Nintendo Investigating Underage Workers At Foxconn
itwbennett writes "Earlier this week, Foxconn revealed that an internal investigation had turned up workers as young as 14 toiling at its factory in Yantai, China. Now Nintendo, whose products are manufactured at that factory, is also investigating Foxconn's labor sourcing."
Welcomed our whip snapping overlords xin li 14f, Yantai. -Sent from my iPhone 5
That's the legal age in most places of Canada to start working, what's the problem? In Ontario you'd need to be 15 to work in a factory. I had my first job (part time) when I was that age.
Bear Stearns (harbinger of bear market), Bernie Madoff (made off with a lot of money), MF Global (fucked people all over the world), Foxconn. Just sayin'.
Do you really think that Foxconn uses underage people for one product only?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
WiiU... For 14 year olds, by 14 years olds...
Nothing to see here, move along.
...the iPhone looks like it was put together by a 5 year old.
Owned.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
[close-up shot of Steve Jobs lounging in a high-tech office, Apple logo]
SJ: "Oppan Foxconn Style!"
[camera zooms out, background is actually a Foxconn assembly line]
14-year-old female worker: "Ooh, sexy lady"
.... there's gambling going on in the casino!!!!
I was in my boss's office in the late 80's (probably 1988) while he was having a conversation with an old friend who owned another company. Both were computer companies with all their manufacturing here in the US and both were facing a new wave of cheap imported computer products flooding in from Taiwan. The friend told my boss that he had gone to China with some other business men and had seen that US companies there were using labor delivered to their factories every day by the People's army and returned to their barracks by that same army... the army made sure they had the right number of workers every day, made sure they never stole anything, and there were simply no labor laws as long as the US firms kept the Army happy (which was easy back then). He then said that he saw no future in manufacturing consumer goods in the US and was going to shift his production to China. My boss, refused to join that tidal wave and as the years went by and the US generally (and California in particular) added regulation after regulation while taxing him heavily and not protecting him from the modern equivalent of slave labor he eventually closed his doors and all his US workers lost their jobs.
Companies like Apple are the most evil entities in the US:
1. They talk a good line about civil rights and the environment and they back more laws along these lines (in the US where those laws will impact any new upstart who tries to get going in a garage somewhere) while shifting their own production to places like China where none of the laws they embrace will apply to them; they hope their super-gullible customers will fixate on the next shiny bauble and not notice.
2. They demand that the US government and courts protect their intellectual property rights from any infringement by the very same hard working taxpayers of the US who fund that government... while depriving them of jobs in the US and pushing down their wages (by using cheap Chinese labor both in competition with and as a replacement for US workers)
3. They demand all the benefits of capitalism and free enterprise within the US, but then when supply and demand rules within that arena might drive-up their costs for things like engineering and manufacturing they escape from the US to a police-state with a demand-economy (which any small upstart cannot do)
First off.... Children today have a better understanding of game development then some of the adults. Plus children have a bigger imagination then adults. So why not? If the child loves to make games, and has a talent for it, Why can't they do what they love doing? As long as it's not forced labor, I don't see any harm in it. Fuck off you tree hugging twerps.. let these kids work. It's hard enough these days trying to support a family, let the kid earn money for his college.
So the West have always wished to save people. Enforce their value system on the rest of the world. And as long as they have an economic stake in another nation, they shall. It's their bloody right. They pay for that right. And we need to respect that. Times really haven't changed. We, the 3rd world, are truly the White Man's Burden. Rescue us from the chains that bind us.
If Nintendo find out that they are using 14 years old workers, what they want to do about it?
There's not much OEM/ODM the size of Foxconn/Asus. If Nintendo want to move somewhere else, what is their option which such a low manufacturing costs the foxconn gave them? All they probably do is demand to foxconn, then how you enforce that?
nintendo also has the worst environmental record of any tech company but since they make cutesy video games instead of unix workstations all the nerds look the other way.
Wait, wait, wait...
You mean Apple isn't the only company that uses Foxconn for manufacturing?
You mean there are other companies involved with this Chinese behemoth that is so obviously the very worst exploiter of workers in the whole wide world?
But...but...but...how will I get my hate on now that I have actual knowledge like this?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
School is more or less standard for kids in China up through middle school. However, some kids are kicked out of school, or choose not to attend for some reason (or their parents pull them out for some reason). It is not unheard of for 14-year olds to be working full-time. For example, there is this 10-year old auto mechanic who does this work "as a hobby" since he was kicked out of school for bringing down the test scores:
http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/10-year-old-boy-skilled-auto-mechanic.html
China is basically a different beast altogether. This country does not follow the same rules as a first world country, and some things may seem completely alien to us. They are also very hostile to what they view as "western meddling," and with good reason (past history, and frankly western countries do have that tendency). As someone who has lived there in the past, my only advice is that other countries should have strict standards for labor practices if they are doing trade with China, and to realize that China is a very different animal (things may be legal in China that are illegal in the U.S., and vice-versa). In my view, China is really the "Wild West of Asia," in which there is very little rule of law, and things mostly still get done through networking and favors.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
Foxconn's internal investigation came after a Chinese media report and New York-based China Labor Watch said students from the ages of 14 to 16 were interning at Foxconn's factory in the Chinese coastal city of Yantai. Chinese labor laws prohibit companies from recruiting workers under the age of 16.
I'm not a non-interventionalist. I mean, I believe we insert ourselves into far more situations than we need to and should general stay the hell out, but not as a hard and strict rule. However, I have to ask . . . why is this our problem? China is massive. What are they, one and a half billion people, by now? While some places are just small backwoods villages, they also have some of the largest and most modern cities around. They have their own businesses, government, law, citizens, workers, and probably activists, lobbies, and unions. If they feel that they have a problem with the way businesses are treating their citizens -- and even taking into account the history of China's treatment of their own citizens and dissidents -- isn't that their problem? We're not talking about some little country with a defunct government that is controlled by warlords that is possessed by lawless anarchy.
Because a business in another country sub-contracts business out to them, everyone is supposed to feel a great deal of guilt over something that their own businesses and government don't have a problem with? Are parents selling their children to Foxconn who then takes them away and locks them in rooms with chained and barred doors and forced into slave labor doing stuff that'll cause them to lose limbs and digits?
Their own labor laws say they can't recruit workers under the age of sixteen (though I had my first job in America at 12 and my first real job at 14). So let their government and system of law deal with it. If you feel the reports are true, report it to their government.
I thought kids loved Nintendo?
Here's some changed ones...
Now you're working for power!
Build it loud!
And we can use these without changing them...
Welcome to the future
change the system
Get N or Get out
Wii would like to play
What will you and i do? (
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously, China can and does hold Japan hostage via economic means. As such, I hope that nintendo is looking to use this as an excuse.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Foxcoon is like the USA of the past where works rights where very poor.
They are doing it all.
Under age work
Unpaid work
unpaid overtime
Company town with changing workers the costs of living at work.
and so one.
I don't completely understand why Slashdot is being so conservative regarding Unicode support.
I've explained this several times. Google site:slashdot.org erocs and you'll eventually end up at abuses of Unicode, such as breaking site layout with bidirectional control characters, that prompted the use of what amounts to a narrow whitelist of code points.
Since when does Nintendo care if kids sit for twelve hours a day performing repetitive hand motions and rarely seeing fresh air or sunlight?
Their business model depends on it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Come on mods, this is actually pretty funny.
Bear Stearns (harbinger of bear market), Bernie Madoff (made off with a lot of money), MF Global (fucked people all over the world), Foxconn. Just sayin'.
Are you trying to connect Foxconn to News Corporation (Fox), to confidence tricks ("con" jobs), or to the title for a Turko-Mongol king ("khan")?
oh don't worry, all the stuff is going to be coming back home to america soon enough. just keep voting republican.
I'm also quite sure there is already well-proven methods to work out such problems. How would all the other websites get around them otherwise?
By having editions in languages other than English, which provides revenue to pay people to work on features that would be useful to readers of editions in languages other than English. Slashdot, on the other hand, isn't affiliated with Barrapunto or Slashdot.jp.
Can't we believe what Apple says?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
..because a bunch of do-gooders think that its uncivilized. They equate child labor with forced labor.
Yea wasn't it Newt that wanted to do away with child labor laws so they could work as janitors in the schools?