9 ms·

Foxconn using forced student labor to build Sony’s PS4

107 points by Impossible 13y ago

yeukhon 13y ago
I am not going to defend the Chinese this time. How stupid is that? How much money can you save by hiring students? While I don't think top managements like the CEO has any idea of this (I really doubt), they are still responsible for this horrible practice. Here is the actual press from the school. http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html It basically said "the students (total of 45) had made a milestone, breaking Foxconn's record." The press praised the students for their hard work. It was written so.. idk how to explain it... the kind of statement you get from a government news press. It's ridiculous.
- XorNot 13y ago
  More importantly this is about as close to "mortgaging your future" as you can get. Take Chinese students, in a high-tech degree program which could equip them to earn 6-figure salaries...and waste their time forcing them to provide free-labor doing unpaid menial assembly jobs. The Chinese optics on this are absurd.
taspeotis 13y ago
That's terrible! I will definitely remember this when I go to buy a next-generation game console. Posted from my iPhone 5S 64GB (Gold)
- bentcorner 13y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if competitors attempt to dig up dirt like this.
  - KevinEldon 13y ago
    Does it matter if it's true?
  - beedogs 13y ago
    I don't care who digs it up if it's factual.
    - venus 13y ago
      That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that? If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that? Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as this could be - is bad mental hygiene.
      - shard972 13y ago
        > When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Well maybe some people don't have such a naive view of the world where they assume nobody is corrupt until it's slapped in their face (And even then). Some people can look at stories at this and not think "Hey fuck the PS4 for using forced labor, Ima buy a Xbox One instead". > If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that? So you would argue in that case it would be better to see party A's actions covered up so that there would be a fairer playing field between the two? > Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it But he isn't closing his eyes, he's got them wide open. He's just saying that he doesn't care who bringing him his info as long as it's factual.
    - SG- 13y ago
      like Mike Daisey when pretended his stuff was fact?
  - jkscm 13y ago
    Hopefully this will have some impact or otherwise everyone stops bothering.
bookface 13y ago
If this involved Apple, the article's headline would be "Apple using forced student labor to build iPhone"
- nilved 13y ago
  Indeed. This title should properly reflect that Sony is responsible.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
    Maybe they don't know though. Imagine you contract out some work, say building a website, to party A. How do you know they did it? Maybe they sub-contract. While I'm sure Sony's contract has lots of details in it, there is probably no "don't trick university students" clause and Foxconn saw an opportunity to do something underhanded and increase profits.
    - jm4 13y ago
      It's someone's job to know. I knew a buyer at a major office supply company. The buyers' responsibilities included occasional visits to the factories where suppliers made the products that were bought and then put on sale in the stores. This particular company had standards that they held suppliers to. When a buyer found workers at a factory with duct tape on their mouths, people living in squalor in the "dormitories", child labor or any other nonsense it was not uncommon for those suppliers to be thrown out of the store if it was not corrected. This was for a few million dollars worth of back to school supplies. There's no way someone enters into a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for high end electronics without ever visiting the factory and knowing what goes on there. They know damn well what kind of conditions exist and chose to do business with the supplier anyway. If they didn't know then they're too stupid to have their job.
      - joesb 13y ago
        But even if you personally visit the factory, how do you know that guy in a mouth cover working over there is a college student being forced to work?
undoware 13y ago
...the PS5, on the other hand, will be built by the players themselves, as the games will just be transforms on robot-guiding, chip-stamping, box-printing...
- megrimlock 13y ago
  Computational complexity theory tries to find equivalence classes of problems that can map to one another. Each class has a primary representative such as TSP (travelling salesman problem) or 3-SAT that memorably capture the essence of the class. While it's not clear that you can map Grand Theft Auto to anything useful, you might be onto something here: Imagine a mechanical turk system where the grunt tasks are remapped onto inherently enjoyable gameplay scenarios. It would be an arbitrage play between turk vendors needing menial tasks done, and players needing entertainment. Recaptcha is a (brilliant) example, but I don't know of others. Maybe UAV control might be one. (Note that mapping one valuable task to another enjoyable task is a different idea than the "gamification" fad of inventing events to adorn with tawdry badges.)
  - victorf 13y ago
    Just add points to arbitrary tasks and people will do them for free and with unexpected ability. Did you know there are amateur human protein folders and they pretty much outperform computational folders?
  - Debugreality 13y ago
    It wouldn't have to be a full time task but could be inserted into a game to provide a change to the flow. For example putting together an iphone from pieces found in an old cardboard box while zombies are trying to break in the door you just locked. This is kind of like the use of in game advertising in that when done well it doesn't actually detract from the game but adds to it.
  - pirateking 13y ago
    Reminds me of a similar idea I had related to remapping body motions from a motion-based control scheme in a game, to real world assembly lines. "Solve the puzzle and get $10 in Labor Points towards your next iPhone!"
swamp40 13y ago
Sounds a lot like the unpaid internship positions I've seen offered at plenty of startups. Just on an industrial scale.
avty 13y ago
Forced labor leads to better US consumer prices!
thex86 13y ago
While I want to stop buying such stuff, where does it end? A quick look at my favourite supermarket shows that almost 90% of the products are "Made in China". How do I know they were not made under similar circumstances? Or the t-shirts that are made in Bangladesh that I can expect to be made pretty much under the same conditions of forced labour. I would love to buy things made in USA or Canada but that is not happening. I have tried to do this in the past and I am even willing to pay extra dollars for this, but I find most companies have shifted manufacturing to China. My recent conversation with a company went like: Me: Where do you manufacture your products? Company: We used to manufacture them in Canada but we shifted to China. But rest assured, our quality is the same and blah blah blah. So my point is, we do not have a choice. You can boycott Apple or Sony PS4 now, but it doesn't end there.
- KevinEldon 13y ago
  Where do you live? It's odd to me that 90% of the products at your favorite supermarket are made in China. Like bananas, oranges, bread, beer, hamburger, celery, avacados, beans, cereal, milk, fish... these do not seem like things that are made in China if you live in the Western hemisphere. I know I have many things made in China, but they seem to be more physical long-term goods; toys, electronics (maybe?), physical things.
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    He lives in China.
  - thex86 13y ago
    I was not talking about eatables. I was talking about electronics and non-edible stuff. Should have clarified.
    - KevinEldon 13y ago
      No worries. I do not think 90% of the thing I buy from Walmart and other common "supermarkets" in the South Eastern US are from China, but I cannot vouch or the labor laws of these sources... that doesn't mean they're bad, it means I need to pay more attention to these things.
chrischen 13y ago
"But students have said that once they got to Foxconn, they were assigned to jobs that had no relation whatsoever to their fields of study, including grunt work like distribution and shipping." Sounds like a lot of American internships haha. But seriously, people have given me advice to try "working at a McDonalds" or "work as a dishwaser" to gain some experience outside of sitting in front of a computer all day.
- eru 13y ago
  McDonalds might not be too bad, if you keep your eyes and ears open. They have great operations, that turns unskilled labour into steady source of income.
  - redthrowaway 13y ago
    Plus they teach great customer service. When my step mother was in retail she would always hire people with McD's on their resume because she knew she wouldn't have to teach them how to treat customers.
    - logn 13y ago
      I was just thinking recently how good customer service is for McDonald's and fast food as a whole. McD's has 'served billions and billions' and scaled their workforce to an impressive extent while still retaining food safety and decent customer service. A philosophy of technology professor in college loved to use them as an example as the pinnacle of engineering, from supply chain down to point-of-sale. And while minimum wage might seem demeaning, they invest a lot more in people than many companies and (sadly) is one of a few good employers in many towns.
    - eru 13y ago
      I've heard that attitude echoed by a few small business owners. Especially coffee shops.
  - KevinEldon 13y ago
    I worked @ McDonalds for about 6 months many years ago. I learned that I wanted to really like my work and that customer's care about what they get; clean restaurants and food prepared according to spec is good business. I got cheap food, good pay for a teenager, and learned that you should always look at the health score wherever you eat... a low score doesn't mean you don't eat there... but you better really love the place if you do (my restaurant always scored well, and when you know what goes into a health score you know what to look out for).
westiseast 13y ago
While you're ranting at Sony/Apple, don't forget to spare some outrage for the Chinese professors, managers, bosses etc. who are willing participants. Sony are the customer, and could share some blame, but honestly, this smacks of a couple of professors from the uni getting nice kickbacks (ie. "consultancy" fees) and everyone looking good to some local government officials for their "modern" internship programmes. That's generally how stuff works in China.
- beedogs 13y ago
  The companies who happily make use of suppliers who utilize this kind of labor are just as culpable. They can take their business elsewhere, but obviously, capitalism being what it is, there's no incentive to do that.
  - KevinEldon 13y ago
    Capitalism being what it is, no one is required to buy a PS4 or anything else that they do not want to (please do not take me into a rat hole about healthcare or other government mandated purchases). If the only source of water was to purchase it form a corporation that enslaved people I'd get your point, but we're talking about a PS4... it's a video game console... a PS4 does not matter that much if you really care about taking care of workers.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - beedogs 13y ago
      Well I'll be doing my part by continuing to not purchase Sony products (a decision I made years ago for other reasons; this just adds to the pile.)
      - cgh 13y ago
        Do you think Sony execs had a say in this or were even aware of it?
tobyjsullivan 13y ago
Getting student interns to do the grunt work is an outdated practice? I was almost convinced that was standard operating procedure at most North American tech firms.
- bookface 13y ago
  If you think tech internships are bad, you should look at literally any other field.
eriksank 13y ago
The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn. I think that they should voluntarily appoint international-standard labour auditors to vet all their labour practices and to phrase recommendations as to what exactly their management should seriously consider changing. The foxconn management may not always be aware of sensitivities in their overseas markets. With small changes in their procedures, they could already achieve quite a few things. It is not a problem to hire students and interns, but they should beware of anything that could make it look like indentured labour.
- tsotha 13y ago
  >The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn. What do you mean by this? What are the ramifications of this "serious problem"? Are they making less money?
  - benologist 13y ago
    Consequences do exist, although it's still very minimal. This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move though and actively audit the companies they work with - In one case, Apple terminated its relationship with a component maker after discovering 74 cases in which underage workers were being employed. Apple also found that an employment agency had forged documents to allow children to work illegally at the supplier. Apple reported both the supplier and the employment agency to the local authorities, the company said in its latest annual report on the conditions in its supply chain. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-audits-uncover-underage-workers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-aud...
    - elithrar 13y ago
      > " This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move though..." Where do they [or Apple] go if not Foxconn? Foxconn is huge. Moving production elsewhere, even outside of a major product launch, is likely in the realm of the infeasible.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
redact207 13y ago
Any company that has suicide nets and barred up windows is breaking some serious humanitarian laws. Free labour aside, the bleak truth for many of these students who are going down the professional track is that their country's industry isn't large enough to offer most of them placements. Despite being smart, hard working and well educated, many will have to go into manufacturing like this after they graduate. The article talks about Xi'an that's roughly in the centre of the country, a good distance away from the international East coast where the majority of the professional appointments are.
- Tichy 13y ago
  I don't understand how people can go on pointing at the suicides when it is well known that suicide rates are lower at Foxconn than the average Chinese suicide rates?
sb057 13y ago
Just don't forget, sweatshops are better than no employment at all. Though it is bad that they exist, they are a sign of progress.
- peterkelly 13y ago
  Except that these students aren't getting paid for their work.
jusben1369 13y ago
One man's forced labor is another's "real world work credits to finish your degree". This seems to be a storm in a teacup that will naturally play very well for historical reasons.
KevinEldon 13y ago
I recently mentored two high-school interns at a Fortune 500 tech company. My goal was to give them a real experience in what it's like to work at a big company (code for I had no budget to woo them w/ fancy dinners, concerts, toys, etc.) and to give them real work. They built a useful mobile app. I gave them minimal supervision, directed and helped when I could... based on their feedback I think it was a huge success. I'm glad the company I work for considers interns as an opportunity to train up the next generation of great programmers, managers, and leaders, and practically realizes these people are their next employees. If I'd exploited them as menial labor (getting me coffee, processing mail, doing boring work) they'd lose out and my company would too. Perhaps China has a labor pool large enough to develop and exploit at the same time (that's sad if they do).
dminor14 13y ago
Guess what, Foxconn makes boards for Linux boxes as well, blaming Sony and Apple for using Foxconn and ignoring that everybody else uses them as well is absurd.
kamaal 13y ago
Do you know saddest part in all this? These kind of jobs might be the only way those students can earn enough(to pay for their education) in hopes of a better life later. I've been is such a situation before, and it totally sucks. But that is the only available option before you. Imagine having to this, when you have no other options left. I mean these people are not lazy, not stupid and very capable. But they have to do this because of scarcity of opportunity.
- Tichy 13y ago
  ... until they graduate and get high paying jobs in finance. Is it really so bad to have to work "student jobs"?
Tichy 13y ago
"One student, for example, majored in finance and accounting but has been assigned to a job that entails glueing together parts of Sony’s Playstation 4...." Am I the only one who thinks that sounds great? Why shouldn't finance an accounting guys get some insights into the working conditions of people "below" them?
goggles99 13y ago
Sad thing is - the target audience for the PS4 doesn't give a damn. As long as it is not them and they never have to see the people or be affected in a personal way because of it, they are happy to look the other way.
ddeck 13y ago
This is pretty widespread. There was an interesting investigative piece last year done by a HK station [1], but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available online. Plenty of kickbacks going to the local government/schools to keep the students flowing. This made the headlines last year too except it was Apple that time: 32,000 Students Choose: Build Your iPhone 5 Or Get Expelled From School [2] China Contractor Again Faces Labor Issue on iPhones [3] [1] http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/ http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/ [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-students-choose-build-your-iphone-5-or-get-expelled-from-school/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-stud... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to...
gambiting 13y ago
99% of all internships in Poland are not paid for. And you HAVE to do them to pass the course. Yet I am yet to see an article talking about "forced student labour" building anything in Poland. Maybe because the same issue in China is more sensational?
ivanhoe 13y ago
Banks do pretty much the same thing with their internships... which, of course, just makes it even bigger argument against this type of modern slavery...

107 points by Impossible 13y ago

I am not going to defend the Chinese this time. How stupid is that? How much money can you save by hiring students? While I don't think top managements like the CEO has any idea of this (I really doubt), they are still responsible for this horrible practice. Here is the actual press from the school. http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html It basically said "the students (total of 45) had made a milestone, breaking Foxconn's record." The press praised the students for their hard work. It was written so.. idk how to explain it... the kind of statement you get from a government news press. It's ridiculous.

XorNot 13y ago
More importantly this is about as close to "mortgaging your future" as you can get. Take Chinese students, in a high-tech degree program which could equip them to earn 6-figure salaries...and waste their time forcing them to provide free-labor doing unpaid menial assembly jobs. The Chinese optics on this are absurd.

taspeotis 13y ago

That's terrible! I will definitely remember this when I go to buy a next-generation game console. Posted from my iPhone 5S 64GB (Gold)

bentcorner 13y ago
Sometimes I wonder if competitors attempt to dig up dirt like this.
- KevinEldon 13y ago
  Does it matter if it's true?
- beedogs 13y ago
  I don't care who digs it up if it's factual.
  - venus 13y ago
    That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that? If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that? Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as this could be - is bad mental hygiene.
    - shard972 13y ago
      > When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Well maybe some people don't have such a naive view of the world where they assume nobody is corrupt until it's slapped in their face (And even then). Some people can look at stories at this and not think "Hey fuck the PS4 for using forced labor, Ima buy a Xbox One instead". > If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that? So you would argue in that case it would be better to see party A's actions covered up so that there would be a fairer playing field between the two? > Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it But he isn't closing his eyes, he's got them wide open. He's just saying that he doesn't care who bringing him his info as long as it's factual.
  - SG- 13y ago
    like Mike Daisey when pretended his stuff was fact?
- jkscm 13y ago
  Hopefully this will have some impact or otherwise everyone stops bothering.

bookface 13y ago

If this involved Apple, the article's headline would be "Apple using forced student labor to build iPhone"

nilved 13y ago
Indeed. This title should properly reflect that Sony is responsible.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
  Maybe they don't know though. Imagine you contract out some work, say building a website, to party A. How do you know they did it? Maybe they sub-contract. While I'm sure Sony's contract has lots of details in it, there is probably no "don't trick university students" clause and Foxconn saw an opportunity to do something underhanded and increase profits.
  - jm4 13y ago
    It's someone's job to know. I knew a buyer at a major office supply company. The buyers' responsibilities included occasional visits to the factories where suppliers made the products that were bought and then put on sale in the stores. This particular company had standards that they held suppliers to. When a buyer found workers at a factory with duct tape on their mouths, people living in squalor in the "dormitories", child labor or any other nonsense it was not uncommon for those suppliers to be thrown out of the store if it was not corrected. This was for a few million dollars worth of back to school supplies. There's no way someone enters into a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for high end electronics without ever visiting the factory and knowing what goes on there. They know damn well what kind of conditions exist and chose to do business with the supplier anyway. If they didn't know then they're too stupid to have their job.
    - joesb 13y ago
      But even if you personally visit the factory, how do you know that guy in a mouth cover working over there is a college student being forced to work?

undoware 13y ago

...the PS5, on the other hand, will be built by the players themselves, as the games will just be transforms on robot-guiding, chip-stamping, box-printing...

megrimlock 13y ago
Computational complexity theory tries to find equivalence classes of problems that can map to one another. Each class has a primary representative such as TSP (travelling salesman problem) or 3-SAT that memorably capture the essence of the class. While it's not clear that you can map Grand Theft Auto to anything useful, you might be onto something here: Imagine a mechanical turk system where the grunt tasks are remapped onto inherently enjoyable gameplay scenarios. It would be an arbitrage play between turk vendors needing menial tasks done, and players needing entertainment. Recaptcha is a (brilliant) example, but I don't know of others. Maybe UAV control might be one. (Note that mapping one valuable task to another enjoyable task is a different idea than the "gamification" fad of inventing events to adorn with tawdry badges.)
- victorf 13y ago
  Just add points to arbitrary tasks and people will do them for free and with unexpected ability. Did you know there are amateur human protein folders and they pretty much outperform computational folders?
- Debugreality 13y ago
  It wouldn't have to be a full time task but could be inserted into a game to provide a change to the flow. For example putting together an iphone from pieces found in an old cardboard box while zombies are trying to break in the door you just locked. This is kind of like the use of in game advertising in that when done well it doesn't actually detract from the game but adds to it.
- pirateking 13y ago
  Reminds me of a similar idea I had related to remapping body motions from a motion-based control scheme in a game, to real world assembly lines. "Solve the puzzle and get $10 in Labor Points towards your next iPhone!"

swamp40 13y ago

Sounds a lot like the unpaid internship positions I've seen offered at plenty of startups. Just on an industrial scale.

avty 13y ago

Forced labor leads to better US consumer prices!

thex86 13y ago

While I want to stop buying such stuff, where does it end? A quick look at my favourite supermarket shows that almost 90% of the products are "Made in China". How do I know they were not made under similar circumstances? Or the t-shirts that are made in Bangladesh that I can expect to be made pretty much under the same conditions of forced labour. I would love to buy things made in USA or Canada but that is not happening. I have tried to do this in the past and I am even willing to pay extra dollars for this, but I find most companies have shifted manufacturing to China. My recent conversation with a company went like: Me: Where do you manufacture your products? Company: We used to manufacture them in Canada but we shifted to China. But rest assured, our quality is the same and blah blah blah. So my point is, we do not have a choice. You can boycott Apple or Sony PS4 now, but it doesn't end there.

KevinEldon 13y ago
Where do you live? It's odd to me that 90% of the products at your favorite supermarket are made in China. Like bananas, oranges, bread, beer, hamburger, celery, avacados, beans, cereal, milk, fish... these do not seem like things that are made in China if you live in the Western hemisphere. I know I have many things made in China, but they seem to be more physical long-term goods; toys, electronics (maybe?), physical things.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  He lives in China.
- thex86 13y ago
  I was not talking about eatables. I was talking about electronics and non-edible stuff. Should have clarified.
  - KevinEldon 13y ago
    No worries. I do not think 90% of the thing I buy from Walmart and other common "supermarkets" in the South Eastern US are from China, but I cannot vouch or the labor laws of these sources... that doesn't mean they're bad, it means I need to pay more attention to these things.

chrischen 13y ago

"But students have said that once they got to Foxconn, they were assigned to jobs that had no relation whatsoever to their fields of study, including grunt work like distribution and shipping." Sounds like a lot of American internships haha. But seriously, people have given me advice to try "working at a McDonalds" or "work as a dishwaser" to gain some experience outside of sitting in front of a computer all day.

eru 13y ago
McDonalds might not be too bad, if you keep your eyes and ears open. They have great operations, that turns unskilled labour into steady source of income.
- redthrowaway 13y ago
  Plus they teach great customer service. When my step mother was in retail she would always hire people with McD's on their resume because she knew she wouldn't have to teach them how to treat customers.
  - logn 13y ago
    I was just thinking recently how good customer service is for McDonald's and fast food as a whole. McD's has 'served billions and billions' and scaled their workforce to an impressive extent while still retaining food safety and decent customer service. A philosophy of technology professor in college loved to use them as an example as the pinnacle of engineering, from supply chain down to point-of-sale. And while minimum wage might seem demeaning, they invest a lot more in people than many companies and (sadly) is one of a few good employers in many towns.
  - eru 13y ago
    I've heard that attitude echoed by a few small business owners. Especially coffee shops.
- KevinEldon 13y ago
  I worked @ McDonalds for about 6 months many years ago. I learned that I wanted to really like my work and that customer's care about what they get; clean restaurants and food prepared according to spec is good business. I got cheap food, good pay for a teenager, and learned that you should always look at the health score wherever you eat... a low score doesn't mean you don't eat there... but you better really love the place if you do (my restaurant always scored well, and when you know what goes into a health score you know what to look out for).

westiseast 13y ago

While you're ranting at Sony/Apple, don't forget to spare some outrage for the Chinese professors, managers, bosses etc. who are willing participants. Sony are the customer, and could share some blame, but honestly, this smacks of a couple of professors from the uni getting nice kickbacks (ie. "consultancy" fees) and everyone looking good to some local government officials for their "modern" internship programmes. That's generally how stuff works in China.

beedogs 13y ago
The companies who happily make use of suppliers who utilize this kind of labor are just as culpable. They can take their business elsewhere, but obviously, capitalism being what it is, there's no incentive to do that.
- KevinEldon 13y ago
  Capitalism being what it is, no one is required to buy a PS4 or anything else that they do not want to (please do not take me into a rat hole about healthcare or other government mandated purchases). If the only source of water was to purchase it form a corporation that enslaved people I'd get your point, but we're talking about a PS4... it's a video game console... a PS4 does not matter that much if you really care about taking care of workers.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - beedogs 13y ago
    Well I'll be doing my part by continuing to not purchase Sony products (a decision I made years ago for other reasons; this just adds to the pile.)
    - cgh 13y ago
      Do you think Sony execs had a say in this or were even aware of it?

tobyjsullivan 13y ago

Getting student interns to do the grunt work is an outdated practice? I was almost convinced that was standard operating procedure at most North American tech firms.

bookface 13y ago
If you think tech internships are bad, you should look at literally any other field.

eriksank 13y ago

The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn. I think that they should voluntarily appoint international-standard labour auditors to vet all their labour practices and to phrase recommendations as to what exactly their management should seriously consider changing. The foxconn management may not always be aware of sensitivities in their overseas markets. With small changes in their procedures, they could already achieve quite a few things. It is not a problem to hire students and interns, but they should beware of anything that could make it look like indentured labour.

tsotha 13y ago
>The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn. What do you mean by this? What are the ramifications of this "serious problem"? Are they making less money?
- benologist 13y ago
  Consequences do exist, although it's still very minimal. This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move though and actively audit the companies they work with - In one case, Apple terminated its relationship with a component maker after discovering 74 cases in which underage workers were being employed. Apple also found that an employment agency had forged documents to allow children to work illegally at the supplier. Apple reported both the supplier and the employment agency to the local authorities, the company said in its latest annual report on the conditions in its supply chain. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-audits-uncover-underage-workers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-aud...
  - elithrar 13y ago
    > " This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move though..." Where do they [or Apple] go if not Foxconn? Foxconn is huge. Moving production elsewhere, even outside of a major product launch, is likely in the realm of the infeasible.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

redact207 13y ago

Any company that has suicide nets and barred up windows is breaking some serious humanitarian laws. Free labour aside, the bleak truth for many of these students who are going down the professional track is that their country's industry isn't large enough to offer most of them placements. Despite being smart, hard working and well educated, many will have to go into manufacturing like this after they graduate. The article talks about Xi'an that's roughly in the centre of the country, a good distance away from the international East coast where the majority of the professional appointments are.

Tichy 13y ago
I don't understand how people can go on pointing at the suicides when it is well known that suicide rates are lower at Foxconn than the average Chinese suicide rates?

sb057 13y ago

Just don't forget, sweatshops are better than no employment at all. Though it is bad that they exist, they are a sign of progress.

peterkelly 13y ago
Except that these students aren't getting paid for their work.

jusben1369 13y ago

One man's forced labor is another's "real world work credits to finish your degree". This seems to be a storm in a teacup that will naturally play very well for historical reasons.

KevinEldon 13y ago

I recently mentored two high-school interns at a Fortune 500 tech company. My goal was to give them a real experience in what it's like to work at a big company (code for I had no budget to woo them w/ fancy dinners, concerts, toys, etc.) and to give them real work. They built a useful mobile app. I gave them minimal supervision, directed and helped when I could... based on their feedback I think it was a huge success. I'm glad the company I work for considers interns as an opportunity to train up the next generation of great programmers, managers, and leaders, and practically realizes these people are their next employees. If I'd exploited them as menial labor (getting me coffee, processing mail, doing boring work) they'd lose out and my company would too. Perhaps China has a labor pool large enough to develop and exploit at the same time (that's sad if they do).

dminor14 13y ago

Guess what, Foxconn makes boards for Linux boxes as well, blaming Sony and Apple for using Foxconn and ignoring that everybody else uses them as well is absurd.

kamaal 13y ago

Do you know saddest part in all this? These kind of jobs might be the only way those students can earn enough(to pay for their education) in hopes of a better life later. I've been is such a situation before, and it totally sucks. But that is the only available option before you. Imagine having to this, when you have no other options left. I mean these people are not lazy, not stupid and very capable. But they have to do this because of scarcity of opportunity.

Tichy 13y ago
... until they graduate and get high paying jobs in finance. Is it really so bad to have to work "student jobs"?

Tichy 13y ago

"One student, for example, majored in finance and accounting but has been assigned to a job that entails glueing together parts of Sony’s Playstation 4...." Am I the only one who thinks that sounds great? Why shouldn't finance an accounting guys get some insights into the working conditions of people "below" them?

goggles99 13y ago

Sad thing is - the target audience for the PS4 doesn't give a damn. As long as it is not them and they never have to see the people or be affected in a personal way because of it, they are happy to look the other way.

ddeck 13y ago

This is pretty widespread. There was an interesting investigative piece last year done by a HK station [1], but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available online. Plenty of kickbacks going to the local government/schools to keep the students flowing. This made the headlines last year too except it was Apple that time: 32,000 Students Choose: Build Your iPhone 5 Or Get Expelled From School [2] China Contractor Again Faces Labor Issue on iPhones [3] [1] http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/ http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/ [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-students-choose-build-your-iphone-5-or-get-expelled-from-school/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-stud... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to...

gambiting 13y ago

99% of all internships in Poland are not paid for. And you HAVE to do them to pass the course. Yet I am yet to see an article talking about "forced student labour" building anything in Poland. Maybe because the same issue in China is more sensational?

ivanhoe 13y ago

Banks do pretty much the same thing with their internships... which, of course, just makes it even bigger argument against this type of modern slavery...