Illegal Student Labor Used To Assemble iPhone X, Apple Admits Transit
school students said they worked 11-hour shifts for required "work
experience."
Nina Golgowski
Apple has admitted that one of its main Chinese factories worked
student interns overtime to assemble its iPhone X, violating local labor
laws.
The admission on Wednesday came after teenage workers claimed they
were regularly forced to work 11-hour shifts assembling the pricey
devices in order to graduate from school, according to a report
published in the Financial Times.
The tech giant, as well as plant operator Hon Hai Precision Industry
Co., also known as Foxconn, has denied the student program was
involuntary but admitted the long hours violated policy.
"We've confirmed the students worked voluntarily, were compensated and
provided benefits, but they should not have been allowed to work
overtime,"
Apple said in a statement obtained by HuffPost.
The corporation, headquartered in California, said it has sent staff
to the overseas plant to address the violations, which it said involve
a small percentage of the workers.
The six students, aged 17 to 19, told the Financial Times that they
were among a group of 3,000 students from Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit
School who were sent to the Zhengzhou factory to complete a
three-month stint for "work experience."
One student, who didn't want to be identified because of fear of
retaliation, said she was tasked with assembling the new iPhone X
smartphones, which cost just under $1,000, despite studying to be a
train attendant.
"The work has nothing to do with our studies," the 18-year-old told
the Times.
Foxconn, in a statement obtained by Reuters, admitted that some
interns have worked more than 40 hours per week on "program-related
assignments," which violates their policy.
In 2015, The Asia-Pacific Journal reported that Foxconn's student work
programs frequently violated the rights of student interns and Chinese
law.
"Foxconn, through direct deals with government departments, has
outsourced recruitment to vocational schools to obtain a new source of
student workers at below minimum wages," the report states. "The goals
and timing of internships are set not by student educational or
training priorities but by the demand for products dictated by
companies."
Factories that produce Apple products in Asia, like Foxconn, have a
history of workplace violations and criticism from labor rights groups
that have cited them over excessive overtime, unpaid overtime, hiring
underage workers, underpaying student workers, and exposure to
chemicals and other hazardous environments. Plants where Apple
products were manufactured also saw a series of suicides in 2010-2011.
Li Qiang, founder of New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch,
told Bloomberg improvements have been made at factories in Shanghai
that work on Apple products, but there's still a ways to go.
"Ultimately it's about production needs. From Apple's actions, it
seems like they don't care about the labor standards they set
previously," Qiang said, while claiming that Apple knew about the
students' long hours weeks ago but didn't do anything about it.
"They could have stopped these students working night shifts and long
hours sooner, but they didn't do that," he said.
Last April, an intern for China Labor Watch described working 12-hours
shifts in an iPhone assembly line at a Chinese plant while sitting in
a backless chair and being punished when a machine broke, causing
parts to get backed up.
"What is behind these Apple products are millions of hands and
millions of untold lives," Dejian Zeng wrote. "Some of them are
genuine friends that I know, who are still struggling whether they
should use the restroom or take a nap in that 10 minute break, who are
still struggling whether they should buy the 15yuan ($2.25) roasted
chicken as a treat for the weekend, who are still struggling whether
they should stay in the factory tomorrow and if not, where else will they
go?"
Foxconn did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
Original Article at:
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a157b73e4b09650540e82ec?ncid=APPLE
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