2023-11-10 04:54:51
Smartphones are built under the worst conditions – Swiss retailers hardly care
New research reveals precarious working conditions in Chinese factories. When it comes to responsibility and transparency, Digitec Galaxus, Mediamarkt and Co. do poorly.
At shopping events like Black Friday, electronics are purchased on a massive scale: cell phones on display in a store.
Photo: Christian Beutler (Keystone)
It’s that time once more around November 24th. The discount battle of the year is then underway in consumer electronics, the so-called Black Friday and Black Week. Then business is booming for Swiss retailers. The market researchers at GFK assume that sales of multimedia devices will be higher this year than last year. While consumers spent 114 million francs last year, this year it is expected to be almost 118 million francs.
An undercover investigation by the non-governmental organization China Labor Watch on behalf of its partner organization Solidar Suisse, which is being published today, shows how many of the popular electronic items are manufactured. Research was carried out in the spring and summer of 2023 in factories in China that produce for global electronics brands.
Conditions in China’s factories are still precarious
The most important finding: The problems that have been known for years remain. These are: low basic wages, extreme overtime, enormous work intensity as well as verbal violence and sexual harassment.
How this feels in reality can be seen in the diary of one of the researchers. She had worked undercover for a cell phone manufacturer. On day four of her stay she writes: “The work on the assembly line is very intensive. For example, workers have to install more than 3,000 SIM card slots per day.” The floor plan of the factory resembles a labyrinth, she reports. «A few newcomers got lost today. If an accident occurs, many will definitely not be able to escape.”
Male workers would also constantly make sexist jokes. “Many people brag that they have slept with interns and that they are here to find a wife.” The researcher herself was also confronted with sexual harassment that day.
According to the report, a new one has been added to the known problems: many of the factories have now switched to so-called gig manufacturing. Because orders increase massively, especially before the release of new devices, but especially in the run-up to shopping events such as Black Friday, factories only employ the majority of employees temporarily. Employment agencies would entice people with high bonuses for fulfilling “exorbitant daily and weekly workloads”. As soon as orders decrease once more, employees lose their jobs.
Swiss trade has little interest in the supply chain
The non-governmental organization Solidar Suisse used this research as an opportunity to check how transparent large electronics retailers in Switzerland are when it comes to the supply chain of their products. These include providers such as Digitec Galaxus, Media-Markt and Co. This report will also be published today.
To ensure comparability, only information that was publicly published on the websites of the companies or their parent companies was taken into account. The authors’ conclusion: “What is becoming increasingly popular in other industries such as textiles is not even in its infancy when it comes to consumer electronics.”
According to the investigation, none of the retailers found any evidence that transparent supply chains were a prerequisite for inclusion in the product range. The authors are surprised that some of the retailers would not even publish a comprehensive code of conduct.
One of them is Brack.ch. The online retailer is aware of the backlog and is currently working on binding supplier guidelines, the report says.
The online retailer will confirm this upon request. It turns out that information regarding fair production conditions would increasingly influence purchasing decisions. The fact that some of the brackish suppliers are already members of industry initiatives does not go far enough for the company. “For this reason, we have developed new supplier specifications that will be contractually binding,” writes a company spokesman. This concerns minimum standards for compliance with corporate due diligence obligations in the supply chain.
However, when it comes to their impact, Brack.ch doesn’t sound very optimistic: “Switzerland is a small market, and multinational electronics companies are not particularly hurt when a player like us no longer wants to sell their products.”
And even if a supplier or manufacturer agrees to the specifications, monitoring compliance remains a major challenge, “especially in the Far East, where most electronics manufacturers, component suppliers and raw materials still come from,” says the company.
According to the Solidar Suisse report, it shows that when Swiss electronics retailers deal with sustainability, it is mostly regarding environmental standards, but less regarding social issues. “With the exception of Media-Markt, we were unable to find any concrete information from any retailer regarding how any social requirements are actually implemented by the electronics brands,” the report says.
“There are so many individual parts and third-party products installed, which promotes a lack of transparency.”
Media-Markt is owned by the German Ceconomy AG, which is subject to the German Supply Chain Act and is therefore forced to provide comprehensive reporting.
Industry associations, for example the Handelsverband.swiss, did not comment on the subject when asked because they were not yet aware of the study. Upon request, the largest Swiss online retailer Digitec Galaxus refers to the social standards of the Migros Group, to which the company belongs. “We are bound by these and work hand in hand with our colleagues in the group,” writes a spokesman.
Hope for more regulation
“Only transparency offers consumers a good basis for decision-making,” says Christian Eckerlein, fair work campaign manager at Solidar Suisse. He sees one reason why this is much less common in electronics than in the textile industry in the complex supply chain of the products. “There are so many individual parts and third-party products installed, which promotes a lack of transparency.” But also due to the lack of will of many manufacturers.
Eckerlein is betting that the legal framework will also become more stringent in Switzerland. For this financial year, all larger companies must submit a sustainability report as part of the counter-proposal to the corporate responsibility initiative.
The EU Parliament also recently approved a comprehensive supply chain law, which is due to be passed soon. This will probably also affect various Swiss companies that achieve a certain level of sales in the EU.
Accordingly, Eckerlein hopes that the pressure on all companies in the supply chain to weigh up the risks will increase. And the tightening measures will sooner or later also be introduced in Switzerland. Until then, the non-governmental organization wants to express its demands with a petition to retailers, in which it demands more transparency and responsibility and to forego discount days.
Politics is arguing once more
EU legal developments are also being discussed in the Bundeshaus. The Federal Council has announced that it will report to Parliament on the innovations.
For left-wing politicians it is already clear: Swiss legislation needs to be tightened. While a comprehensive corporate responsibility directive is regarding to be passed in the EU, the Swiss counter-proposal is practically ineffective, says Green Party Councilor Lisa Mazzone.
The SVP, on the other hand, warns of further bureaucracy without any clear benefit for companies. It is another piece of EU legislation that is weakening the European economy, says parliamentary group leader Thomas Aeschi.
It is unclear how the FDP and the center will position themselves. They want to wait for the announced Federal Council analysis first, say several parliamentarians who were asked. “Then,” says FDP Councilor of States Andrea Caroni, “we’ll see whether there is an urgent need for action for Switzerland or not.”
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