Death of Underage Worker Sparks More Accusations of Labor Violations at Pegatron [Updated]

[Dave00]

You say that without any obvious understanding of their situation. Desperate people do desperate things. I'm sure they would have preferred their son to be in school, what parent wouldn't want the best for their kids. But they are living in abject poverty. They probably needed the money for food and medicines to stay alive.

I agree with you. My point (made better in the next paragraph below the one you quoted) is that the real issue is not one of corporate exploitation, but of a social problem. If the company had been more diligent and prevented him from working, it still wouldn't have addressed the underlying problem of a family sending their 15-year-old to work long hours in a factory. This social situation is more likely to have contributed to the illness/death than the work hours.

 

[gnasher729]

I agree with you. My point (made better in the next paragraph below the one you quoted) is that the real issue is not one of corporate exploitation, but of a social problem. If the company had been more diligent and prevented him from working, it still wouldn't have addressed the underlying problem of a family sending their 15-year-old to work long hours in a factory. This social situation is more likely to have contributed to the illness/death than the work hours.

I'm not sure what you think causes pneumonia. It's caused by bacterial infection. Have a look here for details:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Pneumonia/Pages/Causes.aspx

Being sent away from home (or anything related, like stress etc.) and long working hours are not mentioned among contributing factors.

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Hmm, well, you need to change this opinion. It's not valid.

Ok. Give us examples of things that are illegal in the USA, Germany, and the UK, but legal in China.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Just a couple of points, from a medical standpoint.

Working long hours doesn't cause pneumonia. If it did, those of us in the medical field would never survive our training, which recently has been limited to 80 hours/week but prior to that was routinely over 100 hours a week, in an environment where one is exposed to lots of sick people.

This was more likely related to his social situation - poverty and its related poor diet and health care can contribute to pneumonia. He could also have had TB.

While the company bears some responsibility for not identifying an underage worker, I think it's a little ballsy for a family who sent their 15-year-old son to work in a factory to then turn around and blame someone else for their son's death. At least the company had a fake ID to fool them. The family knew how old he was and how much he was working, but felt the need to have him working long hours rather than in school where he belonged. THAT situation is what needs to be addressed much more than the company's failure to identify a fake ID.

But working such long hours causes stress that the body reacts to by compromising the immune function. STRESS, It's a killer...