Foxconn ♥ Interns

Motherboard magazine has published an excellent expose about the Foxconn's labour practices surrounding internships and it's the stuff of nightmares. Foxconn is an electronics manufacturer that does outsourcing for companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Nintendo. The company has seen a string of intern suicides, protests, and vast outside interest in their operations given the high-profile nature of the products it produces. Essentially, it appears that Foxconn is exploiting tens of thousands of interns as a reserve labour force to supplement its already massive workforce.

Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, indicated that Foxconn might be running “the world’s single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative.” That's a pretty harsh critique, but one that's probably dead on target. What's driving Foxconn bottom line is the West's insatiable need for consumer goods, which get snapped up as fast as they can be produced. For some additional reading on Foxconn's labour practices, see: here and here. Also, check out the video below documenting a protest by Foxconn workers over unfair labour practices, see: