Report: Students being forced to work in Chinese factories

A report from the Wall Street Journal claims that teens in China are being forced to work long and hard hours in factories assembling gadgets for well-known companies. This is in violation of Chinese regulations, but sadly not the first time such issues have arisen.

The teenagers are students reportedly being forced to work under the threat of not being allowed to graduate otherwise. Summers and such are spent working 12-hour days with only one day off a week — one 16-year-old student said "Sometimes we are so tired on the night shifts we almost fall asleep," according to the WSJ.

Though minors aren't supposed to work at night or for longer than 8 hours a day, the government does mandate that such students should be used to fill in labor gaps. When working as interns, if the students can properly be called that, the teens stop attending class, putting a temporary end to their education.

Sadly, while some students are paid the same as a factory's regular workers, others have the majority of their monthly pay go back to their school. While efforts to crack down on practices like this have grown, the issue still remains. A similar claim, for example, surfaced back in February.

SOURCE: WSJ