Hundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon’s Echo Dot and Kindle devices illegally in China, a report has revealed.
Investigators at Amazon supplier Foxconn’s factory found children were working gruelling night-shifts in order to meet demands in the city of Hengyang in Hunan Province.
Teenagers are encouraged by local schools and colleges to become ‘interns’ at the factory, where their teachers are paid to accompany them to work.
More than 1,000 youngsters stand for hours on end throughout the night doing repetitive work which requires little technical training, China Labor Watch found.
Huang Xuehua, 24, from Guangdong province works inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province
The dorm room interior where workers live at the Foxconn factory in Hengyang in Hunan Province
One 17-year-old was required to apply a layer of plastic film to around 3,000 Echo Dots every day
The Foxconn plant in Hunon province also makes Amazon Kindle e-book reading devices (pictured, office buildings in Silicon Valley)
One 17-year-old told The Guardian she was required to apply a layer of plastic film to around 3,000 Echo Dots every day.
She was initially told she would work eight-hour shifts, five days a week, but that soon jumped to ten-hours a day in a six day week.
‘I tried telling the manager of my line that I didn’t want to work overtime.’ She told The Guardian, ‘But the manager notified my teacher and the teacher said if I didn’t work overtime, I could not intern at Foxconn and that would affect my graduation and scholarship applications at the school.
‘I had no choice, I could only endure this’
Chinese law allows children aged 16 and over to work in factories, but they are not supposed to work overtime or during the night.
Many of the workers are packed in factory dorm rooms which were found to be lacking fire exits, extinguishers and had squalid bathrooms.
China Labor Watch investigators could find no presence of a labour union and staff were subjected to verbal abuse by line managers.
More than 40 percent of the workforce at the Foxconn plant are dispatch workers – poorly trained and denied sick leave – in violation of China’s 10 percent law on dispatch workers.
The exterior of the Foxconn plant in the city of Hengyang in Hunan Province
Chinese law mandates dispatch workers must receive at least 24 hours of training, China Labor Watch found those in Hengyang received just eight.
Workers at the factory were also required to put in 100 hours of overtime per month in ‘peak season,’ despite it being illegal to work anymore than 36 hours of overtime.
During the off season workers made an average of just £290 a month, while the average workers in Hengyang take home £600.
Foxconn, a Taiwanese multinational, which also makes iPhones for Apple admitted to the Guardian it had employed students illegally and would take remedial action.
In a statement provided to the paper it said: ‘We have doubled the oversight and monitoring of the internship program with each relevant partner school to ensure that, under no circumstances, will interns [be] allowed to work overtime or nights.
‘There have been instances in the past where lax oversight on the part of the local management team has allowed this to happen and, while the impacted interns were paid the additional wages associated with these shifts, this is not acceptable and we have taken immediate steps to ensure it will not be repeated.’
Workers eat their lunch at a restaurant inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in Shenzhen
However, Foxconn defended its use of children and said it provided an ‘opportunity to gain practical work experience and on-the-job training.’
Amazon, whose chairman Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, said it would address the allegations with Foxconn at the highest level.
Amazon’s statement to China Labor Watch said: ‘Amazon recognizes our responsibility to ensure the well-being of factory workers manufacturing products for Amazon …
‘Where appropriate, Amazon uses independent auditors to verify compliance with expectations in our Supplier Code of Conduct.’