly earnings to just $15.57.

Ten to 12 people share each small, crowded dorm room. 250 rmb is deducted from the workers’ wages for their Temporary Residency Permits. Workers are fined 10 hours pay for mistakes they make on the production line. They are not given a legal work contract. Illegally, they are not inscribed in Social Security health, unemployment and pension program. Workers have never heard of any so-called U.S. Corporate Code of Conduct. No union exists at the factory.  Independent unions are not permitted in China.

       
Action/Thomson 5" color TV with radion made in China. Retails price at Circuit City $149

 

Hours Working 7 days a week during the peak season, sometimes from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. or midnight. During the slack season, the women generally work a five-day, 45 to 47½-hour workweek.  In the peak season, the women must put in a seven-day workweek, working some days from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. or midnight.  During particularly large rush orders there may be mandatory overtime hours required even beyond midnight, which is why the factory has established a special 3 rmb (36 cent) per hour premium for working past midnight. Peak Season Hours:  Seven-day Workweek:   7:30 to 11:30 a.m. (11:30 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. lunch break) 12:50 to 5:10 p.m. (5:10 to 6:00 p.m. supper break) 6:00 to 7:30, 9:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m. or 12 midnight (or later, depending on the size of the order and the shipping deadline.) If they had to work until midnight, the workers would be at the factory 16½ hours a day.  On average, during the busy season, the women could be at the factory for up to 80½ hours a week, while being paid for 57½ to 65 hours.

Action Electronics is owned by its Taiwanese parent corporation, Hwa Yih.  There are two Action Electronics factories in China, one in Shenzhen and the other in Shanghai. The Shenzhen Action Electronics factory is located in the Zhong Her Industrial Park, which houses several medium to small sized electronics, rubber and plastics factories.  The Zhong Her Industrial Park is a joint venture of Taiwanese and Chinese capital.  China’s investment is in the land, factories and overall management of the zone, while Taiwan’s investment is in the actual manufacturing. Action Electronics, which began operating in 1993, is the largest factory in the zone, housed in a six-story building that includes the production space, offices and storage. Action Electronics produces 4-inch, 5-inch and 7-inch mini-TV sets, some including radios, or radios together with CD boomboxes, for RCA (Model RT-7945) which retails for $299.  Mini-TVs carrying Action’s own label are sold at Circuit City and Wal-Mart.  The National Labor Committee purchased a 5-inch Action color TV at Circuit City for $149.  Action Electronics exports to the U.S. and to Japan.There are 500 workers in the factory, mostly young women, split into eight production lines.  The average age of the women is 20 years old, however some as young as 14 are employed there.   The women are migrant workers from Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces.  The factory actively recruits in the local high schools in these rural areas. The more skilled workers who make the main body of the TV earn a higher base wage of 32 cents an hour, or $12.79 for a forty-hour workweek.  They also receive a higher attendance and production bonus of 120 rmb, which comes to $14.46 a month, or $3.61 a week.  They earn the same 30-cent an hour overtime premium. Skilled Workers’ fully-loaded wage 36 cents an hour $3.37 a day (for a 9 ¼-hour day) $23.08 a week (for a 7-day, 65-hour workweek) $100 a month $1,200 a year However, it appears that the workers have to pay out of pocket for their food, for which the factory charges 120 rmb a month, $14.46 U.S.  This would lower the weekly take-home wage of an assembly worker to $15.30 for a 65-hour workweek, or 24 cents an hour.  A skilled worker’s weekly take-home wage would drop to $19.47, or 30 cents an hour. The workers report that the food they receive at the factory canteen is of poor quality.

Assembly worker’s wage   360 rmb  $43.37  base wage per month 70 rmb  $8.43  production/attendance monthly bonus 250 rmb  $30.12  for 100 hours of overtime per month at 2.5 rmb per hour 680 rmb  $81.93 U.S.  total per month Assembly workers’ fully-loaded wage 29 cents an hour $2.69 a day (for a 9 ¼-hour day) $18.91 a week (for a 7-day, 65-hour workweek) $81.93 a month

 

Working Conditions—Making RCA and Action TVs Crowded Dorms Workers are housed 10 to 12 people to a small, cramped dorm room, with three double bunk beds along each side wall, with only a narrow corridor down the center of the room remaining open.  There is no space for the workers to store their few possessions.   Strict Factory Rules and Fines Production errors on the assembly line are punished with a fine of 20 rmb, amounting to the loss of 10 hours wages.  Also, the names of anyone making such production errors are publicized in the factory as a way to pressure and humiliate the young workers.   No Work Contract The workers are not given written work contracts, which are legally required and which must spell out hours, pay, overtime premiums, days off and other working conditions and obligations.   Workers Not Inscribed in Social Security Again, this is illegal.  The company by law must inscribe its workers into a Social Security health, unemployment and pension insurance program to which both the company and the workers must contribute.  Without social security coverage, the workers are left with no safety net whatsoever.  There is a very limited factory clinic, but the workers must pay out of their pocket to use it.   Deduction for Residency Permit 250 rmb, $30.12 U.S., is deducted from the workers’ wages to pay for their temporary residency permits.   No Code,  No Union No worker ever heard of any so-called U.S. Corporate Code of Conduct.  There is no union at the factory.  Independent unions are not tolerated in China.   Workers’ Main Complaints The workers were very upset about the low wages they made in the factory, which after all the deductions and paying for basic necessities left them with very little money despite the long hours they worked.  They also complained about the harsh treatment in the factory and in the industrial park, especially from the Chinese personnel managers. Many of the young women workers said they would like to be able to study English or computer programming at night.  But they have no time to do so given the long overtime hours they must work.  Also, they said, they do not have much energy left when they finally return to their tiny dorm rooms after the day’s work.

TV’s Retail Price in the U.S. is Marked up 430 and 630 Percent!   Wages Base wage in the assembly section is 25 cents an hour.  More skilled workers earn 32 cents. The base wage in the assembly section is 360 rmb per month, $43.37, which comes to $10.01 a week—25 cents an hour for a regular 40-hour workweek.  However, most workers receive a 70 rmb bonus each month ($8.34 for the month, $2.11 a week) if they meet production goals, behave well and do not come late or miss days. Overtime hours are paid at 30 cents, except when working past midnight, when the premium rate rises to 36 cents. So during the peak season, if the factory was running on a seven-day, 65-hour week schedule, an assembly worker would earn $81.93 a month, or 29 cents an hour.

 

Production errors on the assembly line are punished with a  fine of 20 rmb, amounting to the loss of 10 hours wage

Tracing a TV Made in China to Circuit City in New York and Finding a 430 Percent Mark-up Using U.S. Customs Department shipping documents made available in the Piers database, the National Labor Committee was able to trace an Action brand 5-inch mini color TV set (model CAN 5503) made in the Action Electronics Factory in Shenzhen City in southern China to a Circuit City store on 14th Street in New York City. Two thousand one hundred Action 5-inch color TV sets, shipped from China on an Evergreen Line vessel arrived in Los Angeles on October 26, 1999, where they were declared to have an estimated customs value of $72,904.  Each TV had a customs value of $34.69, which represents the total materials and labor cost to make and ship the product. The 5-inch Action color TV (Model CAN 5503/Made in China) which the NLC purchased in Circuit City cost $149, which represents a 430 percent mark-up over the total cost to make the TV, including Action Electronics’ profit.

The big losers are the assembly workers in China, who are denied their rights and paid just 25 cents an hour to make these sets. In the global sweatshop economy, the 430 percent mark-ups, a company’s huge advertising budget, booming corporate profits, the CEO’s enormous salary, all of it rides on a pyramid scheme in which those at the bottom, in the developing world, are stripped of their rights and toil for pennies an hour to funnel money up the pyramid to those at the top. If the U.S. retailers were willing to give up just a tiny piece of their substantial mark-up, then it would be possible to pass it along to the workers in China, whose wages would then begin to climb to at-least-subsistence levels.

China's president welcomes GM with a billboard, "Twenty-first Century. Construct Modernized Plant. Make New Century Vehicles and Develop New Century People."

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