Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour [View all]

[joshcryer]

One Foxconn worker Mike Daisey interviewed, outside factory gates manned by guards with guns, was a 13-year old girl. She polished the glass of thousands of new iPhones a day.

The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn't really check ages. There are on-site inspections, from time to time, but Foxconn always knows when they're happening. And before the inspectors arrive, Foxconn just replaces the young-looking workers with older ones.

In the first two hours outside the factory gates, Daisey meets workers who say they are 14, 13, and 12 years old (along with plenty of older ones). Daisey estimates that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage.

Daisey assumes that Apple, obsessed as it is with details, must know this. Or, if they don't, it's because they don't want to know.

The Business Insider link covers all the details, but if you want the emotional impact, I encourage you to listen. If you don't want to listen you can read a transcript here. I just finished with it and I am completely taken aback.

I know that this show was posted here before (in the other Apple-centric threads), but this Business Insider overview is the best one I could find that covers the whole thing.