Foxconn using students as "interns" to build Playstations

Foxconn believes that students are the future, at least judging by its deal with China’s Xi’an Institute of Technology to expose more than 1,000 of them to the educational experience of working on an assembly line (link in Chinese) for Sony’s forthcoming Playstation 4.

Educational experience?

... if they didn’t participate in the internship program, they wouldn’t receive six course credits, effectively making it impossible for them to graduate...

Link

What's that called? Volunforced?

Well, working with a tech company that makes so many gadgets has to have some educational value, right?

Students perform the same hours and work as paid Foxconn workers—gluing together parts, applying stickers, and boxing up cords. Foxconn says they also earn the same salary as entry-level workers.

They've got a nice school to slave path going there. Kudos to China.

Quick, pre-order your idiot box and support educational opportunities such as this. With any luck they'll move on to iPads before committing suicide to leave their life insurance to their elderly parents.

Foxconn says the students are free to leave any time. Of course if they do leave they wont get their credits and they wont graduate but they are free to leave any time.

They have life insurance? Who knew.

And it's Voluntold, not volunforced.

Evil_Santa
They have life insurance? Who knew.

That was one of the alleged reasons for the string of Apple suicides. Some death benefit was going to their families.

UNpaid interns as worker-bees is pretty popular in your own country as well, gents.

www.nydailynews.com...

and this

www.unpaidinternslawsuit.com...

and a million others......

This beats coming out of High School and going into college for a major and being forced to take mandatory courses you've covered in High School, all in order to get a degree for whatever you're majoring in. The best part is you're paying for these courses you might not want, need, or remember, while these students are getting paid for this course they might not want, need, or remember. Give more internship programs relative to the field you're studying and get rid of the unnecessary courses.

reply to post by MarsSentinel


They sure are. And work study for school credit is also popular.

Maybe there is some educational value to the trade of study to gluing and putting on stickers on an assembly line?

Any company taking advantage of students in cooperation with a school in this way deserves scrutiny.

If they're students there to learn then get them in a position to learn. Maybe the classes they need these credits for are stickers and gluing 101?

reply to post by FidelityMusic


Yes. I suppose indentured servitude for empty credits is preferable to paying out of pocket for a pointless class to earn empty credit.

I've worked with interns in the veterinary field. You start with cleaning cages and mopping floors. You lear and then you get to do more; once you prove you can be trusted to do simple tasks.

If you think this is really a big deal, then I suggest that you not buy anything elecrronic from China, your iPhone, PS4 or whatever is the latest thing right now.

When a company outsources and a county agrees, how employees are treated in our terms are really irrelevant. The market is there, no matter if you like it or not. So goes the nature of business and quite frankly, human nature. Product, demand, poor working conditions for someone who has to produce.

And, no, no game system here nore do I care to have one. Electronics, yes, that's how I can reply.

I see no big deal in this to be honest. Lots of work studies are like this where you get absolute no pay. Besides I think it helps keep people grounded a bit and realize work could really suck.