Hi, my name is Chaoxiang Yang. I am 17 years old and work
at Ningbo Headwear Co. Ltd. Factory in China. The working conditions here are
horrible, but it is extremely difficult to quit ones job because we are fined for quitting before we have served our time at the factory. I put
in long 12 hour days, 7 days a week with lower than legal minimum wage in the
assembly line. Since I am currently also a student during the school year, I
receive 45 RMB or ($7 US Dollars) for an eight hours shift, and about 6.6 RMB
($1 US) as my overtime wage. That is only about 2,000 RMB ($312 US) per month!
With all the work I have been putting in, I am exhausted as I swipe my card
every morning at 7:00 am and usually almost fall asleep as I swipe it again, sometimes as late as 10:00 pm. By this time of day, I am ready to hit the hay along with my
fellow co-workers in the employee housing. Housing is cramped, battered, and
old, but I mostly sleep when I am there, so it could be worse.
Unfortunately, the food is another story. The factory provides us with a
cafeteria to get food from, but there sanitation is not
even close to being up to standard! But who’s to tell those in the authorities
that? I eat what I can and manage to get by; thankfully they don’t take any
medical exams here! However, they really don’t pay much attention to us and always try to keep everything hush hush. For instance, a fight broke out
here between two workers and one young worker told investigators what had
happened. He was absolutely fired by the factory and
wasn’t given his remaining salary he earned that week. I don’t know why he
would ever do such a thing… we all knew what would come about if news got out…
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