工厂使用学生工折射出中国劳动力缺口

The admission from Apple supplier Foxconn that students worked illegal overtime at its iPhone manufacturing plant underscores how Chinese companies are turning to schools to fill gaps in the country’s labour force.

苹果(Apple)供应商富士康(Foxconn)承认有学生在其iPhone制造工厂违法加班，明确显示出中国企业正在借助学校填补该国的劳动力缺口。

The FT has spoken to six people who said they were part of a cohort of 3,000 student interns from Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit School sent on compulsory “work experience” at the local Foxconn facility. There they assembled iPhones — a task that had nothing to do with their studies to become train attendants and railway managers.

英国《金融时报》采访了6个人，他们说，郑州城轨交通中等专业学校(Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit School)有3000名学生被派往当地富士康工厂获得必需的“工作经验”，他们也在其中。在那里，他们的工作是组装iPhone，而他们在学校学习的是如何成为乘务员和城市轨道运营管理师。

Foxconn confirmed the Zhengzhou students “did work overtime in violation of our policy”. Students are banned under Chinese law from working overtime.

富士康证实称，郑州那些学生“确实加班工作，违反了我们的政策”。中国法律禁止学生加班工作。

Such companies are resorting to employing students as Chinese manufacturers wrestle with rising wages and the difficulty of finding flexible workers.

眼下，中国制造业企业正在艰难应对工资上涨和难以找到灵活劳动力的问题。

The sectors most likely to abuse student labour are the electronics and textiles industries, according to the Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility. The Beijing-based charity found that 14 of the 24 electronics factories it surveyed said they used student workers.

关注儿童权利和企业社会责任问题的瑞联稚博(CCR CSR)称，电子产品和纺织是最可能滥用学生工的行业。这家在北京设有办事处的机构发现，在其调查的24家电子产品工厂里，有14家表示使用过学生工。

China’s local governments are under pressure to supply flexible labour to factories to stop employers relocating their facilities to other Asian countries. At the same time, Beijing is aware that young people must be educated to a higher standard if the country is to shed its low-cost tag and compete globally.

中国地方政府面临着向工厂提供灵活劳动、以防止企业把工厂迁至其他亚洲国家的压力。同时，中国政府知道，如果想让本国甩掉低成本的标签、参与全球竞争的话，那就必须提高青年人的教育程度。

Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program at Stanford University, says the compulsory recruitment of student interns into factories is widespread across China. “It’s not just Foxconn sending students to factories but the whole of China,” he says.

斯坦福大学(Stanford University)农村教育行动项目(Rural Education Action Program)联席主任罗斯高(Scott Rozelle)表示，强迫学生进入工厂实习的现象在中国各地非常普遍。“把学生送进工厂的不只是富士康，整个中国都在这么做。”他说。

He fears the tension between China’s rising wealth and its inadequate education system will have serious consequences. “Kids aren’t learning in these internships?.?.?.?China is going to collapse if its human capital continues to be so bad and so unequal.”

他担心，中国不断增加的财富与其不胜任的教育系统之间的矛盾，将产生严重后果。“孩子们没有在这类实习中学到东西……如果人力资本如此糟糕、如此失衡的局面延续下去，那么中国将走向崩溃。”

Ms Yang, an 18-year-old secondary school student, told the FT that she and the other interns worked 11-hour days assembling Apple’s new iPhone X.

一位18岁、姓杨（音译）的女中学生告诉英国《金融时报》，她和其他实习生每天工作11小时，组装苹果新推出的iPhone X手机。

“If I don’t stay [at Foxconn] I won’t graduate school, but my body can’t take it,” says Ms Yang, who declined to give her full name for fear of being identified. “My mum says if I can’t stand it, maybe I can leave school and work with my dad.”

“如果我不呆在（富士康），我就毕不了业，但我身体受不了这个。”这位杨姓女生说，“我妈妈说，要是我受不了，也许我可以退学，然后跟我爸一起干活。”她拒绝透露全名，害怕被人认出来。

If she did drop out of education, it would add to a trend that threatens Beijing’s target of a 90 per cent enrolment rate for upper-secondary education by 2020.

如果她当时真的退学了，那将是为一种不利于中国政府实现如下教育目标的趋势做贡献：到2020年高中阶段教育毛入学率达到90%。

In 2016, only 9.3m students graduated from China’s upper-secondary schools, less than two-thirds of that age cohort, according to official statistics.

官方统计数据显示，2016年，中国高中毕业人数仅为930万人，低于该年龄组总人数的三分之二。

Economists believe China must upgrade its workforce to avoid falling into the “middle income trap” — where a country’s growth fizzles out before it becomes prosperous.

经济学家认为，中国必须进行劳动力升级才能避免落入“中等收入陷阱”——这是指一个国家还未达到富裕水平就停止了增长。

The country has expanded its vocational schooling as part of its Made In China 2025 industrial policy. But with no national assessment of teaching quality, those schools have become a source of flexible labour for local factories.

作为“中国制造2025”产业政策的一部分，中国扩大了职业教育规模。但由于对教学质量缺乏国家考核，这些学校已成为当地工厂弹性劳动力的一个来源。

“Improving the quality of vocational education is necessary to address the major changes and contradictions in Chinese society,” Zhang Laiming, vice-minister of the State Council’s Development Research Center, said at a recent forum organised by JPMorgan in Beijing.

在摩根大通(JPMorgan)最近于北京举办的一场论坛上，国务院下属发展研究中心(Development Research Center)副主任张来明表示：“提升职业教育发展质量是适应中国社会主要矛盾变化的必然选择。”

He said the quality of vocational school tuition in China was poor and that vocational education was looked down upon by employers and parents. Thirty-six per cent of China’s new workers are from vocational schools.

他说，中国的职业学校教育质量不高，雇主和家长都瞧不起职业教育。中国36%的新入职工人来自职业学校。

In response to abuses of student interns from vocational schools, the government has passed laws limiting the use of students to less than six months and has banned overtime. But Yang Po, an associate professor at Peking University, says schools have “faced big challenges in adjusting to these laws”.

为了应对滥用职业学校实习生的问题，政府已经通过了相关法律，将学生的实习时间限制在6个月以内，并且禁止他们加班工作。但北京大学(Peking University)副教授杨钋表示，职业学校“在调整做法、以适应这些法律方面面临巨大挑战”。

SACOM, the Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group, earlier this year found that tech groups Acer and Fujitsu sourced their goods from such students. SACOM claims that students comprised about half of the workers on assembly lines at a Quanta Computer factory in Chongqing that supplies Acer and Fujitsu.

香港维护劳工权益组织“大学师生监察无良企业行动”(SACOM)今年早些时候发现，科技集团宏碁(Acer)和富士通(Fujitsu)的产品就出自此类学生之手。SACOM指称，在广达电脑(Quanta Computer)位于重庆的一家工厂，装配线上约一半的工人都是学生。这家工厂为宏碁和富士通供货。

Quanta Computer, the world’s biggest laptop manufacturer, said: “We have treated the allegations seriously and hence strongly demanded our agents to ensure the justifiability of their labour sources.”

全球最大笔记本电脑制造商广达电脑表示：“我们对这些指控非常重视，因此已态度坚决地向我们的代理商提出要求，让它们确保合法使用劳工。”

Acer confirmed student workers are used in some factories to “ease labour pressure”, while Fujitsu declined to comment on the Quanta factory. Both companies said they insisted on adherence to local laws when selecting suppliers.

宏碁证实，一些工厂的确在使用学生工“缓解人手压力”，而富士通拒绝就广达电脑那家工厂置评。两家公司都表示，在选择供应商时，它们都坚持一点：必须遵守当地法律。

Of the student interns working illegal overtime at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory, Apple said: “We have confirmed the students worked voluntarily, were compensated and provided benefits, but they should not have been allowed to work overtime.”

针对富士康郑州工厂实习生违法加班的问题，苹果表示：“我们已经确认，这些学生是自愿工作的，他们得到了报酬和福利，但他们不应获准加班。”

After the FT published the Zhengzhou plant story on Tuesday, all student interns were removed from overtime duty, according to a Foxconn employee at the facility.

该厂一名富士康员工表示，英国《金融时报》周二刊发关于富士康郑州工厂的报道后，所有实习生都已被撤下加班名单。

Ms Yang has now left the factory and returned to her school dormitory, where she awaits her teachers’ decision on whether she will be punished for her departure or told to return to Foxconn with next year’s students.

杨同学现在已经离开该厂，返回了学校宿舍，她正在等待老师的决定——或因离厂而受到处罚，或是被告知与明年的学生一起返回富士康。

“[Student labour] is also the problem of the rigidity and backwardness of the school system, and of the labour market,” says a Foxconn manager. “It is the problem of the whole system.”

“（学生劳动力）既是学校体制僵化和落后造成的问题，也是劳动力市场的问题。”富士康一名管理人员表示，“这是整个体制的问题。”