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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.
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.
...
Teenagers who spoke to researchers said the factory work has no relevance to their courses and they have been pressed into working overtime.
Xiao Fang*, 17, started work at the factory on the Amazon Echo production line last month.
Fang, who is studying computing, was given the task of applying a protective film to about 3,000 Echo Dots each day. Speaking to a researcher, she said she was initially told by her teacher that she would be working eight hours a day, five days a week, but that had since changed to 10 hours a day (including two hours’ overtime) for six days a week.
“The lights in the workshop are very bright, so it gets really hot,” she said.
“In the beginning, I wasn’t very used to working at the factory, and now, after working for a month, I have reluctantly adapted to the work. But working 10 hours a day, every day, is very tiring.
It's a long article but descriptive. The factory recruited the kids because they could not recruit permanent staff - and they are obviously cheaper. Also, if the kids did not work overtime, it could affect their application for graduation.
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As long as the item is cheap American's don't care. It's like eating a steak without thinking where it came from. We like our steak and we like Alexa lol!!!
Isnt this the dream of the libertarian right? Employers ignoring labor rights is how it should be right?
We constantly hear that we dont need any minimum wages and that these jobs are only for school kids anyway.
Its a bit rich to complain about how bad it is for Chinese workers and pretend to care about them, while attacking anyone who seek to strengthen labor rights and enforcement of them for American workers.
As long as these bad things are not being imposed on American children, generally, most Americans are totally fine with the practices, especially if they get something that makes it easier to shop and spend money!
Whoever knew that distance was such a HUGE factor in our concern for kids?!!
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