Foxconn says underage as young as 14 working in China

[jsr]

Last edited Tue Oct 16, 2012, 12:59 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.chron.com/business/article/iPhone-manufacturer-says-underage-interns-found-3951626.php

Foxconn says underage interns found working
JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer | Tuesday, October 16, 2012

BEIJING (AP) — Electronics manufacturer Foxconn said Tuesday it found underage interns as young as 14 working at one of its factories in China.

Foxconn Technology Group said the interns were found by a company investigation at its factory in the eastern city of Yantai and were sent back to their schools. China's minimum legal working age is 16.

Foxconn, owned by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is best known as the manufacturer of Apple Inc.'s iPhone but said the Yantai factory had no connection with its work for Apple.

The company said it is investigating with schools how the interns were sent to its factory. It didn't say how many underage interns it found. ...

[FredisDead]

1. Apple's New Foxconn Embarrassment

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/09/12/apples-new-foxconn-embarrassment/

Foxconn has acknowledged it uses student interns but says they work at its plants by choice and can leave their jobs at any time. Foxconn also said in a statement related by the Times, that students make up just 2.7% of its workforces of 1.2 million, and that schools “recruit the students under the supervision of the local government, and the schools also assign teachers to accompany and monitor the students throughout the internship.”

But the Times story paints a different picture. Two worker advocacy groups in China said they had talked to students who reported being forced by their teachers to assemble iPhones at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzho, in north-central China. Also, according to the Times, Chinese media reported last week that vocational schools in the eastern Chinese city of Huai’an required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to make up for worker shortages. One report said the Huai’an students were making cables for the iPhone 5.

“They said they are forced to work by the teachers,” Li Qiang, founder of the Chinese advocacy organization China Labor Watch, told the Times. Li added that the students didn’t want to work at Foxconn, but their teachers told them that if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t graduate.

[HappyMe]

3. This makes me sick.

Poor kids.

[onehandle]

2. No Apple connection with this factory. What about Google, Amazon, Dell, HP, Intel and Microsoft?

Who does this factory manufacture for?