When you purchase your brand new iPhone 5, scheduled to be announced tomorrow, will your thoughts turn to allegations of forced labor? Most of the buzz today in tech is about the function and form of Apple’s new smartphone wonder, but allegations Foxconn used forced student labor bear as much scrutiny, if not more.
Alleged Abuses Meet Patented Denial
Many prominent news outlets have brought to the surface once again human rights issues associated with Apple and the company’s key manufacturing partner Foxconn. One contributor to the discussion, Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, has be quoted in the New York Times and via PC World with incriminating statements of what his organization has found, where student workers are concerned. Apparently, in order to speed your iPhone 5 handset your way by September 21, Li told IDG News:
“In the case of the students at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory, schools are arranging the internships in order to make money from Foxconn.”
For Foxconn’s part, an email to Bloomberg flatly denies their beefing up of iPhone 5 production lines with anything other than “above board” internships including local university students. I quote from the Bloomberg article part of an emailed statement:
“A recent audit of three Foxconn facilities in China carried out by the Fair Labor Association found no evidence that any interns were pressured to participate.”
An Abuse Too Far?
If Li’s and/or student accusations are true, Foxconn went so far as to have teachers threaten students with missing out on credits needed for graduation. Other reports suggest students in education, English, food science and finance majors were reportedly required to do paid internships on Foxconn’s USB data lines for the highly anticipated smartphones. Shanghai Daily’s report on Internet postings by Chinese students allegedly “pressed” into service at Foxconn, is even more damning if true. Reporting on student postings, the leading English paper iterates:
“MengniuIQ84 wrote that the authorities had ordered the schools to send students to assist Foxconn but said that the factory neither informed parents nor signed agreements with students.”
Since Jan. 23, 2010, 19 Foxconn employees have reportedly committed suicide amid suspicion that some classified as suicides may actually have been murders. For those unfamiliar, Taiwan-based Foxconn is the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics for companies like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft. State-run China National Radio reported the internships as part of a “sanctioned” exercise supposedly to let students “experience working conditions and promote individual ability,”
Foxconn admits they employed the students, but insists the recruited workers may leave any time they like. In this statement, via a New York Times story by David Barboza and Charles Duhigg, the Apple partner said:
...“students made up just 2.7 percent of its 1.2 million-person work force in China — about 32,000 workers — 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 their internship.”
Slow Progress in a Very Fast World
Finally, the big question in all this is whether or not Chinese officials, the government, has sanctioned such employment activities or not. State media Shanghai Daily references some officials who wish to remain unnamed telling of Huai'an students being driven to Foxconn’s factory. Meahwhile, Fair Labor Association’s “investigation” of Foxconn methods came back suggesting the Apple manufacturing partner had “made progress” in improving working conditions at their plants.
I don’t know about you, but a single student pressed into service to make products is too many, and tantamount to installing safety nets beneath Foxconn plants to stem suicides, if you ask me.
Will you be purchasing the all new iPhone 5? We will keep you updated.
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