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China Technology

Schoolchildren in China Work Overnight To Produce Amazon Alexa Devices (theguardian.com) 94

Hundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon's Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets, documents seen by the Guardian reveal. From a report: Interviews with workers and leaked documents from Amazon's supplier Foxconn show that many of the children have been required to work nights and overtime to produce the smart-speaker devices, in breach of Chinese labour laws. According to the documents, the teenagers -- drafted in from schools and technical colleges in and around the central southern city of Hengyang -- are classified as "interns," and their teachers are paid by the factory to accompany them. Teachers are asked to encourage uncooperative pupils to accept overtime work on top of regular shifts. Some of the pupils making Amazon's Alexa-enabled Echo and Echo Dot devices along with Kindles have been required to work for more than two months to supplement staffing levels at the factory during peak production periods, researchers found. More than 1,000 pupils are employed, aged from 16 to 18.
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Schoolchildren in China Work Overnight To Produce Amazon Alexa Devices

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  • Is there Slavery in China?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Yes Dave, there is very good savings on fine china available on prime day! Would you like me to set up a reminder for you?"

      • I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
        • I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

          "Dave's not here, man."

          Teachers are asked to encourage uncooperative pupils to accept overtime work on top of regular shifts.

          Gee, how come I immediately thought of the rowing scene in "Ben Hur" . . . ?

          • by bob4u2c ( 73467 )

            Gee, how come I immediately thought of the rowing scene in "Ben Hur" . . . ?

            I think of Thor Ragnarok: "the prisoners with jobs" scene.

        • What is sad (outside of this problem in China) is that most readers probably don't even know this is a well-known quote from a movie.

    • not in this case, these are paid workers 16 years of age and older. Not even "children"

      • Re:Alexa... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @02:38PM (#59071050)

        not in this case, these are paid workers 16 years of age and older. Not even "children"

        There is also nothing at all "new" about this.

        China requires all high school and college students to do an internship in a factory, farm, or military unit. It is supposed to build solidarity with the working class.

        My spouse attended high school in China 30 years ago, and spent 3 months working in a tractor factory.

        The interns are treated exactly the same as other workers. Same pay, same working conditions, same overtime policies.

        Most Chinese view these internships as a Good Thing, that instills work ethic and job skills.

        Maybe we should do something similar in America.

        • China requires all high school and college students to do an internship in a factory, farm, or military unit. It is supposed to build solidarity with the working class.

          Germany has an interesting system of apprenticeships. You can say, right out of your secondary education, do an apprenticeship and learn to be a professional electrician. Afterwards, you can try to study electrical engineering. If things don't work out with studying electrical engineering, you can fall back on your electrician apprenticeship.

          Out of my own house, my girlfriend did an apprenticeship in printing . . . at Gutenberg in Mainz! She later went on to study graphic design. When she started work

          • The German apprenticeships and the Chinese internships are not really comparable.

            The German apprentices learn real skilled trades, while the Chinese interns are mostly doing unskilled repetitive work.

            But the German apprentices learn for years, while the Chinese interns are just working for a few months.

        • There is also nothing at all "new" about this.

          China requires all high school and college students to do an internship in a factory, farm, or military unit.

          Maybe we should do something similar in America.

          It's called work - study.

      • I was curious if the posts on this thread would be as rabidly pro-corporate as so many of the posts were in the stories about Foxconn and Pegatron workers suffering horribly (and in some cases committing suicide—remember the suicide nets) under illegal and unethical working conditions (1 [scribd.com], 2 [theguardian.com], 3 [reuters.com], 4 [alternet.org]). I'm sorry to see that so much of the discussion obscures relevant details or tries to divert attention away from ethical treatment of other people. Framing discussion around whether payment is made at all o

    • and then it plays an vote trump 2020 ad about how bad china is.

    • Just don't expect any politician who is a friend of either Jeff Bezos or Tim Cook do anything about this. Such as banning imports of products made with child labour.
    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      No Dave China is not in the United States

  • Communist dictatorship. Why do you think so many businesses moved their manufacturing to China in the first place? BILLIONS of "ready willing" workers...Yeah, ready and willing, at the end of a machine gun barrel, not to mention, for many, it's the ONLY way they can get any money at all. Slave labor is pretty much all China has to offer, and, they've built an "empire" on the backs of their dear comrades.
    • by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @02:08PM (#59070796)

      Communist dictatorship.

      Yes, of course, communists are bending over backwards to help Amazon make scads of money.

      First it was "schoolchildren". The horrors! Then it was "teenagers". The horrors, but not quite so bad as 8-year-olds.

      Then the fact at the end: 16-18. In many cultures, these "schoolchildren" would already be working full time at stuff a lot more dangerous than putting electronic gizmos together. Even in the US it used to be a thing for juniors and seniors to go out on work-study programs. And it's a thousand or so in total.

      Yeah, it's not good. It's also not the child labor horror that the title tries to make it out to be. That makes the article suspect as a whole.

      Why do you think so many businesses moved their manufacturing to China in the first place? BILLIONS of "ready willing" workers...

      No. Millions of cheap workers. "Ready willing" has nothing to do with it. When you're being paid going local rate for your labor, the government doesn't need to coerce you to work.

      • by Anonymous Coward


        Then the fact at the end: 16-18. In many cultures, these "schoolchildren" would already be working full time at stuff a lot more dangerous than putting electronic gizmos together. Even in the US it used to be a thing for juniors and seniors to go out on work-study programs.

        And that's supposed to be good, because other cultures do it, and even the US did something similar? We also had children working machines in the early 1900s until we passed child labor laws. This sounds pretty much like similar abuses.

        • And that's supposed to be good,

          You know, the very first sentence in the very next paragraph after what you quoted says "that's not good." You can't even fucking read one sentence ahead, asshat.

          I was pretty horrified when I had a couple friends working at freaking Burger King during school hours circa 1988.

          Yeah, cause that's so much like child slave labor in the heavy industries of the 1900s. You're a nitwit.

    • China is communist the same way that the US is free.

    • Mao is long dead and like it or not Chinese, not American, economic methods lifted more humans out of poverty in a shorter time than any other in history.
      Keep getting your thoughts from Faux News while Chinese productivity moves China inexorably towards superpower status.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So "as young as 16", big deal, I worked when i was 16 too and did the long hours and weekends for glorious overtime pay.

    I know, here in the west we have people in their 20s in their mom's basement, but in the rest of the world when you have adult body you can do adult's work.

    • You honestly think manufacturers in China are paying overtime? You know, the same manufacturers that are such worker's paradises they even put up suicide nets?
        You believe in Santa Claus too?

      • Guess what? China has labor laws, and overtime laws. Yes, they are by law required to pay overtime. Check your facts before you spew in ignorance.

        • Because Chinese companies NEVER violate the law, right? Hell, AMERICAN companies routinely commit wage theft to the tune of billions of dollars per year:

          https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year-survey-data-show-millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-than-the-minimum-wage-at-significant-cost-to-taxpayers-and-state-economies/

          Also a very simple Google shows many Chinese companies are ignoring any overtime laws in China:

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/c

          • now you're talking about what is illegal in China

            you have no point, I only countered your B.S. assertion about how things are in China.

            You've lost

            • Actually, you countered nothing. "No... U" isn't a counter argument.

              As I said, post evidence. I'm not taking some clown with a high 6 digit userid at their word.

          • by ghoul ( 157158 )

            China is a 4000 year civilization. America is built on land stolen from the natives through trickery.

            I would expect a Chinese company to foolow laws much more than an American company.

            Just because American corporations exploit people doesnt mean Chinese companies do.

            China has a strong Communist Party which is an alternate power structure which can arrest and hang Industrialists who try to exploit Labor.

            No such protections exist int he US

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        You know, the same manufacturers that are such worker's paradises they even put up suicide nets?

        At least they're protecting the workers.

        Even during the peak of the suicides, the rate was still lower than China's national suicide rate. So yeah, there was a spate of them, but any city sized collection of people will have some suicidal among them. And let's not forget even China's suicide rate is lower than say, the US suicide rate.

        Not to say China is right, but sometimes there are poor examples.

    • Their next article will be titled "Schoolchildren in America work nights and overtime to produce Burgers and Fries"

    • It was standard in farm communities for teens to perform adult tasks. Pitching hay is not for the weak, yet somehow many turned into capable adults who, holy shit, enjoy farming and farm today.

  • China os right smack in the middle of the capitalist industrialization we had a 100 years ago. With all the same symptoms like horrible worker rights and safety, catastrophic pollution and destruction of the planet, huge construction projects and greedy fatcats.
    All that's missing is a cigar-smoking Rockefeller in his Gotham-City-esque skyscraper with gargoyles and Mafia goons.

  • Home of suicide netting and forced child labour.

  • China Makes "Rules" preventing such action. So they are not to blame (they may not enforce it though)
    Because Foxconn doesn't follow these rules as there is no repercussion for breaking allows them to produce more cheaply
    Amazon will find the lowest bidder who can do the work, and ethically consider China's labor rules good enough. (however they may not verify that they are indeed following such rules)
    These students are classified as interns hungry for job experience, with paid teachers who "encourage" them

  • that I could go to and see how young the kid was that made my kid's toys. I remember a soccer ball made by a kid her age when she was 9. I think it's gone now.
  • Another reason to not have these shitty listening devices in my house.

  • Everyone needs a job.

  • Outsource your slavery to China, and act indignant when they use slave-like conditions.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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