BYD is facing a new accusation of poor working conditions in Hungary, where it is building a factory capable of producing 300,000 vehicles per year.
The allegation came from a Chinese employee of the company, who reported the working conditions to the non-profit organization China Labor Watch (CLW), according to Canadian outlet CBC News.
He was sent to the BYD factory in Szeged, Hungary, to help build the company’s first European factory, which received a $6 billion investment to supply its electric vehicles to the European market.
CLW interviewed 50 workers. To protect their safety and reduce the risk of retaliation, no names appear in the report. Many of those interviewed by CLW field investigators were construction and installation workers recruited through subcontractors or other intermediaries.
“It is important that consumers know what really lies behind some of these electric vehicles and the working conditions behind the production of these cars. Chinese workers who are being brought to these sites are working under terrible conditions,” said Elaine Lu, project officer.
The report, first covered by the U.S. public radio program The World, describes possible violations of Hungarian labor and migration laws, including 7×0 work schedules, meaning no weekly day off.
In addition, workers described 12 to 14-hour workdays, with short meal breaks and no overtime pay. Wages were also frequently delayed, in some cases by up to three months or until workers returned to China.
Recruitment fees were also charged to workers. In a practice known as “debt bondage,” low-income workers said they were forced to stay despite poor conditions because they could not afford to break their contracts.
At the same time, workers entered Europe on business visas instead of authorized work permits, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and unable to access basic services such as healthcare for workplace injuries.
CLW also found that complex layers of subcontracting blurred the lines of legal responsibility for poor working conditions, potentially allowing BYD to evade accountability.
Lu said local Hungarian media began reporting safety concerns at the site after the death of a Chinese worker in February. Last month, CLW met with local authorities to share its findings.
“We hope that BYD takes these violations and these findings very seriously, because they are […] breaches of local laws and international standards,” Lu said.
Photo: Unsplash. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
