Slashdot Mirror
Foxconn Accused of Forcing InternsTo Build PS4s Or Lose School Credit
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a short article at Geek.com, based on this Chinese newspaper report (Google translation) that thousands of students have been (figuratively) press-ganged into assembling PlayStation 4 consoles, ahead of the PS4's November launch. From the article: "The students involved were offered internships at the company while studying an IT engineering course. But those that accepted aren't being assigned work that matches their course or skill set. Instead, they are being put on the production lines. The reason it is being called a forced internship is because if any of the students refuse to do the work they are assigned, six credits will be deducted from their course total. Without those six credits it's thought to be impossible to pass, meaning the students have to do the work or risk losing their qualification."
Why does China get the job done?
- They understand their priorities when the world wants the latest gadgets
- Cheap labor
- Small kiddy fingers == smaller gadgets
- Lost of cheap labor
- Factories run at 24/7 which means a more efficient use of factory resources
- No workers's union which could jeopardize deadlines.
Currently China is a booming economy (partially because they have lots of cheap labor). Maybe The West has become too elitist in A) Gadget demands and B) Worker rights. Our demand is there, China is just for filling our wishes.
In most of the companies where I have worked, the interns were judged to be incapable of direct involvement in frontline work, whether that was coding, sales, process-based QA, support or technical documentation.
I did show on a couple of occasions that they could be useful in the QA, support and documentation roles on a limited basis, and when that was not possible, I always dragged my interns off to any meetings I was attending, and talked for what felt like the whole day about what I was doing, but mostly about "why" and "how" - by the time they got out of an internship and finished their education, the chances of them using the same tools as me was minimal anyway, so the processes and reasoning were more useful anyway.
Just about every other engineer and manager used their interns as coffee boys/girls or errand runners.
I cannot say that my interns were happier or felt more fulfilled than any of the others, but they were the ones who wanted to come back a second time, and I am pretty sure they learned a lot more (although one or two of our interns actually made coffee for the first time ever when they were with us).
The whole point of this self-patting-on-back is to say that interns rarely get tasks relevant to their skillset or needs. In this case, it seems like a bit of Chinese pragmatism, using the free resources they have available to maximise profit.
These accusations of coercion are blatantly defamatory. We are simply offering incentives, which the interns, as free and rational agents, are choosing to accept or decline. It's practically a libertarian utopia, trade among men, as equals, free from the dead hand of state power. Anyone who says otherwise is probably some sort of commie, who thinks that labor and capital negotiate from positions of unequal strength or some bullshit like that.
Slavery? Nah. Wage slavery! It's new, you'll like it. Or else.
Except that it is not new. Since the 1950s, students in China have been required to work in factories, farms, or military service. It is not supposed to be an "internship" related to their work, but rather normal work to give them an appreciation of the proletariat/peasant/soldier. They are treated the same, and paid the same, as the other workers. Building PS4s is probably an easier assignment than 99% of the students get, so they should stop whining, and get the job done. If they don't like it, I am sure some students assigned to mosquito infested rice paddies would be happy to swap with them.
These students are going to be the future leaders, in both business and politics. It is reasonable to require them to have an appreciation for the people they will be leading.
My wife is Chinese, and during college she spent six months working in a car factory in Tianjin, installing door handles. She remembers it as a mostly positive experience.
Honestly not a bad system even if all they learn is why they should continue their education. My family did not require my economic contribution when I was a child but from the age of 15 I held various jobs for spending money, car insurance and most importantly to my parents so I could see what sort of someone without much education would be likely to get. Once you have spent a summer of 8-12 hour days washing dishes you know you would like to do more with your life.
China is socialist and not capitalist? Have you been asleep for the last few decades? Or do you also believe that the Democratic Republic of North Korea is actually democratic, and that the United States of America is actually united?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Unless people are willing to boycott Sony and not buy a PS4 over this kind of thing, they have no incentive to stop.
Why boycott Sony? When you can boycott Foxconn products like the iPhone and Xbox. Sony have their own manufacturing plants. Where do you think the UK made rasberry Pi is made? Sony's Pencoed factory. I suspect that Foxconn will not be making the PS4 long term, but have used Foxconn to deal with its initial demand, their are very few companies who could have taken on this contract.
And not press-ganged, but Shanghaied.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
But how can this be tied back to Apple? Isn't everything bad that Foxconn does Apple's fault? I'm sure Apple is responsible for this somehow if we dig hard enough!
Like "300 workers at Apple factory threaten suicide" (because they were in danger of losing their jobs when Microsoft Xbox production dropped). Another one was an article about employees complaining mostly about overtime - when they actually complained that they couldn't always get as much overtime as they wanted.
If they want to pay these kids as well as give them a grade that would be fine.
The students are paid the same as other assembly line workers. The English article says they are not paid, but that is wrong. The original article, in Chinese, explicitly says that they are paid (yes, I can read Chinese). I am also somewhat familiar with these internships. I lived in Shanghai for several years, and my company had an electronics assembly plant in Pudong. We had some interns there, and I wanted to use some of the engineering undergrads to do actual engineering rather than assembly line work. But I found out that was against the rules. They had to do "proletariat" work on the assembly line, not desk work. They were paid the same as other assembly workers, and were treated the same in every way.
I have to agree. There is a finite amount of time they are forced to do that particular task and then they move on in life. It kind of messes up my business plan to stand in the parking lot selling "I was a slave at Foxconn and all I got was this stupid tee shirt" shirts to graduating interns...
"I was an indentured servant at Foxconn and all I got was this stupid tee shirt" just does not have the same humorous impact.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office