
Foxconn using forced student labor to build Sony’s PS4 - Impossible
http://www.gamesinasia.com/report-foxconn-using-forced-student-labor-to-build-sonys-ps4/
======
westiseast
While you're ranting at Sony/Apple, don't forget to spare some outrage for the
Chinese professors, managers, bosses etc. who are willing participants.

Sony are the customer, and could share some blame, but honestly, this smacks
of a couple of professors from the uni getting nice kickbacks (ie.
"consultancy" fees) and everyone looking good to some local government
officials for their "modern" internship programmes. That's generally how stuff
works in China.

~~~
beedogs
The companies who happily make use of suppliers who utilize this kind of labor
are just as culpable.

They can take their business elsewhere, but obviously, capitalism being what
it is, there's no incentive to do that.

~~~
KevinEldon
Capitalism being what it is, no one is required to buy a PS4 or anything else
that they do not want to (please do not take me into a rat hole about
healthcare or other government mandated purchases). If the only source of
water was to purchase it form a corporation that enslaved people I'd get your
point, but we're talking about a PS4... it's a video game console... a PS4
does not matter that much if you really care about taking care of workers.

~~~
Klinky
You don't have to go across the ocean to find labor issues. The agriculture
industry in the U.S. has questionable labor practices, and everyone has to buy
food. There is little transparency with how food is produced, just like how
there is little transparency with how the PS4 is produced, at least to the
average consumer.

Lack of transparency and awareness channels is why grassroots consumer
boycotts cannot be relied upon to improve society/humanity.

~~~
mattlutze
It's not just on the producer to create transparency. It's on the consumer to
want transparency. There is also a lack of desire for knowledge by the
consumer, in either food or PS4 production.

Saying "there's little transparency" suggests that the world (and not a small,
vocal protest community) is clamoring for information, and the accused company
/ industry is failing to provide it. When, in reality, most people really
don't care.

~~~
Klinky
I disagree. Lack of transparency is to the benefit of the companies, and they
prefer to keep it that way. You are not going to get an honest answer from a
company on a touchy subject unless it's already in their marketing/press
releases. Usually customer inquiries are handled by powerless and uninformed
employees who are not in the loop, and have no power to accurately answer
difficult questions. This goes for negative customer experiences, as well as
things like working conditions. Companies know that an individual voice is
weak and the masses have trouble congregating. At the same time companies
often have large marketing budgets to push either what they want people to
believe or distractions.

There is also the matter of time. Companies have plenty of time and a unified
goal to sell their products all day long. Meanwhile consumers have to split
their attention between dozens of different and pressing tasks. Becoming a
one-man consumer watchdog group is a job in and of itself. I think it's
unrealistic to expect or rely on a majority of consumers becoming experts on
all the products they purchase, as well supply chain logistics and day-to-day
geopolitical rumblings.

Even if consumers are willfully ignorant, it still does not excuse abuses or
poor practices. Your second paragraph is akin to the philosophical tree
falling in a forest, "If a Chinese factory worker is abused and nobody cares,
is he really being abused?". Of course he is, and consumer ignorance still
does not make it alright for the company to exploit the worker.

------
chrischen
"But students have said that once they got to Foxconn, they were assigned to
jobs that had no relation whatsoever to their fields of study, including grunt
work like distribution and shipping."

Sounds like a lot of American internships haha. But seriously, people have
given me advice to try "working at a McDonalds" or "work as a dishwaser" to
gain some experience outside of sitting in front of a computer all day.

~~~
eru
McDonalds might not be too bad, if you keep your eyes and ears open. They have
great operations, that turns unskilled labour into steady source of income.

~~~
redthrowaway
Plus they teach great customer service. When my step mother was in retail she
would always hire people with McD's on their resume because she knew she
wouldn't have to teach them how to treat customers.

~~~
logn
I was just thinking recently how good customer service is for McDonald's and
fast food as a whole. McD's has 'served billions and billions' and scaled
their workforce to an impressive extent while still retaining food safety and
decent customer service. A philosophy of technology professor in college loved
to use them as an example as the pinnacle of engineering, from supply chain
down to point-of-sale. And while minimum wage might seem demeaning, they
invest a lot more in people than many companies and (sadly) is one of a few
good employers in many towns.

------
taspeotis
That's terrible! I will definitely remember this when I go to buy a next-
generation game console.

Posted from my iPhone 5S 64GB (Gold)

~~~
bentcorner
Sometimes I wonder if competitors attempt to dig up dirt like this.

~~~
beedogs
I don't care who digs it up if it's factual.

~~~
venus
That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when
determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear
something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this
does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an
effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that?

If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B
managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about
that?

Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and
closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as
this could be - is bad mental hygiene.

~~~
shard972
> When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of
> "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar
> companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives?

Well maybe some people don't have such a naive view of the world where they
assume nobody is corrupt until it's slapped in their face (And even then).
Some people can look at stories at this and not think "Hey fuck the PS4 for
using forced labor, Ima buy a Xbox One instead".

> If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B
> managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about
> that?

So you would argue in that case it would be better to see party A's actions
covered up so that there would be a fairer playing field between the two?

> Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse
> and closing your eyes to factors affecting it

But he isn't closing his eyes, he's got them wide open. He's just saying that
he doesn't care who bringing him his info as long as it's factual.

------
yeukhon
I am not going to defend the Chinese this time. How stupid is that? How much
money can you save by hiring students? While I don't think top managements
like the CEO has any idea of this (I really doubt), they are still responsible
for this horrible practice.

Here is the actual press from the school.

[http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html](http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html)

It basically said "the students (total of 45) had made a milestone, breaking
Foxconn's record." The press praised the students for their hard work. It was
written so.. idk how to explain it... the kind of statement you get from a
government news press. It's ridiculous.

~~~
XorNot
More importantly this is about as close to "mortgaging your future" as you can
get. Take Chinese students, in a high-tech degree program which could equip
them to earn 6-figure salaries...and waste their time forcing them to provide
free-labor doing unpaid menial assembly jobs.

The Chinese optics on this are absurd.

------
bookface
If this involved Apple, the article's headline would be "Apple using forced
student labor to build iPhone"

~~~
nilved
Indeed. This title should properly reflect that Sony is responsible.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Maybe they don't know though. Imagine you contract out some work, say building
a website, to party A. How do you know they did it? Maybe they sub-contract.

While I'm sure Sony's contract has lots of details in it, there is probably no
"don't trick university students" clause and Foxconn saw an opportunity to do
something underhanded and increase profits.

~~~
jm4
It's someone's job to know. I knew a buyer at a major office supply company.
The buyers' responsibilities included occasional visits to the factories where
suppliers made the products that were bought and then put on sale in the
stores. This particular company had standards that they held suppliers to.
When a buyer found workers at a factory with duct tape on their mouths, people
living in squalor in the "dormitories", child labor or any other nonsense it
was not uncommon for those suppliers to be thrown out of the store if it was
not corrected. This was for a few million dollars worth of back to school
supplies.

There's no way someone enters into a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract
for high end electronics without ever visiting the factory and knowing what
goes on there. They know damn well what kind of conditions exist and chose to
do business with the supplier anyway. If they didn't know then they're too
stupid to have their job.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I may just be cynical but I think there are still shenanigans going on. Like
the link posted above

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6525582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6525582)

You can't be everywhere all the time and you have to actively do audits to
make sure you're satisfied with your factory conditions.....

------
ddeck
This is pretty widespread. There was an interesting investigative piece last
year done by a HK station [1], but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be
available online. Plenty of kickbacks going to the local government/schools to
keep the students flowing.

This made the headlines last year too except it was Apple that time:

32,000 Students Choose: Build Your iPhone 5 Or Get Expelled From School [2]

China Contractor Again Faces Labor Issue on iPhones [3]

[1]
[http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/](http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/)

[2]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-stud...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-students-
choose-build-your-iphone-5-or-get-expelled-from-school/)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-
to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-
forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?pagewanted=all)

------
undoware
...the PS5, on the other hand, will be built by the players themselves, as the
games will just be transforms on robot-guiding, chip-stamping, box-printing...

~~~
megrimlock
Computational complexity theory tries to find equivalence classes of problems
that can map to one another. Each class has a primary representative such as
TSP (travelling salesman problem) or 3-SAT that memorably capture the essence
of the class. While it's not clear that you can map Grand Theft Auto to
anything useful, you might be onto something here: Imagine a mechanical turk
system where the grunt tasks are remapped onto inherently enjoyable gameplay
scenarios. It would be an arbitrage play between turk vendors needing menial
tasks done, and players needing entertainment. Recaptcha is a (brilliant)
example, but I don't know of others. Maybe UAV control might be one. (Note
that mapping one valuable task to another enjoyable task is a different idea
than the "gamification" fad of inventing events to adorn with tawdry badges.)

~~~
Debugreality
It wouldn't have to be a full time task but could be inserted into a game to
provide a change to the flow. For example putting together an iphone from
pieces found in an old cardboard box while zombies are trying to break in the
door you just locked. This is kind of like the use of in game advertising in
that when done well it doesn't actually detract from the game but adds to it.

------
jusben1369
One man's forced labor is another's "real world work credits to finish your
degree". This seems to be a storm in a teacup that will naturally play very
well for historical reasons.

------
tobyjsullivan
Getting student interns to do the grunt work is an outdated practice? I was
almost convinced that was standard operating procedure at most North American
tech firms.

~~~
bookface
If you think tech internships are bad, you should look at literally any other
field.

------
KevinEldon
I recently mentored two high-school interns at a Fortune 500 tech company. My
goal was to give them a real experience in what it's like to work at a big
company (code for I had no budget to woo them w/ fancy dinners, concerts,
toys, etc.) and to give them real work. They built a useful mobile app. I gave
them minimal supervision, directed and helped when I could... based on their
feedback I think it was a huge success. I'm glad the company I work for
considers interns as an opportunity to train up the next generation of great
programmers, managers, and leaders, and practically realizes these people are
their next employees. If I'd exploited them as menial labor (getting me
coffee, processing mail, doing boring work) they'd lose out and my company
would too. Perhaps China has a labor pool large enough to develop and exploit
at the same time (that's sad if they do).

------
swamp40
Sounds a lot like the unpaid internship positions I've seen offered at plenty
of startups.

Just on an industrial scale.

------
thex86
While I want to stop buying such stuff, where does it end? A quick look at my
favourite supermarket shows that almost 90% of the products are "Made in
China". How do I know they were not made under similar circumstances? Or the
t-shirts that are made in Bangladesh that I can expect to be made pretty much
under the same conditions of forced labour. I would love to buy things made in
USA or Canada but that is not happening. I have tried to do this in the past
and I am even willing to pay extra dollars for this, but I find most companies
have shifted manufacturing to China. My recent conversation with a company
went like:

Me: Where do you manufacture your products? Company: We used to manufacture
them in Canada but we shifted to China. But rest assured, our quality is the
same and blah blah blah.

So my point is, we do not have a choice. You can boycott Apple or Sony PS4
now, but it doesn't end there.

~~~
KevinEldon
Where do you live? It's odd to me that 90% of the products at your favorite
supermarket are made in China. Like bananas, oranges, bread, beer, hamburger,
celery, avacados, beans, cereal, milk, fish... these do not seem like things
that are made in China if you live in the Western hemisphere. I know I have
many things made in China, but they seem to be more physical long-term goods;
toys, electronics (maybe?), physical things.

~~~
thex86
I was not talking about eatables. I was talking about electronics and non-
edible stuff. Should have clarified.

~~~
KevinEldon
No worries. I do not think 90% of the thing I buy from Walmart and other
common "supermarkets" in the South Eastern US are from China, but I cannot
vouch or the labor laws of these sources... that doesn't mean they're bad, it
means I need to pay more attention to these things.

------
Tichy
"One student, for example, majored in finance and accounting but has been
assigned to a job that entails glueing together parts of Sony’s Playstation
4...."

Am I the only one who thinks that sounds great? Why shouldn't finance an
accounting guys get some insights into the working conditions of people
"below" them?

------
gambiting
99% of all internships in Poland are not paid for. And you HAVE to do them to
pass the course. Yet I am yet to see an article talking about "forced student
labour" building anything in Poland. Maybe because the same issue in China is
more sensational?

------
redact207
Any company that has suicide nets and barred up windows is breaking some
serious humanitarian laws. Free labour aside, the bleak truth for many of
these students who are going down the professional track is that their
country's industry isn't large enough to offer most of them placements.

Despite being smart, hard working and well educated, many will have to go into
manufacturing like this after they graduate. The article talks about Xi'an
that's roughly in the centre of the country, a good distance away from the
international East coast where the majority of the professional appointments
are.

~~~
Tichy
I don't understand how people can go on pointing at the suicides when it is
well known that suicide rates are lower at Foxconn than the average Chinese
suicide rates?

------
kamaal
Do you know saddest part in all this?

These kind of jobs might be the only way those students can earn enough(to pay
for their education) in hopes of a better life later. I've been is such a
situation before, and it totally sucks. But that is the only available option
before you. Imagine having to this, when you have no other options left. I
mean these people are not lazy, not stupid and very capable. But they have to
do this because of scarcity of opportunity.

~~~
Tichy
... until they graduate and get high paying jobs in finance. Is it really so
bad to have to work "student jobs"?

------
dminor14
Guess what, Foxconn makes boards for Linux boxes as well, blaming Sony and
Apple for using Foxconn and ignoring that everybody else uses them as well is
absurd.

------
ivanhoe
Banks do pretty much the same thing with their internships... which, of
course, just makes it even bigger argument against this type of modern
slavery...

------
sb057
Just don't forget, sweatshops are better than no employment at all. Though it
is bad that they exist, they are a sign of progress.

~~~
peterkelly
Except that these students aren't getting paid for their work.

------
eriksank
The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a
serious problem for Foxconn. I think that they should voluntarily appoint
international-standard labour auditors to vet all their labour practices and
to phrase recommendations as to what exactly their management should seriously
consider changing. The foxconn management may not always be aware of
sensitivities in their overseas markets. With small changes in their
procedures, they could already achieve quite a few things. It is not a problem
to hire students and interns, but they should beware of anything that could
make it look like indentured labour.

~~~
tsotha
>The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a
serious problem for Foxconn.

What do you mean by this? What are the ramifications of this "serious
problem"? Are they making less money?

~~~
benologist
Consequences do exist, although it's still very minimal. This may prompt Sony
to do something as significant as Apple's move though and actively audit the
companies they work with -

    
    
        In one case, Apple terminated its relationship with a
        component maker after discovering 74 cases in which 
        underage workers were being employed. Apple also found 
        that an employment agency had forged documents to allow 
        children to work illegally at the supplier.
    
        Apple reported both the supplier and the employment 
        agency to the local authorities, the company said in its 
        latest annual report on the conditions in its supply chain.
    

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-
aud...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-audits-
uncover-underage-workers.html?_r=0)

~~~
elithrar
> " This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move
> though..."

Where do they [or Apple] go if not Foxconn? Foxconn is _huge_. Moving
production elsewhere, even outside of a major product launch, is likely in the
realm of the infeasible.

~~~
benologist
I don't know much about this stuff but presumably Foxconn has competitors -
Samsung and Qualcomm maybe? I'm not sure Foxconn would even fail the audits at
this point, they copped a lot of flack for their appalling work conditions and
suicide rates in 2010 which I believe contributed to Apple's stance on work
conditions since it reflected terribly on them too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)

~~~
girvo
Foxconn... really doesn't have any competitors at scale. Maybe Quanta, but
that's it off the top of my head. They are unlike any other company in the
world. Too big to fail, and too big to give a shit about human rights sounds
about right for them.

------
avty
Forced labor leads to better US consumer prices!

------
goggles99
Sad thing is - the target audience for the PS4 doesn't give a damn. As long as
it is not them and they never have to see the people or be affected in a
personal way because of it, they are happy to look the other way.

