The schoolboys weren't of legal age to work on an assembly line, but when their vocational school sent them to a Foxconn manufacturing plant last month as part of an internship program, they were soon piecing together Sony PlayStations 12 hours a day.
One boy said he worked an overnight shift that started at 7:30 p.m. looking for imperfections on finished gaming consoles. Another struggled to stand after spending hours screwing together thousands of devices. The intern assigned to lug plastic cases for the product bore red welts on his neck from hoisting heavy loads onto his thin shoulders.
All five said that a day before their three-month internships began, company employees visited their school requesting copies of everyone's identification cards.
