Underage Foxconn interns return to school

Students from vocational schools in east China's city of Yantai are returning to their classrooms following a Tuesday apology from Foxconn, a major electronics manufacturer that hired the children to work as interns.

Sources from the Administration Committee of Yantai Development Zone said Wednesday that the interns would be returning to school. The committee did not specify how many interns were hired by Foxconn, a major supplier for Apple Inc.

Foxconn said in a statement issued Tuesday night that it carried out an internal investigation at a factory in Yantai and found that it had employed underage interns ranging in age from 14 to 16 for about three weeks.

Foxconn spokesman Bruce Liu said Wednesday that the statement was an "apology to the underage workers and their parents."

He said the incident is an individual case and has not occurred in any other Foxconn factories on the Chinese mainland.

"Foxconn is expanding its manufacturing ability on the mainland. The company cooperated with vocational schools, under the coordination of local authorities, to hire student interns to work in some of Foxconn's factories in order to solve occasional labor shortage issues," Liu said.

Foxconn said in the statement that approximately 2.7 percent of its workforce of 1.2 million people on the Chinese mainland are interns.

Chinese Labor Law refers to workers below the age of 16 as child laborers. Employers can be fined or have their business licenses revoked for illegally hiring child laborers, according to the law.

The underage workers were among thousands of student interns sent to factories by vocational schools in Yantai after Foxconn turned to the Administration Committee of the Yantai Development Zone for help in solving a severe labor shortage that occurred in September, when the company reported a shortage of 19,000 workers.

Foxconn's Yantai factory is one of the company's eight major production bases on the mainland. The factory went into operation in 2004 and produces PCs, mobile phones and video game consoles.

By 2011, the company had realized an output value of 109.6 billion yuan (17.5 billion U.S. dollars), ranking first among all overseas-funded firms registered in east China's Shandong Province.

In contrast to the export plight currently suffered by many Chinese manufacturing firms amid the eurozone debt crisis, Foxconn's production has been increasing, with 32 production lines recently added to help the company keep up with its orders.