The company Foxconn has been repeatedly accused of violating labor protection legislation in China and of employing minors in its factories, and today recognized officially, children as young as 14 were temporarily employed in one of the factories. Yantai is the city where Foxconn has the factory, for that reason, the company says that all the minors were sent back to the schools from which they were taken to work in that factory, but although the existence of minors in one factory was acknowledged, in reality probably there are many more where the law is not respected. In China, the minimum legal age for employment is 16, but unfortunately many companies do not take these restrictions into account, and the Chinese government does not sanction them.
BEIJING (AP) — The company that manufactures Apple's iPhone said Tuesday it found underage interns as young as 14 working at one of its factories in China. Foxconn Technology Group said the interns were found by a company investigation at its factory in the eastern city of Yantai and were sent back to their schools. China's minimum legal working age is 16. Foxconn, owned by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., said it was investigating with schools how the interns were sent to its factory. It didn't say how many underage interns it found. "We recognize that full responsibility for these violations rests with our company and we have apologized to each of the students for our role in this action," Foxconn said in a statement. "Any Foxconn employee found, through our investigation, to be responsible for these violations will have their employment immediately terminated."
Organizations for the protection of the rights of Chinese workers have said since last year that Foxconn and other large companies in China employ minors in their own factories, and this time it seems that they were right, although their investigations did not reveal evidence to support their claims. Foxconn is not the only company that has such problems, Samsung has been accused of exactly the same things in recent months, but in that case the company denied the accusations, as Foxconn did until recently.
