By Karen Diep
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
BEIJING, China – Yesterday, the world’s largest contract electronic maker, Foxconn Technology Group, admitted to using student interns in its Chinese factory. The Taiwanese company has been employing students as young as fourteen years old.
According to The Guardian, Chinese labor rights activists have accused many big companies, including Foxconn, of using student internship programs as a veil for cheap labor.
On Tuesday, Foxconn shared that it found interns under the legal working age of sixteen at its factory in Yantai, located in the northeastern Shandong province. Foxconn, however, did not reveal how many of underage interns there were.
“Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks,” stated the company.
In defending its internship program, Foxconn stated that workers make up only 2.7% of its staff in China. Moreover, internships can be long- or short- term, with the average lasting three and a half months.
Foxconn stated that the company would work with the local government to forbid schools involved in the Yantai factory from the internship program. However, if these schools demonstrated compliance with company policy and, most importantly, labor law then they would not be barred from the program.
“This is not only a violation of China’s labour law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions,” Foxconn shared. “However, we recognize that full responsibility for these violations rests with our company and we have apologized to each of the students for our role in this action.”
According to The Telegraph, in order to differentiate student interns from others, Foxconn gave them special worker ID numbers. Nonetheless, they worked alongside adults including night shifts and overtime.
“I did transport work, helping them move goods,” said one fourteen years old using the alias Xiao Wang. “Right now, the night shift is 7:40pm until the morning. Whenever the work is done is when you get off your shift.”
Moreover, when asked how many days these student interns do not work a month, the response was “[n]ot even one.”
In September of this year, a riot took place at Foxconn’s plant in Taiyuan over living conditions inside the plant’s on-site dormitories for commuting workers.
Foxconn is Apple’s largest manufacturing partner and creates products for, among other companies, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell. However, the company stated that none of the under age interns were working on Apple products.
After a series of suicides in 2010 and reports of employment abuses, Foxconn and Apple were mandated to improve working conditions in the Chinese factories.
For further information, please see:
The Guardian – Foxconn used 14-year-old interns at its factory in China – 17 Oct. 2012
Los Angeles Times – Underage Foxconn interns working in China plant return to school – 17 Oct. 2012
The Telegraph – 14-year-olds employed on Foxconn factory production line – 17 Oct. 2012
