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.
