As Canada lowers its tariffs and imports more electric vehicles from China, an upcoming report from New York-based labour rights researchers is making new allegations of forced labour practices at the world's bestselling EV manufacturer, BYD.
China Labor Watch (CLW) received a complaint last fall from one of the thousands of migrant workers brought to Hungary from China to help build BYD's first European plant in the city of Szeged — a $6-billion investment intended to supply the European market with around 300,000 vehicles per year.
The non-profit organization launched an investigation and provided CBC News with an advance copy of its findings, set for publication later this month.
"It's important that consumers know what's really behind some of these electric vehicles, and the labour conditions that are behind the production of these cars," said project officer Elaine Lu.
"Chinese workers who are being brought in to work on these sites are being employed in quite horrible conditions."
...
The report describes potential violations of Hungarian labour and migration laws, including:
- Seven-day workweeks with no days off to rest, with workers telling CLW they were instructed to lie to inspectors about their working hours if asked.
- Shifts of up to 12 or 14 hours, with only a short meal break and no paid overtime.
- Delayed wage payments of up to three months, with final payments withheld until workers returned to China.
- Steep recruitment fees used as a form of debt bondage, with low-income workers saying they were forced to stay despite poor conditions because they can't afford to default on their contract.
- Workers entering on business visas instead of authorized work permits, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and unable to access services like health care for workplace injuries.
...
Why do Westerners care about working conditions for cars but not, say, the production of cocoa? Cocoa producers face way more exploitation, including child labor.
A: It's so they can drive up labor costs for their competitors and convince people to buy Western products.
They don't actually care about the well-being of workers. This is why you'll see them bitch about working conditions in factories, but not in the mines that produce materials for those factories.
Just conveniently ignoring all the reporting and lawsuits about it in an attempt to bait people?
No, I'm focusing on the fact that real action has been taken against Chinese EVs while products made with child labor are legal and reasons why that's the case.
You would have a point if it were illegal to sell chocolate made with cocoa produced using child labor, but it's not. If anything, you prove me further correct by highlighting how easy it was to ban Chinese EVs, but banning chocolate made with child labor is an uphill battle that's been going on for decades without success.
Can confirm, the EV tariffs came after intense lobbying by our industry (am in Canadian automotive) stateside, which then got copied here. Our exec layer got scared shitless after conducting some competition research and they communicated that to us in no uncertain terms. At the time the tariffs made some sense since there was real, material shift towards EV production at NA autos. All that got fell apart with Trump's election. Ford just recently announced it's refocusing one of its loudly advertised Kentucky batt plants to do other applications. The Oakville plant was supposed to be retooled for EVs. Instead it's gonna be making F250s.
*Edit: the quote was the original comment from the poster before me, they changed to make them look less unhinged so they could continue trolling around. I fell for it, because it was not an honest discourse, they are here just for the lolz and trolls.
As far as I am aware, cocoa trees do not grow in Hungary (they place in the news from this thread).
Also, you are replying to news about auto industry, there are other news about fair trade and slave labour across the globe. There were way more news earlier this year about child/slave labour in cocoa plantations in Brazil associated to a Swiss company.
But if you are interested in western cocoa production:
The largest producers and exporters are Ecuador and Brazil, if you know Spanish or Portuguese you can find a lot more recent news about it. It is not perfect, but they are tackling hard slave labour there.
About chocolate production, it is quite difficult to find a bar that does not come with some sort of fair trade seal on them.
I'm replying to news about working conditions that create competition for Western companies and contrasted it with working conditions that don't create competition for Western companies.
You don't see Western politicians arguing to outlaw chocolate based on working conditions, but you do see it for cars. I explained why this is the case.
Not sure where you saw anything being "outlawed" besides poor labour conditions.
No one is outlawing cars or chocolate, but I do see politicians discussion labour conditions all the time. It is even more apparent all around by having a job protected by union.
That news is about tackling labour issues, not about competition.
If you are serious about it, you would see that there are news about labour issue with "western" car companies all the time. There were plenty of strikes last year, and we will probably see more this year.
The problem is that you are too busy bundling up 80-ish nations in your xenophobic rant.
No you are using a whataboutism and not acknowledging other people's statements.
We do. Why do people who use the term westerners not understand that people aren't a monolith?
It's nice that you do, but hopefully you can understand that most Westerners don't. They will use this as an excuse to buy Western products at inflated prices that most people can only afford by screwing others over.
"So what if these factory workers have better working conditions than the people who farm cocoa for my chocolate? They're creating competition for my rulers, and I can't have that!"
@sicilian@lemmychan.org
This is rubbish.
In a nutshell, it's part of anti-Western, anti-democratic propaganda that makes you believe that the Western world is a mega-monolithic self-interested superstate that lives at the expense of others. Stylized as 'the enemy', it is then used by dictatorships to justify the suppression and exploitation of their own peoples.