Nintendo Comments on Foxconn's Underage Workers

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Nintendo, one of the few companies I actually have respect for. I fully expect them to do an actual investigation rather than try to brush this under the rug, so I hope issues are resolved in on form or another.
 
Are 14 year old year old workers on an internship that big of a deal? Here in Saskatchewan Canada 14 year old workers are allowed (although most don't because their parents buy them everything anyways).

So foxconn didn't check some id's. Big deal. They generally run a pretty tight ship.
 
[citation][nom]assasin32[/nom]Nintendo, one of the few companies I actually have respect for. I fully expect them to do an actual investigation rather than try to brush this under the rug, so I hope issues are resolved in on form or another.[/citation]
I agree, I can put my cynicism aside and actually believe Nintendo will respond appropriately to this development even if Foxconn tries to brush this under the rug.
 
[citation][nom]dameon51[/nom]Are 14 year old year old workers on an internship that big of a deal? Here in Saskatchewan Canada 14 year old workers are allowed (although most don't because their parents buy them everything anyways).So foxconn didn't check some id's. Big deal. They generally run a pretty tight ship.[/citation]
Except underage interns in Canada or in the US aren't put to work 80 hours a week
 
Ummm, I started working in warehousing at the age of 14, loading/unloading trailers for Coca-Cola at our city's depot. After school and on weekends work sucked, but I was the one flush with cash on my days off.

And not only is noone FORCING these people to work for Foxconn (one of the better paying employers now), recently the chinese government lowered the allowed overtime to 60hrs a week and workers COMPLAINED because now they have lost a significant portion of their pay.

EORant
 
thank heaven's someone other than apple is taking the rap for this.

20 of tech's biggest companies use foxconn, but only apple ever gets any press for foxconn's unethical practices.
 
[citation][nom]funguseater[/nom]Ummm, I started working in warehousing at the age of 14, loading/unloading trailers for Coca-Cola at our city's depot. After school and on weekends work sucked, but I was the one flush with cash on my days off.And not only is noone FORCING these people to work for Foxconn (one of the better paying employers now), recently the chinese government lowered the allowed overtime to 60hrs a week and workers COMPLAINED because now they have lost a significant portion of their pay.EORant[/citation]

at least someone here is thinking rationally and not emotionally.

I applaud you sir for being a lone voice in a wilderness of stupidity.
 
How is working at the age of 14 unethical? I would have loved to learn the skills these youths are getting at the age of 14, are they learning soldering techniques, SMT, troubleshooting? Not every family has the luxury of paying for every new thing, if they want to work at 14 why shouldn't they? And who the hell are WE who already allow our 14 year olds to work (in fact recently in Canada we actually paid our under 16yr old workers considerably less than over 16, corrected last year) to comment on this companies hiring practices. No-one seems to care if the guy cooking your french fries is 14.
 
None of this would have happened if they had used child-proof locks on the kiddy cages. Now my mobo is gonna be on back-order. Now they'll have to use whips to take away their new found sense of freedom so they won't be so restless.
 
[citation][nom]funguseater[/nom]How is working at the age of 14 unethical? I would have loved to learn the skills these youths are getting at the age of 14, are they learning soldering techniques, SMT, troubleshooting? Not every family has the luxury of paying for every new thing, if they want to work at 14 why shouldn't they? And who the hell are WE who already allow our 14 year olds to work (in fact recently in Canada we actually paid our under 16yr old workers considerably less than over 16, corrected last year) to comment on this companies hiring practices. No-one seems to care if the guy cooking your french fries is 14.[/citation] I highly doubt it's a skill that is that useful. How it works is production lines where you repeat one action over and over like putting one screw in the lower hand corner for example so imagine doing that 12 hours a day and you'd probably die of boredom.
Letting kids work is not all that horrible in the West but in China there are very low standards when it comes to workers protection so it's quite a different story.


 
[citation][nom]dameon51[/nom]Are 14 year old year old workers on an internship that big of a deal? Here in Saskatchewan Canada 14 year old workers are allowed (although most don't because their parents buy them everything anyways).So foxconn didn't check some id's. Big deal. They generally run a pretty tight ship.[/citation]

I definitely agree. A prison encampment setting is pretty tight. It's like a dream vacation if you think about it.
 
Republicans would love to get rid of all child labor laws.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/14/mitt-romney/romney-gingrich-wants-scrap-child-labor-laws/
 
Ummm, I started working in warehousing at the age of 14, loading/unloading trailers for Coca-Cola at our city's depot. After school and on weekends work sucked, but I was the one flush with cash on my days off.And not only is noone FORCING these people to work for Foxconn (one of the better paying employers now), recently the chinese government lowered the allowed overtime to 60hrs a week and workers COMPLAINED because now they have lost a significant portion of their pay.EORant
Click to expand...


You're kind of missing the underlying problem here. It should never be the case where overtime hours are a significant part of your paycheck. The goal is not more work, it is more pay. We should be encouraging a living wage for workers before pushing for the availability of overtime hours. If these people (this applies to everyone though) earned more per hour, they would not have to spend so much time at their jobs. This is how the middle class was born in the US - with the advent of people making enough money at their jobs combined with leisure time in which to spend it on the things that the very things they create. Of course this means lower margins for Foxconn and Apple (but again - applies to everyone), but it also means more potential customers.

I'm with you on the 14 yr old thing though. I was also working at 14, and even though it was putting roofs on houses for my cousin's business (which sucked) it was nice having money. Keep in mind though, as others have noted, that you can't make an equivalence between working in the West as a 14yr old and working in China as a 14yr old. We also can't make assumptions about these kids being forced or not into these jobs. Before the US had child labor laws, 12yr olds weren't forced to work in a coal mine or a steel or textile mill, but the situations in which they lived really didn't give them much choice. So again, we're back to reasonable pay for the adults in their families.
 
Also, while I got mad love for the House of Mario, they have a pretty crap record when it comes to where they source their materials, especially whats now being called 'conflict minerals' in some pretty terrible mines in Africa.

So I have to take their 'investigation' here with a grain of salt.
 
[citation][nom]soundping[/nom]Republicans would love to get rid of all child labor laws.http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- [...] abor-laws/[/citation]
Next time you link a Politifact page to prove your point, you should make sure it actually agrees with you.
 
To all those who think letting underage worker is no big deal, it's a damn intern for a line worker now let that sink in for a while, the reason this is a big problem in a marginalized environment there is this tremendous pressure if the child can become a source of income to pull them out of school and have them work all the time, the protections are there to ensure the child gets an adequate education go as not to be unduly disadvantaged and who knows maybe claw their way out of poverty via means of a good education and white collar job that goes with it
 
Foxconn has been tumbling downhill at a rediculous pace ever since they started making hardware for crapple.
 
The next super mario will feature whips for beating foxconn slaves with
 
[citation][nom]funguseater[/nom]Ummm, I started working in warehousing at the age of 14, loading/unloading trailers for Coca-Cola at our city's depot. After school and on weekends work sucked, but I was the one flush with cash on my days off.And not only is noone FORCING these people to work for Foxconn (one of the better paying employers now), recently the chinese government lowered the allowed overtime to 60hrs a week and workers COMPLAINED because now they have lost a significant portion of their pay.EORant[/citation]

at that age you are supposed to be focused on your education so you aren't stuck working that job for the rest of your life and at 80 hours a week how is it you are left with time for school, homework and study?

always a fundamental flaw with socialism and communism, usually it is their math due to limited supply and overwhelming demand.
 
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