Foxconn confesses to underage employment

If one were to take the headline above in a more literal manner, you can say that a high school student had a say in how your iPhone or iPad was assembled, as Foxconn has confessed that they did employ underaged interns – especially those aged between 14 and 16. Foxconn’s statement mentioned, “An internal investigation carried out by our company has confirmed media reports in China that some participants in the short-term student internship program that is administered at our campus in Yantai, Shandong Province are under the legal working age of 16 years. This is not only a violation of China’s labor 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.”

Foxconn intends to carry out a full investigation, although we do wonder why not let a third party perform the investigation instead of doing an internal one, as the first option would definitely sound to be far less partial and more biased. It seems as though a lack in monitoring the IDs of the interns and running on assumption were the main causes of this oversight, although something of this oversight should not have happened in the first place, even if it is in China we are talking about. We do hope that things get sorted out as soon as possible though, it is for everyone’s good, and customers of Foxconn-assembled products can also sleep better at night knowing that the product they hold in their hands was ethically put together.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: foxconn