johninnit

So I’ve been looking at choosing my next smartphone upgrade with a nod to its ethical implications. It’s not really surprised me that it’s not that easy to find out much on this. Customer services departments tend to clam up when you ask awkward questions, and I don’t have the clout of a proper media outlet to make press offices take note.

HTC have come the closest in terms of answering my questions so far though, and were good enough to give me the requested copy of their Code of Ethics for suppliers (PDF). It’s not a bad policy *, mentioning the right to union membership, and many of the key terms you’d expect.

After a stunt last year by workers who make HTC phone touchscreens, HTC Chairperson Cher Wang engaged sympathetically but told her disrupted press conference that the issue wasn’t one she knew about, other than that it related not to HTC staff, but to a supplier (Young Fast Optoelectronics), and that therefore HTC unfortunately couldn’t do anything about it.

However, a lot of the issues in the HTC supplier code neatly map against a Taiwanese government inspector’s report from 2010. Chairperson Wang is a busy woman, so I’ve made her a handy cut out and keep guide: (more…)

I am something of a phone geek. Oh okay then, I am rather obsessed by them, smartphones in particular. I’ve had 5 different smartphone handsets since ditching my standalone PDA for 2003′s splendid SonyEricsson p800, and whichever I’ve had, it’s always been my most treasured possession.

Now though, my choice of handset is giving me a bit more of a headache. (more…)

Taiwanese smart phone manufacturer HTC has had an extremely successful year, on the back of a strong product line. Increased sales at the company have nearly tripled the share price and more than quadrupled the wealth of husband and wife top team Cher Wang and Wenchi Chen in the last year alone. Wang and Chen are now worth a very tidy $8.8bn, and are sitting right at the top of this week’s Forbes Taiwan Rich List.

Which makes it all the harder to work out why exactly they don’t seem to be taking any action over worker abuses at their outsourced touchscreen supplier Young Fast Optoelectronics, where there are allegations of union busting, forced overtime for low pay, child labour and poor safety.

(more…)

Here’s a video from the unrecognised union at Taiwanese touchscreen supplier Young Fast Optoelectonics. Their members make the high tech display panels for mobile phones for several companies, including up and coming iPhone rivals HTC. And their members allegedly face harassment and sacking for union membership, poor safety and enforced overtime. There are even allegations of child labor at YFO.

I have a phone using one of these screens, and as it’s due for upgrade and I’m an unreformable smartphone geek, I’ve been looking into the gobsmackingly clever new Desire HD as a replacement for it. I’m concerned though that I really don’t want (another) phone which has been made under such terrible conditions for the people who produced it.

I’ve heard good things of HTC in the past on CSR – even saw one of their managers present a communications industry award to a union strike comms project ferchrissakes. But they don’t seem to be engaging at all over the very serious allegation that the key component of their flagship products is sourced from a sweatshop. (more…)

Bad day to be an HTC fanboi like me. LabourStart have a campaign running in support of YFOTU, the union of workers in Taiwanese mobile phone touchscreen manufacturer YFO. There have been some grim reports of working conditions at the company, with child labour, forced overtime and poor safety.

After seeing reports of bad conditions at iPhone component factories, I was feeling all smug with my non-union-busting HTC TouchHD (the third HTC handset I’ve had now, and a very nice one too), but it looks like mine may be just as bad. YFO have dismissed a number of union reps and members recently, which the union belives is in contravention of employment law. (more…)