The Chinese manufacturer of the Apple Watch has been accused of relying on young students who are coerced into completing an “internship” where they work 12-hour days on the production line, an investigation has revealed.
Undergraduate students have been pressured to work for Taiwanese firm Quanta Computer, which is the exclusive provider of the Apple Watch, according to the investigation by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), a Hong Kong-based non-profit.
The students get no educational benefit from the so-called internship and work as ordinary production-line workers, Sacom claims. Students cited in the report said that they were told that they would not be able to graduate without completing the programme and some also reported that they faced cuts to their dining and accommodation subsidies if they refused.
Quanta also supplies Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Sony, among others.
One mid-level manager in Quanta’s factory in Chongqing reported that 60 per cent of workers at the factory were students. The company prefers students because they are “flexible”, according to the report.
“You can’t easily fire workers if they are regular employees, but you can tell the interns to leave at almost any time,” the manager told Sacom.
A fashion design student said: “I learned nothing here. We’re just here to fill in vacancies at the factory. After leaving Quanta we’ll be sent to a factory for repairing automobiles in our third year.”
Internships must be relevant to a student’s degree and workers are not supposed to work more than 8 hours per day, according to Chinese regulations.
The students interviewed were studying a range of subjects unrelated to electronics and said that they were made to work an average of 12 hours per day with some saying they had no days off for a month.
They also alleged that they were made to pay a “deposit” in order to secure the internship, a requirement that violates Chinese labour law, Sacom said.
“After internal verification, we believe that the allegations … are untrue and unfair to the company. There are serious mistakes in the information … from the ‘undercover investigators’,” Quanta Computer said in a statement to the Guardian.
Apple has come under pressure in recent years over conditions at its suppliers’ factories in China. Foxconn, which builds the iPhone began moving its production inland in 2010 as it attempted to avoid higher wages in China’s coastal areas. The company was criticised after a number of suicides by workers at its facilities.
The Independent has contacted Apple and Quanta for comment.
