公平劳动协会（Fair Labor Association）主席奥瑞特•范•希尔登当初应苹果公司（Apple）要求赴一家中国工厂考察。事后，他评价说，这家工厂的环境非常清洁、安静。这番言论让劳工权利维权人士深感忧虑，仿佛只要一家工厂要求员工必须身着干净的工作服就会变成美国三角内衣工厂（the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory，该工厂曾经由于管理人员将安全出口上锁导致火灾发生时多数女工未能逃生——译者注）。

    维权人士其实大可不必担心。公平劳动协会于周四发布了初步结论报告。他们对富士康（Foxconn）的三家工厂进行了长达一个月的调研，与35,000名工人进行了面谈。虽然调研很有可能遗漏一些问题，但很显然，这份报告并未粉饰、掩盖实际情况。公平劳动协会查出了至少四五十起违反协会规定或者中国劳动法的情况。报告重点强调了以下这些问题：

    • 中国法律规定每周工作时间为40小时，每月加班不超过36小时，而三家工厂的工作时间都超出了法律规定。

    • 近半数工人表示，他们有时要毫不停歇地连续工作11天甚至更长时间。

    • 64.3%的工人称他们的薪水（其中一家工厂给工人的月薪为356美元）不足以满足基本的生活需求。

    • 员工加班不超过30分钟一般没有加班费。

    • 富士康平均每月会聘用27,000名实习工，且常常要求他们加班、上夜班，这些都违反了公司的实习生用工协议。

    • 富士康的工会组织在很大程度上形同虚设，部分原因在于工会委员会大多数成员都来自于管理层。

    • 公平劳动协会评估人员发现有些机器的传感器、外罩和挡板有必要安装自动断流器装置，以免工人手部伸入机器造成事故。

    Labor rights activists feared the worst when Fair Labor Association president Auret van Heerden, inspecting a Chinese factory at Apple's (AAPL) request, remarked how clean and tranquil he found it -- as if a factory floor where workers are required to wear clean suits would look like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

    "The facilities are first-class," he told a Reuters reporter after his first day, "the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."

    The activists need not have worried. The FLA issued its initial findings Thursday, and while it's quite possible that there were problems it missed in its month-long investigation of three Foxconn factories -- including interviews with 35,500 workers -- it's clear that the report is no whitewash. The FLA found more than four dozen violations of either its own codes or Chinese labor laws. Among the issues highlighted in the report:

    • All three factories exceeded the Chinese legal limits of 40 hours per week and a maximum of 36 hours overtime per month

    • Nearly half the workers said there were periods where they worked 11 days or more without a break

    • 64.3% of workers said that their salary ($356 per month at one factory) was not sufficient to cover their basic needs

    • Employees were often not compensated for overtime when it came in less than 30 minute intervals

    • Foxconn hired an average of 27,000 interns a month and often had them work both overtime and night shifts -- a violation of their internship agreement

    • Foxconn's unions were largely ineffective, in part because a majority of the members of union committees were drawn from the ranks of management

    • The FLA assessors found machines at which sensors, hoods or barriers needed to be connected to automatic cut-out mechanisms to prevent workers from reaching into the machine