Buyer's Market: Apple's Chinese iPhone Plants Employ Forced Interns, Claim Campaigners

Yellow River Scenic Near Zhengzhou

Juliette Garside  guardian.co.uk,

Sunday 1 April 2012 14.50 EDT

Students told to man production lines at Foxconn if they want to graduate, says Hong Kong-based nonprofit

   A production line at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, southern Guangdong province. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

   Apple's factories in China are employing tens of thousands of students, some of them on forced internships, according to campaigners lobbying for better labour conditions at Foxconn plants, which assemble iPhones. Some students could be as young as 16.

Employees work on the assembly line at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Foxconn chairman, Terry Gou, head of China's largest private-sector employer – with 1.2 million workers – promised on Sunday to reduce hours and improve pay after an independent audit found multiple labour law violations at his factories.

   But campaigners have accused Apple, Foxconn and the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a charitable organisation that carried out the audit published on Friday, of ignoring the issue of forced internships, where students are told they will not graduate unless they spend months working on production lines during holidays.

   In December, 1,500 students were sent by just one vocational college in Henan, China's most populous province, for internships at Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant, which Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, visited last week. The Yancheng Evening News, which exposed the practice, interviewed students who said they were going against their will and that their schools were acting as "labour agencies".

Zhengzhou (Simplified Chinese: 郑州, Traditional Chinese: 鄭州; pinyin: Zhèngzhou; old form: Chengchow); Location: Capital of Henan province, People's Republic of China; Population: 7,082,000 (2004); History:  Early capital of the Shang dynasty (16th - 11th century BC).

"The gross violation of forced internship was not addressed at all," said Debby Cheng, project officer of Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), of the Foxconn audit. "They tried to water down the problem."

   Students of nursing, languages, music and art are being corralled into internships of between three and six months, during which 10-hour days and seven-day weeks are not unusual, according to Sacom and a number of Chinese media reports, which claim colleges and universities are acting as employment agencies, sending their pupils to Foxconn not for relevant training, but to bolster the workforce during summer and winter holiday periods.

   In the summer of 2010, when Foxconn was in crisis after several suicides among the workforce at its largest plant in Shenzhen, 100,000 vocational school students – mostly in their late teens – were sent from Henan for three months.

Permanent Hall-Pass Recipient; His Beyond-Reproachness; Query: How many rivers do we have to cross before we can talk to the boss?

China Daily reported that some students at a vocational school in Henan's capital, Zhengzhou, were not told of the work until nine days before they were due to leave home. Teachers told students they must leave "as ordered by the provincial government" and that all those who refused would have to drop out of school.

   The FLA found that at a peak period in August 2001, 5.7% of the labour force – some 68,000 workers – at Foxconn Group were interns. Its assessors found "interns worked both overtime and night shifts, violations of regulations governing internships".

   The FLA, which described the hiring of interns as "the source of much controversy" and of "major concern to external stakeholders" in its Apple audit, has agreed measures to improve the treatment of students with Foxconn and Apple.

   These include making sure the job relates to the intern's field of study, procedures allowing interns to resign so that they do not feel that they are working against their will, and publishing evaluations of internships, including an annual report.

   The FLA found Foxconn hired an average of 27,000 interns a month, for an average tenure of three and a half months. It said the interns' working day should not exceed eight hours for five days a week, and they should never work seven days in a row.

 

Nightlife in Zhengzhou:  Baby Body Club

But Sacom and the Guardian's own inquiries have confirmed that 10-hour days and six-day weeks are standard. The FLA said conditions for students were difficult to regulate because under Chinese law they were not defined as employees and no employment relationship exists between the factory and interns.

   This meant some of Foxconn's most vulnerable workers were the least protected, with the FLA concluding "their employment status remains vague and represents a major risk".

   "These students should be studying, but rather they now work 10 hours a day, six to seven days a week, taking on night shifts for months at a time, equivalent to adult workers," said Cheng. She criticised the audit for not highlighting the forced labour issue. "They tried to water down the problem. They used the word 'controversial' without mentioning that these students were forced to work at Foxconn."

Zhengzhou was the first notable city surrounded by a city wall in Chinese history. It is full of vitality, exemplified by the Zhengdong development zone. The city is an important communications hub for China. 

Sacom was set up by Hong Kong academics to highlight working conditions at plants making toys for Disney when Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005. It has now expanded to focus on the electronics sector. In March, it issued a public letter to Cook calling on Apple to stop using student workers. 

   It said: "Students who major in subjects such as pharmacy, tourism and language end up working as interns at Foxconn. Some students even complain that if they refuse the 'internship' at Foxconn, they will be forced to drop out of school. This is a form of involuntary labour, which is approved by Apple in producing its products."

   On Sunday, Gou said at a business forum in Hainan province that he would address Foxconn's long-hours culture. "We are saying now in the company, 'You work fewer hours, but get more pay.'"

   Foxconn, Apple and the FLA have not responded to requests for comment.

NOTE:  Sadly, another part of a continuing series that I expect will never, ever end. I suppose we should be grateful that this article doesn't mention students subjected to involuntary servitude killing themselves.  Perhaps that's being saved for The Inevitable Sequel.  The practice, instituted sometime during my mid-career, of having unpaid internships in the U.S. has always irritated me a great deal.  Yes, it provides a “foot in the door,” as well as experience (and possibly course credit), but people should be paid for their work (fairly and on-time).  This, of course, is another kettle of fish entirely, shocking and utterly repellent.  It will receive no attention whatsoever here from our insincere, indifferent and pre-occupied with self-promotion and virtue-guarding (yours as they see it) governing class.  It would be nice to hear people like Elizabeth Warren, Cass Sunstein, Van Jones, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and the president weigh in on this (not to mention our organized labor leaders), but I’m not holding my breath.  Readers who care to are free to add any Republican names they wish to this list.

Gregory Isaacs: Slavemaster (From "Rockers")(link)

Fear And Loathing In Wuhan (Hundreds Threaten Suicide At Microsoft Supplier Plant)

NOTE:  I originally hesitated before posting this story, which was published on the website of CBS News/Seattle last Tuesday and also reported on the air, because I sometimes worry about being a “downer.”  But my family has a close and permanent affiliation with Wuhan, so I thought I should because it is so sad and shocking. (Despite the fact that Im sure we all have suffered lousy days at work, I can’t recall ever considering, let alone organizing, a mass suicide initiative as a solution.) The story also stands in stark contrast to the things our own political media seems to regard as vitally important these days (e.g., Mitt Romney’s income tax rate; Callista Gingrich’s hair.  Actually, Mrs. Gingrich’s hair does have a certain “man bites dog” aspect to it.)    

The Foxconn-Microsoft story follows on last year’s reports of mass suicides at Foxconn’s Apple manufacturing facilities. Although this month's events  received significant international “pick-up” (by Google's calculation, about 550 articles were published), it appears to have made no noticeable impact, on public or media consciousness, i.e., it's your classic "one-day story."  But imagine if this were Your life, All your Life was and ever would Be.  How would you feel?

Nets in place

By William McGuinness

SEATTLE, Wash. (CBS Seattle) – January 10, 2012 11:31 AM

Some 300 Chinese Foxconn employees who manufacture X-box 360 machines said they would throw themselves from their Wuhan, China, plant if demands for lost wages were not met.

    China Jasmine Revolution, an activist revolutionary organization with a name borrowed from the Tunisian revolt that set off the Middle East unrest, reported that employees made their demands for a wage increase for 100 employees on Jan. 2.

    Management at Foxconn — the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a crucial link in the supply chains of Apple, Dell, Nintendo and Song — responded with an ultimatum. Employees could quit with one month’s compensation awarded for each year with the plant or go back to working.

   Many employees quit, but Foxconn allegedly dishonored the agreement and awarded former employees nothing.

   Around 300 workers returned to the plant in an uproar, and staged their protest on the plant’s roof on Jan. 4.

  

Rooftop action

  

   Wuhan’s mayor intervened through hours of negotiations, walking them back from the roof’s edge until 9 p.m. when workers agreed to return to work, according to China.com.

    In an email to CBS Seattle, a Foxconn spokesperson confirmed the “workplace incident” occurred but said the workers protested because the company planned to move the workers from one business unit to another on the same campus as a result of shifts in the production line.

  “The welfare of our employees is our top priority and we are committed to ensuring that all employees are treated fairly and that their rights are fully protected. The operational changes that were the basis for this incident are being carried out in accordance with all relevant laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said.

Nets

   A Microsoft spokesperson wrote CBS Seattle a statement saying, “Microsoft takes working conditions in the factories that manufacture its products very seriously, and we are currently investigating this issue. We have a stringent Vendor Code of Conduct that spells out our expectations, and we monitor working conditions closely on an ongoing basis and address issues as they emerge. Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors, and to ensuring conformance with Microsoft policy.” ­

   Foxconn came under fire in 2010 when workers successfully committed suicide in a plant that manufactured components for Apple. Then, Foxconn told media that it considered every worker’s life to be valuable while some plants required workers to sign contracts stating that they wouldn’t kill themselves.

 

 Factory

   Wired magazine was granted access to the factories, which installed nets that would catch anyone attempting to jump.

 

Counseling center 

   Touring the Longhua plant in 2011, Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn parent Hon Hai Precision, said suicide rates among workers in his plants were smaller compared to the country’s and added a country’s suicide rate typically climbs when its GDP does, Forbes reported.

 

Rooftop action

Link: Ohio (Neil Young, Massey Hall, Toronto, 1971) (This story reminded me of Ohio and Neil’s lyric: "What if you knew her/And found her dead on the ground/How can you run when you know?")