The Foxconn City complex of factories, run by Foxconn Technology Group, employ 235,000 workers and Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard projects are also built on the site. Assembly-line employees earn less than $2 an hour, working sometimes more than 60 hours a week putting together iPads and Microsoft Xbox game consoles for Western consumers.
Inside Apple’s Foxconn factory employee dormitories are equipped with protective nets, pictured here at Foxconn's industrial complex in Shenzhen. Foxconn installed the nets and hired mental-health professionals in response to the spate of suicides that peaked in 2010 with at least 10 deaths.
An employee committed suicide after being accused of stealing a prototype for the iPhone. Sun Danyong, 25, was a university graduate working in the logistics department when the prototype went missing. An investigation revealed that the factory's security staff had beaten him, and he subsequently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of his apartment building.
Foxconn now operates an emergency hotline in the counseling center at Foxconn City in Shenzhen. The center was set up in 2010 as part of an effort to combat rising cases of depression and suicide.
FOXCONN SUICIDES
WINTEK TOXIC EXPOSURE
Other issues of concern are workers with exposure to toxic substances or using dangerous machinery without adequate protection.
In 2010 a Taiwanese manufacturer that makes LCD screens and components for tech giants like Apple, confirmed that 137 of its workers had fallen ill after toxic chemical exposure at work.
Wintek began using n-hexane instead of alcohol sometime last year to clean screens, because apparently it dried more quickly and reduced streaks. Workers at the factory suffered nerve and muscle damage after working with the toxic chemical hexane to clean component touch screens for electronic products.
Hexane has been known to cause long-term and possibly irreversible nerve damage particularly damage to the peripheral nervous system and the spinal cord.
The company and local government both say Wintek’s factory has since stopped using the chemical in its manufacturing process and the manager who decided to use n-hexane has since been fired.
CHILD LABOUR
In 2008 at least 25 child workers were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple. Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage.
"In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment,"
Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.
Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Only 65% of the factories were paying their staff the correct wages and benefits, and Apple found 24 factories where workers had not even been paid China's minimum wage of around 800 yuan a month. Meanwhile, only 61% of Apple's suppliers were following regulations to prevent injuries in the workplace and a mere 57% had the correct environmental permits to operate.
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. Apple admitted that at least 55 of the 102 factories that produce its goods were ignoring Apple's rule that staff cannot work more than 60 hours a week. The technology company's own guidelines are already in breach of China's widely-ignored labour law, which sets out a maximum 49-hour week for workers. Apple also said that one of its factories had repeatedly falsified its records in order to conceal the fact that it was using child labour and working its staff endlessly.