Recruiting in China

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn, which became notorious after a string of workers’ suicides in 2010, has admitted that student interns worked overtime and night shifts at a factory in northeast China in violation of company policy.

Students told Chinese media that more than a thousand of their classmates worked on basic tasks such as putting together and packaging parts for Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 4 consoles. The college programme at the factory in Yantai, Shandong province, was a graduation requirement, they said.

The admission is a blow to the Taiwanese company most famous for assembling Apple products, and comes in the same week as Terry Gou, its founder and chairman lamented that young Chinese are shunning monotonous, low-paid assembly line jobs.

The same factory last year admitted to having temporarily hired underage interns.

“There have been a few instances where our policies pertaining to overtime and night shift work were not enforced. Immediate actions have been taken to bring that campus into full compliance with our code and policies,” said Foxconn in a statement.

Foxconn have not confirmed or denied that they make the PlayStation 4 at Yantai. Last year, it said the factory did not produce Apple products. Sony confirmed that Foxconn is assembling the PlayStation 4, but did not specify at which factory.

The Taiwanese company, listed in Taipei under the name Hon Hai Precision Industries, last year found that students as young as 14 had been working at the Yantai campus for a few weeks. It pledged at the time to investigate how workers younger than the minimum age of 16 came to be working at the plant.

Foxconn and other contract manufacturers regularly employ students as temporary workers to give the students a chance to gain skills. The programmes are sometimes criticised by labour activists, who say the students often make up for staff shortages and are not offered meaningful training.

Under Foxconn’s policies, interns are not allowed to work overtime or nights and have the right to leave the programme at any time.

As part of its work with the Fair Labor Association – independent inspectors brought in by Apple to audit some Foxconn factories, not including the Yantai facilities – Foxconn has also pledged to ensure that interns’ work matched their educational programmes, according to FLA’s report on its work.

Analysts and news reports in Taiwan and mainland China indicate that other electronics manufacturing companies have been facing staffing shortages as production on new popular products such as the iPhone 5c and 5s ramp up and distributors stock up ahead of the winter holiday season.

Pegatron, which manufactures for groups including Apple and Sony, has been facing “severe” staffing shortages near its Shanghai factories, said analysts at Nomura in a recent note.