HP: Exploitative Student Labor in China

The Chinese economy has become synonymous with cheap and efficient labor and we often hear domestic outrage over the outsourcing of jobs abroad to countries like China by major corporations. This article gives significant insight into one of the reasons that labor is so cheap and efficient. Much to my surprise, student labor is more prominent than I had known as electronic companies often have students working in factories. Cheaper wages with a larger and more productive workforce seems ideal for any company and this is why manufacturers such as Apple have had such an efficient supply chain process. Their cost of production remains low and their profits are a testament to that. In this article, however, we see another big name in the electronic market, Hewlett-Packard, and how it is increasing regulation to limit exploitative student labor practices. It is interesting to note how corporate social responsibility and the company image may sometimes be more important than cheap and efficient production. While many other companies have taken the stance that students also do summer jobs in other countries, such as the United States, and that they learn something from being in a work setting, the student labor practices in China where the students are often required by schools to work in factories (while the school administrators get a cut of their salary or are being paid by companies to encourage such work) are most certainly exploitative in many ways and it is interesting to see what companies are willing to do to regulate this. Apple has gone against it but HP seems to have taken the regulation a few steps further and is trying to keep it to a minimum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/business/global/hewlett-packard-joins-push-to-limit-use-of-student-labor-in-china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=business