The electronics manufacturer Foxconn, which became notorious after workers’ suicides in 2010 has admitted that student interns worked overtime and night shifts at one of its factories in northeast China in violation of company policy.

Students told Chinese media that more than a thousand classmates worked on basic tasks such as putting together and packaging parts for Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 4 consoles. The college programme at the factory in Yantai, Shandong province, was a graduation requirement, they said.

The admission is a blow to the Taiwanese company most famous for assembling Apple products. It comes in the same week that Terry Gou, its founder and chairman lamented that young Chinese are shunning monotonous, low-paid assembly line jobs.