Daily Report : Chinese Plant Faces New Labor Issue On IPhones

Daily Report : Chinese Plant Faces New Labor Issue on iPhones

As Apple prepares to unveil its latest iPhone this week, the company’s manufacturing Partner in China, Foxconn Technology, is coming under renewed critticism over labor practices. Foxconn has been accused of compelling vocational students to work at plants making iPhones and their components, report David Barboza and Charles Duhigg in Tuesday’s New York Times.

Foxconn has acknowledged using student « interns » on manufacturing lines, but says they are free to leave at any time. But two worker advocacy groups said Monday that they had spoken with students who said they had been forced by their teachers to assemble iPhones at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, in north-central China.

Additionally, last week Chinese state-run news media reported that several vocational schools in the city of Huai’an, in eastern China, required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxonn plant to help ease work shortages. According to one of the articles, Huai’an students were ordered to manufacture cables for Apple’s new iPhone 5, which is expected to be introduced on Wednesday.

« They said they are forced to work by the teachers, » Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, one of the advocacy organizations and a frequent critic of Foxconn’s labor policies, told The Times in an interview on Monday. Mr.Li said his staff had spoken with several workers and students who, as recently as Sunday, said that 10 of 87 workers on an iPhone assembly line were students.

« They don’t want to work here – they want to learn, »Mr. Li said. « But if they don’t work, they are told they will not graduate, because it is a very busy time with the new iPhone coming, and Foxonn does not have enough workers without the students. »

The New York Times, September 11, 2012.

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