Chinese commentators work day and night to enable their peers in the West to have the most "must" devices - mobiles and consoles - but also to use advanced services such as Amazon Alexa. What do all these technological goodies of hundreds of euros have in common? But the giant Foxconn of course and his gloomy games with child labor.
What is Taiwanese Foxconn? The largest electronics manufacturer in the world and the fourth largest IT company in the world (in turnover), a real giant to which everyone turns to make their expensive products cheaper.
Foxconn has been the target of the Western press since 2010, when a series of employee suicides at its factory in Shenzhen, the metropolitan area north of Hong Kong, one of China's economic zones (Special Economic Zone), brought light the creepy conditions where the people who give life to the devices of our world live and work.
Criticism of Foxconn and its cooperating Western customers has not been lacking over the years, but a recent revelation has again caused a stir among many out there.
Now there are a number of documents leaked to the China Labor Observatory last year concerning the country's hundreds of overtime commentators working to build devices that support the system. Alexa of Amazon. That is, 16-year-old children who are recruited by the Amazon subcontractor and work in conditions of slavery.
As revealed by the British "Guardian", which provided the documents for the illegal practices, everything is done to meet the delivery deadlines of Amazon products, violating the labor laws of China.
According to documents obtained by the China Labor Observatory and are available online, teenagers are recruited from schools and technical schools in Hengyang City (in Hunan Province) and are labeled as "trainees" in practice.
They are accompanied by their teachers at Foxconn production units, who are explicitly asked by the company to encourage "non-cooperative students" to accept the deadly hours. Illegal extermination hours.
There are even cases of such practitioners, who manufacture the devices of Amazon, Alexa and Echo Dot, who are explicitly forced to work even two months without a break. These conditions affect 1.000 children aged 16-18 years.
Chinese labor law allows students 16 and older to work, but explicitly prohibits overtime and night work.
This time, Foxconn acknowledged the illegal child labor regime and said it would take urgent action to rectify the situation: "We have doubled the supervision and monitoring of the internship program at each partner school to ensure that in no case trainees will not be allowed to work overtime or nights ".
She even attributed the whole event to "loose oversight" of the apprenticeship program, in general and indefinitely, and promised to increase the permanent staff and reconsider its payroll policy. Something that promises every time, after all.
He defended the practice, however, saying it "offers students, all of whom are of legal age to work, the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and on-site training in a number of areas that will support their post-graduation efforts."
The Observatory, however, did not leave the matter to chance. He talked to the "Amazon kids", as the press stuck the title, and they told a bit of a different story.
That this is not essentially practical work, since their work in the factory has nothing to do with their courses, and that they are forced to work overtime without a choice.
Xiao Fang, 17, for example (the Observatory changed her name for obvious reasons), agreed to do her internship at Foxconn, applying a protective film to 3.000 Echo Dot devices a day.
Her teacher informed her that it was an 8-hour shift, five days a week, only that she works from the first moment 10 hours a day (2 hours of compulsory overtime), six days a week.
In fact, when she complained to the shift manager, he shook hands with her teacher, who told her that if she did not work overtime, she could not work at Foxconn, which would affect both her grades and her ability to graduation as well as the opportunity for a scholarship in the future.
This is just one story recorded by the Observatory and they all dispel the alibi of voluntary donation. The students also sleep in the company dormitories and do not have frequent contact with the outside world during the programs.
According to secret Foxconn documents that came to light through "Guardian"," Trainee students who do not want to work overtime will affect not only the goals of production but also their willingness to work. Practicing students must work overtime. "
But the documents also reveal something else, that the factory turned to the commentators to fill the gaps it has, since it is difficult for him to find permanent staff with the meager salaries he gives.
Of the 7.000 he says he needs to cover production between April and October, he is left with 15% vacancies, which he will fill with children's apprenticeships: "to fill labor shortages and reduce labor costs". notes characteristically, with a spar two turtledoves.
To see how much this cost reduction is, Foxconn pays 2,11 euros (16,54 yuan) per student's hour, the same as an experienced worker's hourly wage costs the company 2,57 euros (20,18 yuan). ).
However, it also gives 500 yuan (63,8 euros) to the school for each student employed in its units. We also learn from Foxconn documents that the company struggled with its morale, but all objections were dashed when they saw that the benefits outweighed the dilemmas.
Amazon announced in January that it had sold more than 100 million Alexa devices, which put it ahead of Google Home in the digital assistants and smart home market. Amazon executives were even present at the Foxconn meeting where the parameters of child labor were determined, without which the Echo delivery deadlines could not be met with anything.
Amazon agreed in 2017 with Foxconn to expand their partnership, adding 15 new products to be rolled out of Chinese product lines, including tablets Kindle. The Observer revealed last year that Foxconn was again violating Chinese labor law by hiring far higher numbers of employees than the law allows. In order not to get permanent staff.
Amazon representative Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, said after the uproar that the company does not tolerate labor violations by its suppliers: "If we find violations, we take appropriate measures, including the requirement for immediate corrective action."
They are looking into the matter with Foxconn, he said, "at the highest level" in fact, only the documents show that they knew it from the beginning. Before the first students arrive…
If you follow the news about Foxconn in the last decade, you will see that the No. 1 subcontractor of the technology giants has imposed a new working middle age. In some cases, Foxconn even surpassed itself in recruiting students who did not get one.
Not even the crumbs of the seasonal workers. In consultation with polytechnics and institutes of technology, internships at Foxconn factories were required to obtain a degree. "Concentration camps" were described in 2013 by 20 universities from China, Taiwan and China.
Many lines would be needed to depict the inhumane conditions prevailing in the factories of the world's largest manufacturer of technological products.
And while things have been known in the West and the rest of the world for at least a decade, everyone refuses to acknowledge how big and bad this monster has become.
Foxconn has 12 factories in China, with the Shenzhen plant being the largest in the world, employing 300-450 thousand workers. IPhones are made there, behind the fences of Foxconn City, as it is typically called for its size. A second in Chengzhou (Henan Province) has a steady employment of 120.000 workers.
Foxconn also has plants in Brazil, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, while it also operates in European territory (Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic).
The TV screen factory that he said will open in the US (Wisconsin) is not working yet, as it is considered rather unprofitable. Especially since Foxconn has been hit by the China-US trade war sparked by Trump, and plans seem to be sluggish for the time being.
But why, when everyone is disgusted when they learn what is going on behind Foxconn's rails, does she continue to do what she does with undiminished intensity and a strange immunity? The answer lies in the products…