Samsung Electronics to Pass Fewer Orders to China Supplier in Child Labor Response

Article information:

Article title:  Samsung Electronics to pass fewer orders to China supplier in child labor response              

Newspaper title:   Reuters          

Name of the author:   Se Young Lee    

Date of publication:  5th August 2014

The article highlights a significant ethical issue, which is having child labors to work in the China-based firm suppliers of Samsung. Having child labors is considered to be illegal in many countries particularly in China. In this article, the author discussed what is the primary concern of Samsung's supplier and what action did the company took against the vendor.

Samsung has found out that one of their China suppliers, Dongguan Shinyang Electronics Co Ltd, are using child workers which is prohibited. According to china's law, children under the age of 16 are forbidden to work (Lee, 2014). As a consequence, Samsung has suspended their activities with the firm and decided to do 30% less business with them (Lee, 2014). Moreover, Dongguan Shinyang Electronics Co Ltd did not adhere to local labor law and Samsung's zero tolerance on child labor policy, as a result of failing to take the responsibility and monitor their subcontractors. The supplier got revealed by China Labor Watch, who have reported their illegal act of having many underage workers. Thus, Samsung has decided to send their audits to inspect the process of their suppliers to prevent from having this incident again.

This article has some strength and weaknesses that I have analyzed and interpreted. The author delivered an insightful article that highlights the central issue. It gave particular details on who have uncovered about the issue and how did Samsung company handle it.

Although this article does not have many headings, I found it to be engaging because it gave direct quotations of what the officials of Samsung have stated in this matter. For example, "Samsung will continue to further strengthen its monitoring process of its suppliers to prevent such a case from recurring" (Lee, 2015). The article specifies what kind of action the Samsung company took against their supplier and made us interpret that they have learned to strengthen their supervision so that they can avoid from having illegal cases.  Moreover, it helped us recognize the enthusiasm behind Samsung's practice on this ethical issue which is child labor.