“‘Dying for an iPhone’: The human cost of Apple’s high-speed production demands”, 29 August 2020

… The spate of suicides [at Foxconn factories in China in 2010] sparked a decade-long investigation by the team of researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This led to a book, Dying for an iPhone, written by Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai…

Foxconn Technology Group, a giant Taiwanese company with strong ties in China also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is one of Apple’s largest suppliers...

Over the course of ten years, academic and co-author Jenny Chan and a team of Chinese student researchers infiltrated 12 Foxconn factories, where they interviewed workers and human resources and product managers. The team conducted field research at over a quarter of Foxconn’s facilities…

Chan and her team went undercover at Foxconn factories...

Researchers found that Foxconn sometimes pushed employees to work up to 12-hour shifts for seven days a week, with one day off per month.

“This is a violation of Chinese labour laws,” Chan told HKFP. “[This] was a very important finding because both Foxconn and its international buyers all have so-called ‘supplier codes of conduct’.”…

Chan said it was not acceptable for Apple for hide behind the fact that Foxconn workers are not their direct employees. “It’s not just about your employees. It’s also about the workers who are producing products with your logo. You are connected but you use outsourcing to… shift the responsibility to the suppliers.”

In 2013, after their first round of research, the team sent letters to Foxconn and Apple, asking them to respond to their findings. They were met with blanket replies…

… In May 2011 an explosion at Foxconn’s iPad factory in Chengdu, when aluminium dust was ignited by an electrical spark, killed four workers and injured dozens of others. The proliferation of aluminium dust before the explosion also adversely affected workers’ health…

... Young students from across mainland China are recruited under the guise of interns, but are made to work the same hours as regular workers, effectively becoming even cheaper, temporary workers to meet seasonal demand…

Foxconn told HKFP in an emailed statement that it strives to “comply with all relevant laws and regulations across all our operations”.

It said it was continuously working with health and human resources experts and labour unions to improve working conditions…

The company said it takes allegations of employee abuses seriously…

HKFP reached out to Apple multiple times for comment but had not received a reply at time of writing…