Andre Yoskowitz
22 Feb 2012 19:51
Last night, ABC had a Nightline special which reported on the working conditions in the Foxconn plants at Shenzhen and Chengdu.
Each supply plant makes Apple products like the iPad and iPhone. The special, which was only 17 minutes long, confirmed what many already believed; that workers are extremely overworked and underpaid.
Mashable has collected a great amount of facts from the report, some of which are pretty shocking. For the most part, however, the conditions were not as horrible as most media would have you believe.
First, each worker makes $1.78 per hour, and live in a cramped dorm room on the factory's campus for $17 per month. Each worker has seven roommates. Lunch costs $0.70 for meat and rice, and each worker gets two one-hour meal breaks during their 12-hour shift.
To create just one iPad, it takes five days and 375 people. However, workers can make 300,000 iPad cameras for the device in just two 12-hour shifts. Some workers create the aluminum exterior design (with Apple logo) at the rate of about 10,000 per hour.
Some workers were as young as 13, but most were in their late teens, said the report.
Despite the conditions, the report showed 3000 youths lining up outside the factory hoping for work. Foxconn expects to hire 2400 of them as demand for Apple products remains through the roof.