Foxconn: We're not FORCING interns to make iPhone 5
They are making it of their own free will
The production line turning out iPhone 5s at Foxconn will be manned by willing interns only, said the Chinese company in a statement, rebutting stories last week that the new mobe was being pieced together by conscripted work experience kids.
Newspaper China Daily had alleged last week that trainee primary school teachers and English students in Huai'an, Jiangsu province were being made to assemble USB cables for the new iPhone in Foxconn as a compulsory part of their course at the Open University of Huai'an.
But Foxconn retorted that the internships at its factories are optional and that interns can leave at any time.
"The internship programs range in length from one to six months and students are free to leave the internship program at any time," said the Samsung, Nokia and Apple kit maker.
The interns - from vocational schools that have chosen to partner with Foxconn - are paid 1,550 yuan (£153) a month: a basic rate for workers in the region.
In the China Daily report, a 19-year-old student named only as "Song" was quoted by the paper as saying that she could not get the credit needed for graduation if she refused the Foxconn experience. "The university told us it's a good way to experience corporate culture. Even though many of my classmates are reluctant to go to Foxconn, our teachers still asked us to work there starting in August."
Foxconn's use of interns has come under criticism before, with exactly the same points being made to Tim Cook in March this year by human rights group SACOM.
In the statement this week, Foxconn has retorted that it is the schools which select the students and that the work can be beneficial for the youngsters as well as lead to full-time jobs.
Apparently pressure to prepare the iPhone 5 for launch has put stress on the factories and meant that the manufacturers are leaning more heavily on their workers. An anonymous source quoted by China Daily said:
The high demand for the handset has led to us being short-staffed at the plant. It's been even worse since some people finished their summer jobs and left.
Foxconn said that all interns were of legal working age – in China that's 16 – and that the interns make up an average of 2.7 per cent of its workforce in China. ®
COMMENTS
"W O W the dimwitted are still banging about about OH SO LAST FCKING DECADE IdoitPhone?"
I find it both amusing and appropriate that you are unable to spell "idiot".
Interns
If Song's claim is true then it's pretty poor from an ethical standpoint regardless of whether they are assembling iPhones, motherboards, or things for a NASA probe. It's the compulsion that's the issue.
It may be worth noting that, if they are volunteers, then interns at Foxconn would still seem to be paid about £153 per month more than interns in the UK. Remind me again which state is exploitative?
Re: Of course it is not
"You do not do your stint of "helping the farmer comrades, worker comrades, ... comrades" - you do not get your academic year signed off."
In some ways I don't consider that too bad an idea - we have people who go from nice public schools with grassy quads to nice Oxbridge colleges with grassy quads to nice London inns of law with grassy quads to parliament.
It would make perfect sense to me if these people who will otherwise only know luxury and privilege were obliged to spend some significant time getting to know how the other 98% live.
I doubt it would stop them being such berks but it would at least give people an opportunity to take the piss for a while before they were removed entirely from contact with the great unwashed.
Of course it is not
The student slave labour programmes in the ex-soviet block put the enforcement _ALWAYS_ into the hands of the school or university.
You do not do your stint of "helping the farmer comrades, worker comrades, ... comrades" - you do not get your academic year signed off.
So if China is using the same tried and tested "fix the failing economy" system as was in use in the whole ex-Soviet block, than Foxconn is right - they are not forcing any one. They do not need to. It is the universities and schools which in turn are doing that under the directions of the communist apparatchicks in the local (or even a few levels up) party committe. And those in turn have some "free lunch" with guess whom. So Foxconn is at least a few steps away from the actual drafting and enforcement.
Nuff said really... The only thing to add is that these "fixes" in the labor supply were one the things that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. So anyone investing into a country which needs these and into a supply chain that needs them should thing not twice, but thrice on what are the alternative supply chain options.
Re: "W O W the dimwitted are still banging about about OH SO LAST FCKING DECADE IdoitPhone?"
"Nor can he spell "fuck"."
Sadly, it appears that this particular form of unskilled production work wasn't quite beyond his parents.
