A Chinese factory that provides computer parts and Xbox 360 controllers to Microsoft, and other U.S. companies, has seen the conditions of its workers scrutinized in a scathing report issued by The National Labor Committee (NLC).

The NLC report focused on the KYE Factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong and offered a laundry list of complaints. Among them, workers earn an average of 65 cents an hour (52 cents per hour after deducting for food), workers average 68 hours of work per week, and that workers are prohibited from “talking, listening to music or using the bathroom” during working hours.

Additionally, the factory was said to have a preference for hiring 18 to 25 year old women, as “they are easier to discipline and control,” and also hires “work-study students,” or 16 and 17 year olds who work mandatory 15-hour shifts six or seven days per week.  Workers also share lodging in “primitive” dorm rooms that house up to 14 people.
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A recently-concluded strike by sanitation workers in Toronto serves as the subject matter for Trash Wars, an online parody game.

As the Toronto Star reports, the game was designed by Hafiz Kassam, owner of Q-KMBR Games. Kassam told the newspaper:

It just popped into my head. I have made games in the past... just for the sake of making them, but I wanted to (release) something for the mainstream public – something with a message versus just a game.

 

I dumbed [the complexity] down so people don't get overwhelmed. (It's) for people who don't play video games that often.

Indeed, the game simply involves shooting ever-increasing numbers of rats as you stand atop a large pile of uncollected trash bags.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Trencher for the tip!

GameCulture reports on Card Checked, a Flash game created by Libertarian Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Relief.

When we last saw Norquist on the pages of GamePolitics he was speaking out in opposition to video game legislation in Utah. This time around, his game - set in a tattoo parlor - is meant to rally opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. GameCulture explains:

Card Check [is a] a majority sign-up policy that makes it easier for unions to get employer recognition. If at least 50% of employees sign a card authorizing representation, secret ballots can be bypassed. ATR says that "in the game, the player is a tattoo artist who faces several attempts by union organizers to get you to sign the card, including visiting you at home, vandalizing your car, threatening your cat, and even offering you marijuana."

As it turns out, labor leader Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO took offense not only to the game's portrayal of union organizers as thugs, but to its game play as well:

As anyone who actually grew up playing Atari or Nintendo will know, calling this a video game is as accurate as their lies about the Employee Free Choice Act...

Norquist minion Brian Johnson wasted no time in firing back at Vale:

I'm not sure that a 1930s throwback like the AFL-CIO should be giving advice about what's cool. We're not sure what video games have been cranked out this year by the international brotherhood of video game programmers, but we'd be happy to stack our game up to any union-made product any day.

Here at GamePolitics we're always up for an issue-oriented game.

And while we can't recall another offering based on the conflict between union labor and independent workers, Crane Wars, currently featured at Blurst, explores the never-ending conflict between the two groups.

With Toronto suffering through a strike by sanitation workers, The Star found particular relevance in Crane Wars' labor theme. Designer Steve Swink, who possesses a political science degree and a fascination with the labor movement, spoke to the newspaper about his game:

We're soft on the Union for sure but we make coy little jabs at both sides. Your money, for instance, is constantly decreasing to the point of motion blur to remind you that you're running a Union shop, and doing work is EXPENSIVE.

 

We definitely wanted the controls and gameplay pacing to reflect real cranes, at least so far as they are unwieldy, slow-moving machines that take a lot of skill. It's not an easy job, and the folks doing it certainly deserve much respect...

As a small indie shop that is free of publishers and can set our own hours, I think health care would be the thing that interests us most. The big question mark with labour organization though is how it would affect prices of games for players.

Five years after EA Spouse spilled the beans on the video game industry's abuse of its game development teams, a new survey indicates that worker bees still aren't getting their due.

Develop reports that 98% of respondents to a recent poll said that they are putting in 10-15 extra hours of work per week but getting no overtime pay. Results were based on answers provided by more than 350 industry professionals.

See the results of the Develop survey here.

The annual report of game publishing giant Electronic Arts landed in GP's inbox this morning. Typically, reading through these things is a surefire remedy for insomnia, but EA's contains a few tidbits worth mentioning.

1.) EA's failed bid to gobble up Take-Two cost the company $21 million:

As a result of the terminated discussions [with T2], we recognized $21 million in related costs consisting of legal, banking and other consulting fees...

2.) EA uses DRM (you knew that) and is watching for piracy online:

We typically distribute our PC products using copy protection technology, digital rights management technology or other technological protection measures to prevent piracy... We are actively engaged in enforcement and other activities to protect against unauthorized copying and piracy, including monitoring online channels for distribution of pirated copies, and participating in various industry-wide enforcement initiatives, education programs and legislative activity around the world.

3.) Only 3% of EA employees are unionized, and they all work for DICE:

As of March 31, 2009, we had approximately 9,100 regular, full-time employees, of whom over 5,100 were outside the United States... Approximately 3 percent of our employees, all of whom work for DICE, our Swedish development studio, are represented by a union, guild or other collective bargaining organization.

4.) GameStop and Wal-Mart are EA's biggest customers; each accounts for 14% of EA sales:

Worldwide, we had direct sales to two customers, GameStop Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which each represented approximately 14 percent of total net revenue for the fiscal year... the concentration of our sales in one, or a few, large customers could lead to a short-term disruption in our sales if one or more of these customers significantly reduced their purchases or ceased to carry our products...

5.) EA worries about game content legislation and its potential effect on sales:

Legislation is continually being introduced in the United States... for the establishment of government mandated rating requirements or restrictions on distribution of entertainment software based on content... Other countries have adopted or are considering laws regulating or mandating ratings requirements...  Adoption of government ratings system or restrictions... could harm our business by limiting the products we are able to offer to our customers...

6.) EA worries about falling victim to a Hot Coffee incident but has taken steps to prevent it from happening:

If one or more of our titles were found to contain hidden, objectionable content, our business could suffer... Retailers have on occasion reacted to the discovery of such hidden content by removing these games from their shelves, refusing to sell them, and demanding that their publishers accept them as product returns.

We have implemented preventative measures designed to reduce the possibility of hidden, objectionable content from appearing in the video games we publish. Nonetheless, these preventative measures are subject to human error, circumvention, overriding, and reasonable resource constraints.