Yesterday the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), a UK-based non-profit, released a report on the working conditions in computer production facilities in Mexico, China, and Thailand.  The report, which inspected facilities maintained by HP, IBM, and Dell, slammed all three manufacturers for the appalling working conditions tolerated in the factories.  Workers in Guadalajara, Mexico, are kept on perpetual three-month contracts so as to avoid paying any benefits.  Women who become pregnant are immediately fired, as are workers who dare to complain about the work conditions.  Conditions in China are even worse?their workers are expected to work 15-16 hours a day, seven days a week, exposed to toxic chemicals (without the benefit of any safety gear) and are given neither equipment nor training in how to protect themselves. 

The list goes on?IBM failed to include clauses to prevent child labor or banning harsh treatment, as well as providing for a ?living wage? (a term I shall henceforth stay away from because of the political furor it tends to create, as well as the impossibility of defining precisely what it is).  At factories manufacturing HP printers, employees are subjected to strip-searches, which is, of course, a violation of (US) policy.

As you might expect, IBM, Dell, and HP have lined up to out-do each other in expressing remorse and anger over the conditions reported in their various production facilities.  This is, of course, the only action available to them?they could hardly stand up and admit they were allowing such clear abuses to go on, now could they?  It?s just barely possible to believe that perhaps the decision-makers at HP, Dell, and IBM didn?t know that such abuses were going on?but only because they weren?t bothering to look.  It?s not hard to figure out when employees are being made to work 16 hour days or paid a dime an hour?it?d require, at most, hiring a reliable local to do the digging for you.  Even if this isn?t a case of international corporations deliberately closing their eyes to atrocious working conditions within their factories, it?s a situation where nothing was done to investigate the possibility that such abuses were occurring.

 In this case, the end result of that abuse is sitting on your desk.  Even if you own a system you built by hand, there?s no guarantee that the components within it were built in factories with any more respect for worker?s rights.  In fact, if we assume that American companies are unlikely to partner with the very worst abusers in a foreign market, it?s reasonable to suspect that native manufacturers might be treating their employees even worse. 

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