Apple Inc’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn, has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law, in a case that raises further questions over Foxconn’s student intern program.
Labour rights activists in China have accused Foxconn and other big employers in China of using student interns as a cheap source of labour for production lines that are finding it more difficult to attract young adult workers to lower paid jobs.
Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, said it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.
“Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This is not only a violation of China’s labour law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions,” it said.
Foxconn made the announcement after investigating Chinese media reports of underage interns among its China workforce of 1.2 million. It said it had found no evidence of similar violations at any of its other plants in China.
Foxconn said it would work with local government to bar the schools involved in the Yantai case from the intern program unless shown to be compliant with labour law and company policy.
“However, we recognize that full responsibility for these violations rests with our company and we have apologized to each of the students for our role in this action,” the firm said.
It is not clear if the Yantai plant makes Apple products — Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, also makes products for…
Read more: Reuters
