Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics, said it found interns as young as 14 years old had worked at a facility in Yantai, northeastern China, confirming a report by an advocacy group.
A company investigation found the interns, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked at the campus for about three weeks, Foxconn said in an e-mail. A “small number” of interns who were sent by schools and employed at Yantai over the summer were aged 14 to 16, a statement issued on Monday by China Labor Watch said.
The underage interns add to labor issues during the past three years that include suicides, riots and strikes at Foxconn facilities in China, where the company employs more than 1 million workers. To improve working conditions, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) raised pay and allowed inspections by outside observers.
“Any Foxconn employee found, through our investigation, to be responsible for these violations will have their employment immediately terminated,” Taipei-based Foxconn said in the e-mail. “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.”
One of the company’s factories in Zhengzhou, China, lost two shifts on Oct. 5 after workers became frustrated trying to prevent scratching on the casings of the Apple Inc’s iPhone 5. In addition, the company’s plants had at least 10 suicides in 2010.
After the suicides, Apple Inc chief executive officer Tim Cook brought his company into the Washington-based Fair Labor Association in January, leading to inspections of Foxconn’s plants.
The schools which sent the underage interns to the Yantai campus should take primary responsibility, China Labor Watch said, but added that Foxconn, which sent the interns back to those schools, is also culpable.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day