Another embarassing story for iPhone5 owners

Wednesday, Oct 17, 2012

Foxconn admits to hiring 14-year-olds

Apple’s contract electronics makers used underage interns for cheap labor

By Natasha Lennard, Salon

[Apple store Beijing(Credit: Shutterstock)]

Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, has acknowledged hiring children as young as 14 in a Chinese factory. An internal investigation, following allegations from labor rights groups in China, found teenagers younger than the legal working age of 16 at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province.

“This is not only a violation of China’s labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions,”a Foxconn statement announced according to Reuters. The 56 underage interns found will now be sent back to their schools.

This is not the first labor scandal for Foxconn, Apple Inc.’s largest manufacturer. In Northern China September a riot broke out at a Foxconn plant assembling iPhones over living conditions at the factory’s on-site dormitories. Foxconn were forced to improve working conditions at a number of their Chinese iPhone and iPad plants following numerous reports of labor abuses and the suicide of 14 Foxconn factory workers in China in 2010.

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

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AFP: Foxconn admits employing underage interns in China

By Benjamin Yeh, Agence France-Presse
October 17, 2012

Taiwan’s Foxconn has admitted employing children as young as 14 on assembly lines at a plant in China, a fresh blow to the tech giant that has been attacked over its treatment of staff after several suicides.

The company, which makes products for Apple and Sony, admitted it hired the underage workers as part of an internship programme, reflecting a practice rights groups said is widespread among enterprises in China.

UN, human rights groups examine India’s “democratic” claims and oppressive reality

UN to scrutinize Indian progress on rights

Groups say government must make significant improvements

Rita Joseph, ucanews.com, New Delhi, India
May 23, 2012

[Photo:  Homeless people share a makeshift shelter with their cattle]

Rights groups have said that India is to face “enormous human rights challenges” ahead of a UN review in Geneva tomorrow.

With the Human Rights Council set to conduct its second periodic review, Miloon Kothari, convener of the Working Group on Human Rights in India, said yesterday that the world’s second most populous country must improve on everything from poverty and housing to abuse against women and child trafficking.

“Given the enormous human rights challenges faced by India, the second Universal Periodic Review offers India an opportunity to admit its shortcomings and offer to work with the UN, civil society and independent institutions in India toward implementation of national and international human rights commitments,” Kothari, who is also a former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing in India, said at a Commonwealth Human Rights meeting in New Delhi.

More than 40 percent of children under five are under weight, he said, while India still has the highest number of malnourished people in the world at 21 percent of the population.

“While the average growth rate [in India] between 2007 and 2011 was 8.2 percent, poverty declined by only 0.8 percent,” said Kothari, adding that if India applied globally accepted standards of measurement the nationwide poverty rate would be close to 55 percent.