Chinese factory staff assembling Apple’s latest iPhone continue to face precarious conditions, working many hours of overtime, suffering wage delays and discrimination against ethnic minorities, according to a leading labour rights group.
China Labor Watch found that more than half of the estimated 200,000 workers employed during peak season at the world’s largest iPhone factory run by Foxconn in Zhengzhou are seasonal staff known as “dispatch workers”. This is despite a Chinese law capping the use of such staff at 10 per cent of a company’s workforce.
US-based CLW, which specialises in undercover investigations of Chinese factories, also found that dispatch workers faced staggered payment schedules that withhold part of their wages to deter them from quitting during peak production.