Foxconn’s Chaotic Denial: We do not use forced student labor to make Apple iPhones

Where’s Chairman Mao when you need him, eh?
/sarcasm

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Foxconn denies using forced student labor to make Apple iPhones

By Jessica Guynn and Julie MakinenSeptember 11, 2012, 11:24 a.m.

Foxconn Technology Group is denying reports in the Chinese media that it forced vocational students to work at factories that make iPhones.

Tourist and Apple devotes stop and pose to take pictures of the Apple logo adorned front facade of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, USA, 09 September 2012, three days before the anticipated iPhone 5 announcement will be made. EPA/PETER DaSILVA

The controversy targeting Apple’s manufacturing partner in China comes as Apple is expected to unveil the latest iPhone on Wednesday.

Foxconn, which in recent months has come under heavy scrutiny in connection with working conditions in its factories, has conceded that

Apple’s Chinese FoxConn Factory Criticized Again

“They are free to leave anytime.”

Gee… sounds almost like a Republican-dominated America.

The iPhone 5 (which will presumably be it’s moniker) is due to be released soon.

How could this affect Apple?

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China Plant Assailed Again Over Work for Apple

By DAVID BARBOZA and CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: September 10, 2012

SHANGHAI — As Apple prepares to unveil the latest iPhone this week, the company’s manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn Technology, is coming under renewed criticism over labor practices after reports that vocational students were being compelled to work at plants making iPhones and their components.

Foxconn has come under intense scrutiny in recent months over working conditions inside its factories. Ym Yik/European Pressphoto Agency

Foxconn has acknowledged using student “interns” on manufacturing lines, but says they are free to leave at any time. But two worker advocacy groups said Monday that they had spoken with students who said they had been forced by their teachers to assemble iPhones at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, in north-central China.

Additionally, last week Chinese state-run news media reported that several vocational schools in the city of Huai’an, in eastern China, required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to help ease worker shortages. According to one of the articles, Huai’an students were ordered to manufacture cables for Apple’s new iPhone 5, which is expected to be introduced on Wednesday.

“They said they are forced to work by the teachers,” Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, one of the advocacy organizations and a frequent critic of Foxconn’s labor policies, said in an interview on Monday. Mr. Li said his staff had