Apple’s most expensive iPhone X assembled by 17 year old minors in Asia, says report

Key Highlights

• 3,000 students from Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit School were employed by the company.
• Students aged 17-19 who were assembling the iPhone X.
• The students were allegedly working 11 hour shifts.

Tim Cook-led Apple Inc’s main supplier in Taiwan, Asia - Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn has been allegedly employing child labourers.

Working 11 hour shifts at a factory in Zhengzhou, China, six high school students were cited in a report by Financial Times on Tuesday who said they were employed to assemble the iPhone X.

A total of 3,000 students from Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit School were employed in September by Foxconn.

The students were in the age group – 17 to 19 years.

“We are being forced by our school to work here. The work has nothing to do with our studies,” one of the students said. She assembled up to 1,200 iPhone X cameras a day.

The report said such a plant with a base of 100,000 to more than 300,000 workers producing up to 20,000 iPhones a day.

“Company policy doesn’t allow interns, who represent a very small percentage of its workforce, to work more than 40 hours a week on program-related assignments,” an emailed response quoted by Live Mint said.

“Number of cases where portions of our campuses have not adhered to this policy. We have investigated all of these cases and confirmed that while all work was voluntary and compensated appropriately, the interns did work overtime in violation of our policy,” Foxconn said.

This isn't the first time Apple has been accused of employing child labourers in the production of iPhones. 

Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen that employed 430,000 people in 2012 had 13 year olds polishing thousands of iPhone glasses per day. 

The children were allegedly working 16 hour shifts and paid 70 cents an hour.

Another report by Fortune in 2015 said a survey conducted by Apple in 2014 found 16 cases of underage labourers in six of its facilities. 

The Apple iPhone X is selling for nearly $1000 in the US and its 64GB variant costs Rs 89,000 while its higher storage variant costs over Rs 1 lakh in India.