Apple's New Foxconn Embarrassment - Forbes

Apple's New Foxconn Embarrassment - Forbes:

The undercover story by the Shanghai Evening Post reporter paints a grim picture. About workers’ living quarters, he writes, “The whole dormitory smells like garbage when I walk in.” He adds that when he opened his closet, “lots of cockroaches crawl out from inside and the bed sheets that are being distributed to every new workers are full of dirt and ashes.” His job at the factory: marking four spots on the back plate of an iPhone 5 with an oil-based paint pen. The marks had to be within 5 millimeters of the designated points and he was expected to complete five plates every minute. Supervisors repeatedly reprimanded the journalist for failing to place the marks accurately.

The journalist’s all-night shift lasted 10 hours with only one break for dinner at 11pm. When the shift ended at 6 AM, supervisors exhorted the workers to put in two hours of overtime, for a wage of just $4. The journalist describes a worker who couldn’t take the pressure: “A new worker who sat opposite me became exhausted and laid down for a short while,” he writes. “The supervisor has noticed him and punished him by asking him to stand at one corner for 10 minutes like the old school days.”