Any pics from China trip or new facility?

[phatmonk]

Very cool but some of the workers look under age

[What's_nitro?]

Originally Posted by phatmonk

Very cool but some of the workers look under age

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

In the Provence we are in in China, 16 is the minimum age when people can work a full-time job. But, my plant manager doesn't like to hire anyone under the age of 20 -- he thinks they aren't mature enough, and cause too many problems. He requires any applicant to be at least 20 years old.

And no, US laws protecting employees don't really apply in China -- but we have set up our plant to follow OSHA regulations for health and safety. Castle Holdings LLC is a Kansas company, and the Chinese factory is a WOFE (wholly-owned foreign enterprise.) We made the decision early-on to run the production facility in China the same way we run our production facility in the USA.

I hate to get into the politics of the situation (cause I'm sure some people won't like it!) but wife and I own about 80% of Castle, and we are both very strong proponents of worker's rights (some might even think Brenda borders on Socialist....) We feel like our employees are part of our family, and we treat them like they are. We want a work place that is safe, easy-going, and has a good work environment. And we apply the same philosophy in both Kansas and in China.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

CC may not run into this, but many customers and insurers now require that their vendors meet certain requirements usually labeled as HSE (Health, Safety, & Environmental). At the manufacturing company I was at for 5 years, our customers and insurers kept us much more in check than the government. In fact we had many specific audits to cover these items several times a year. Not to mention the the ISO standards are expanding to cover HSE as well. Companies do a much better job of keeping each other in check than the government ever could.

We had several of these very specific audits by international auditing firms before our Chinese plant ever went into full production. Our customers were very interested in how we operated that plant, even more so than they ever were of our US and European plants.

Even the Chinese government is stepping up their restrictions too. While there are still issues, the images people have in their minds of children working in sweat shops across China simply isn't they case. They have a very significantly sized adult work force to pool from and are also very pro education. This in turn really negates any need or want to employ child labor. One should be more concerned with child labor from our neighbors down south than in China. The African nations are an even larger concern.

The Chinese are great people, very proud, and very intelligent. They have suffered from a communist government for many years but are fairly rapidly rising out of those ashes. I have many friends and some family who live their as well so I keep a pretty decent tab of what's going on over there.