7 WTF Ways Seemingly Innocent Companies Screw Their Workers

The Jungle was shut down in 2014, but San Jose is currently trying to figure how to house the 7,000 homeless people in the area. Like most cities, the area has its fair share of people with mental problems and drug issues who just can't keep it together in mainstream society. But Silicon Valley's homeless population also includes bus drivers, carpenters, medical clerks, and caterers who can't afford San Jose's average rent of 2,633 clams per month.

So, what's a working man or woman who can't afford to move to Middle America do? Some of the bus drivers who shuffle Apple's workers between their suburban homes and glitzy offices end up sleeping in their cars between shifts. Others don't have cars, so they opt for the next best thing: sleeping on a bus every night.

San Jose has one bus that runs 24 hours a day: It's called Line 22, and for $8, anyone can ride "Hotel 22" from Santa Clara to San Jose, over and over again, until morning. Some of the bus' nightly "residents" include people who have lived in the area since the town was full of orchards and ranches. One guy on the bus used to work as a chef at Microsoft. Everyone brings blankets, because this is as good as it gets when the shelters are full and you're stuck choosing between sleeping in the alley, a hobo camp, or staking out the best awning on a sidewalk on a rainy night.

So it's entirely possible that, as you're reading this, someone who contributed to the technology supporting your device is currently sleeping on a bus because they have nowhere else to go at night. But at least we're seeing a united public response to this humanitarian crisis from the tech sector, right?

Tea has always been the drink of choice for the regal and dignified, but the conditions of those who actually collect the tea leaves couldn't be further from that image. A BBC-led investigation into Indian tea plantations where many major companies get their product discovered that workers were subjected to atrocious conditions in their homes and their workplaces. Poking your pinkie out while drinking a cup of tea isn't genteel; it's sanitary. Coffee may be for closers, but tea is open to anybody and everything that comes out of their body.

And we mean everything. The investigation revealed the terrible sanitation conditions that workers endure in Assam, a state in Northeastern India. Many of the families went without toilets and had no other option but to poop among the tea leaves. How's that for shitting it to the man?

The plumbing drains that are in use are usually clogged and overflowing with waste. In some extreme cases, there are cesspits overflowing into homes. Nine out of 10 workers were underfed, and we're guessing that the other one in 10 weren't suffering from obesity.

Chemicals are sprayed without protection for the workers, and their kids were working their butts off on some of the plantations. The children of the families often cycle in and out of the hospital, usually suffering from curable diseases that they don't have the resources to fight. If you're waiting for a joke in this paragraph, here it is: Knock knock. Who's there? Tea-stained tragedy.

So, just to be clear, the next time you sit down for a morning meditation with a hot cup of Tetley, Twinings, or PG Tips, all of which are sold at Walmart, you could be drinking the feces of child laborers currently clinging to life while picking the tea leaves that will fuel your next Oprah-inspired "Aha! moment" Instagram post.

Cobalt is a key component used in producing lithium batteries, and child labor is a key component in retrieving it from the ground for big brands like Apple and Microsoft. An Amnesty International investigation traced the cobalt used by 16 multinationals to mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which used child labor. For your kids to be able to play Minecraft, it takes about 40,000 kids enduring literal minecraft.

Amnesty and African NGO Afrewatch interviewed some of these children and their adult co-workers. They detailed how they worked for 12-hour shifts, without protective gear, for a dollar or two a day. They were beaten and forced to pay "fines" to corrupt officials. The report claims to trace the supply chain from these mines to a Chinese company, Huayou Cobalt, which in turn sells to the battery companies used by businesses like Apple and Vodafone. But when pressed about this, the smartphone producers played dumb.

According to one researcher at Amnesty International, no company can claim ignorance of the human rights abuses in mineral extraction in the DRC, where half of all cobalt originates. He says responses by companies were "staggering," such as Microsoft claiming it was too complex and resource-draining to trace the supply chain all the way down to smelter level. These young upstart companies must be under a lot of financial strain.

Thurlow described the conditions as "illegally harsh." Employees are overworked to the point of hospitalization. If there's an impending deadline to meet, that means nonstop work, and the studios take the concept of deadline very seriously. After that's done, animators can ease back into their regular work schedule of 10-hour days, six days a week.

According to Thurlow, animators at his studio were paid by frame. Drawing corrections on a set of frames for a day might net an employee $150. But other days, it's all tracing and extra details for major shots, and the animator might take home about $12. This kind of pay schedule makes the average worker receive 1.1 million yen (about $10,000 dollars) a year, which equates to less than $1,000 a month. And that's working 11-hour days. Pokemon have better work conditions than that.

Tragically, these unforgiving conditions can lead animators to take their own lives. In one case, a staff member working for A-1 Pictures committed suicide, citing depression due to overwork. He was working for 600 hours a month -- that data came not from his employer but from the hospital that was treating him. The entire industry is employing near slave labor, all so kids can spend time with their own slavemaster on Saturday mornings.

The fish caught are small, cheap, and plentiful in the South China Sea. They are sold to the United States to be used for canned pet food or farm-raised-fish people food. The conditions are violent and cruel: Workers are beaten for the smallest misdemeanors, such as placing a single fish in the wrong bucket. In a 2009 survey of 50 Cambodian men and boys who were once forced onto these ships, over half said they witnessed a captain or officer murder a worker.

Back on land, there is no escape from the corruption and violence of the local industry. Shrimp-shelling sheds are hidden in plain sight from authorities, where the workers are enslaved and locked inside. An Associated Press investigation managed to free 2,000 of the enslaved workers and fry some of the big fish responsible.

As part of the investigation, the shrimp was traced from the local sheds to major Thai exporting companies, which were then tracked globally. The results were shocking: These slave-shelled shrimp were present in the supply chains of major U.S. companies like Whole Foods, Petco, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and even Walmart. (All right, that last one wasn't all that surprising.)

There were 3 million non-fatal workplace injuries in the U.S. in 2014, at a rate of about 3.2 per 100 workers. Ashley's Arcadia factory employs 4,500 people and had over 1,000 injuries in three years. We're in the business of comedy, not math, but even an Ashley Furniture employee who had lost both their eyes can tell that's a ridiculous amount. And, thankfully, the U.S. Department of Labor agrees.

Ashley was slapped with a $1.77 million fine for "willful, repeated, and serious safety violations." Apparently, the Department of Labor rarely issues fines of more than $1 million, but all of those 1,000 injuries were serious and required more than first aid. In other words, several fingers were amputated in the name of matching bedroom sets. Ashley has clearly never seen Star Wars, or they'd know not to risk facing the vengeance of amputees.

Ashley's director of health and safety tried to defend his company's safety record, claiming they'd lowered the accident rate by 14 percent over five years. That doesn't make it sound safe to us -- it just makes us shocked that they were the Devil five years ago and now they're one of his minions.

Dangerous conditions were exacerbated by the company offering incentives for work getting done quickly. Many of these injuries occur due to a lack of training for the workers. For example, they failed to safeguard against machines starting while employees were making changes to the blades or tools, presumably because they want to make some kind of sick Wood-Saw movie.

After the Arcadia facility was fined, the Department of Labor delivered more punishment to the company for the conditions at their Whitehall facility. Once again, they had failed to prevent machines from starting up while workers were changing, cleaning, or unclogging blades. Workers were risking limb every time they did their job.

And to top it all off, when workers do get hurt while working too quickly on dangerous machines they aren't properly trained to use, Ashley regularly blames them for their own injuries. After all, they should know better than to do the job the company pays them for.

A Washington nonprofit, the Environmental Investigation Agency, has spent the past three years looking into connections between protected forest logging and Lumber Liquidators. Posing as illegal buyers, the group went undercover to the Russia-China border to see what noise a tree made when it was knocked down by illegal loggers. The trees were cut down in the middle of the night, and then taken to saw mills to be mixed with legal wood.

The loggers then turned smugglers, transferring the product to Russian and Chinese buyers, who in turn sold it to United States companies. It is alleged that Lumber Liquidators is one of these. They might not be bothered about Siberian Tigers, but the government has claws that they can't ignore.

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