Foxconn Says Vocational Students Aren't Being 'Forced' To Work

jones_supa writes "Foxconn has responded to the criticism regarding Chinese internship students being forced to work for them. In a statement to Washington Post, Foxconn said that its 'short-term internship program' is in line with Chinese labor laws and that interns comprise 2.7% of its labor force in China. Schools, not Foxconn, recruit students into the programs, the company said, and the programs are supervised by local government authorities and teachers assigned to monitor the students' work. Foxconn has also set up a hotline for interns and outlined procedures that allow them to resign from the program." Related, an anonymous reader pointed at an undercover report on working conditions at Foxconn.

Tired of picking on Foxconn yet??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we pick on Nike's chinese sweat shops for a change. Because they're not a tech company? They do make Nike+ accessories for use with the iPod, afterall.

Come on, let's pick on Nike for a change??????

Re:I have some issues interpreting that statement

[canajin56]

To add actual numbers: In the USA the suicide rate is 11.8 per 100,000 people per year, compared to China's overall 22.2. However, this is for all people. In Foxconn's worst year, they had 14 suicides, or 1.5 suicides per 100,000 employees. Making it extremely low compared to the national average for either China or the USA. Or about 2 per 100,000 if you restrict the death and employee counts to their worst (in terms of suicide) factory complex. As you said, this is about equal to the roughly 2 per 100,000 retail employees murdered per year for assorted reasons. At any rate, to get a fair comparison you would have to look at workplace suicide rates for factory employees in the USA, not just at the grand total. And as far as I know, there aren't really many such statistics available.