Report: Chinese Students Illegally Forced to Make Apple Watches
Apple is no stranger to inquiries about working conditions at its overseas manufacturing facilities. The latest, from Hong Kong labor rights group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, says that one of its Apple Watch manufacturers, Quanta Computer, illegally put teenage students to work in Chongqing, China.
Apple is "undoubtedly" using student workers aged 16 to 19 who are forced to work "12 hours a day and night shifts, both of which is in violation of local regulations," according to a report.
This is a follow-up report from 2017, when the group also found "student workers violations."
According to the report, first-year students are sent to the factory to work against local regulations, and they cannot graduate without performing an internship.
One student, working on the production line despite majoring in e-commerce, said that their "graduation certificate will be withheld by the school if [they] refuse to come," while others described how they worked from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with 2.5 hours of overtime every weekday.
According to Chinese law, the standard working day is eight hours long; any extra hours are regarded as overtime work, which may not exceed 36 hours per month. However, the students that the labor rights group interviewed said they had to work two to three hours of illegal overtime per day, as well as working an additional day on the weekend.
Many of the students working also said their activities did not provide any relevant experience with regards to their majors; one student majoring in automotive repair is quoted as saying: "My task is to plug in cables on motherboards. I have no idea what function it is for. I have asked a senior about that. He just told me it is none of my business and my only task is to plug it in."
In a statement to CNN, Apple said that it audited the factory three times between March and June, and found "no student interns working on Apple products at that time."
"We are urgently investigating the report that student interns added in September are working overtime and night shifts," Apple said. "We have zero tolerance for failure to comply with our standards and we ensure swift action and appropriate remediation if we discover code violations."
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.