Foxconn stops illegal overtime by school-age interns
Foxconn has confirmed that it will halt any and all overtime work being illegally carried out by student interns in its factories. Following reports that many student interns from vocational schools were forced to participate in the assembly of products such as Apple’s new iPhone X for well over the federally mandated workday, Apple launched into an investigation of Foxconn’s production facilities. Subsequently, Foxconn has announced that any such labor law violations have come to an end. Teenage students at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant claimed to have been forced to work in assembly lines for Foxconn products by their schools and teachers regardless of their areas of study and beyond China’s legal limit on student work hours. Apple and Foxconn have held that these students were not victims of forced labor. Foxconn’s reaction to employee complaints and investigations represent a rare amicable instance given the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on labor rights activists.
See "Foxconn stops illegal overtime by school-age interns", Yuan Yang, Financial Times, November 22, 2017