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Apple has confirmed with。 Mashable 。that some high school interns at the iPhone-producing Foxconn plant in China worked overtime to produce iPhones. 。
The circumstance became public when six students from Zhengzhou Urban Rail Transit School told the 。 Financial Times 。they were "forced" to work at the facility to complete internship requirements. One student reported assembling 1,200 phones in a single day. 。
SEE ALSO:Authorities just served Apple a warrant for the Texas church shooter's iPhone 。In a statement, an Apple spokesperson acknowledged the students should not have been working overtime to assemble Apple's latest, gleaming handsets. The students said they worked up to 11 hours a day.。
During the course of a recent audit, we discovered instances of student interns working overtime at a supplier facility in China. We’ve confirmed the students worked voluntarily, were compensated and provided benefits, but they should not have been allowed to work overtime. 。
Apple noted that interns, while working at the Foxconn plant — which can produce up to half a million iPhones in a single day — are not a significant part of the iPhone-assembling workforce. 。
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At this facility, student intern programs are short term and account for a very small percentage of the workforce. When we found that some students were allowed to work overtime, we took prompt action. 。
The tech giant says they have "specialists" on-hand to "ensure the appropriate standards are adhered to." Yet, at a sprawling 2.2-mile square facility which employs up to 350,000 workers, it seems some oversight can occur. 。
We know our work is never done and we’ll continue to do all we can to make a positive impact and protect workers in our supply chain. 。 But for those Chinese workers that aren't students, working overtime at some Chinese factories is mandatory. In 2016, a graduate student at NYU, Dejian Zeng, went undercover at a Pegatron iPhone producing factory, and told 。Mashable 。
Mashable 。
about the experience. Like Foxconn, Pegatron is an electronics manufacturing giant. 。
Zeng said he worked 12 hours a day screwing "1,800 screws into 1,800 iPhones" six days a week. He made the equivalent of around $450 a month, even when working overtime. 。
“What shocks me is that overtime is involuntary," Zeng said. “[The workers] are actually kind of forced to do overtime.”
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