{"id":53,"date":"2005-04-22T17:35:19","date_gmt":"2005-04-22T21:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/04\/22\/chinese-factories-accused-of-fakin"},"modified":"2005-04-22T17:35:19","modified_gmt":"2005-04-22T21:35:19","slug":"chinese-factories-accused-of-faking-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/04\/22\/chinese-factories-accused-of-faking-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese factories accused of faking records"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a71'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">From the Financial Times, April 22, 2005. Thanks to Michael Allen for alerting us.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Factory managers in China are becoming increasingly sophisticated at<br \/>\nfalsifying worker time cards and payroll documents to disguise<br \/>\nirregularities including underpayment, excessive hours and inadequate<br \/>\nhealth and safety provision. Auditors estimate that more than half of<br \/>\nfactories they see in China are forging some of their records &#8230;The<br \/>\nwidespread forging of records threatens to undermine the aims of the<br \/>\ncorporate social responsibility movement, a response by multinationals<br \/>\nto the concerns of customers, non-governmental organisations and trades<br \/>\nunions about issues including human rights and the environment.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThe factory manager said he had assigned a team of six employees to<br \/>\ncreate a paper trail of fake documents for foreign buyers. Some of<br \/>\nthese workers punched fake time cards to give the impression that the<br \/>\nstipulations of buyers were being met. One was charged with creating<br \/>\nmatching payroll records on the computer.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nOne Hong Kong-owned toy factory even assigned workers to rubbing<br \/>\nfalsified time cards in dirt to make them look genuine &#8230; Some<br \/>\nfactories coach their employees ahead of auditors&#8217; visits on how to<br \/>\nanswer their questions. One sign posted in a footwear factory in<br \/>\nGuangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, and obtained by an<br \/>\nauditor reminds managers of the various weekly working hours required<br \/>\nby different buyers. &#8220;Please educate the workers well to avoid telling<br \/>\nthe client the truth,&#8221; it says.<\/p>\n<p>A document used in October 2003 to coach workers at a factory in<br \/>\nHuizhou, another city in Guangdong, warned staff that the factory had<br \/>\nreceived notice that Liz Claiborne representatives would be coming for<br \/>\nan audit the following Tuesday. &#8220;All departments and all work places<br \/>\nshould organise a training for workers to prepare for this,&#8221; it said,<br \/>\nwarning that &#8220;workers should not be allowed to let the buyers know that<br \/>\nwe have given prior training to workers based on the specifics of the<br \/>\nworkers&#8217; interview&#8221;.<br \/>\n&#8230; <br \/>\nWhile persuading most auditors that his records were genuine was not<br \/>\nhard, said the Guangdong factory manager observed by the FT, workers<br \/>\nwere harder to control. &#8220;I just stand outside the door and pray to God&#8221;<br \/>\nduring worker interviews, the manager added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Financial Times, April 22, 2005. Thanks to Michael Allen for alerting us. Factory managers in China are becoming increasingly sophisticated at falsifying worker time cards and payroll documents to disguise irregularities including underpayment, excessive hours and inadequate health and safety provision. Auditors estimate that more than half of factories they see in China [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multinational-corporate-responsibility"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}