Workers at Apple partner Foxconn have alleged that their
employer transferred underage employees to other departments or did not
schedule them to work overtime in order to avoid discovery during recent
inspections by the Fair Labor Association, according to one
non-governmental organization.
Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) project
officer Debby Sze Wan Chan relayed the claims in a recent interview with
AppleInsider. SACOM is a Hong Kong-based NGO that was formed
in 2005 and has been researching labor rights violations in the
electronics industry since 2007.
Chan said she had heard from two Foxconn workers in Zhenghou last week
that the manufacturer was “prepared for the inspection” by the Fair
Labor Association that had been commissioned by Apple and began last week.
“All underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any
overtime work and some of them were even sent to other departments,”
Chan reported the workers as having said.
Another Foxconn worker in Chengdu said she had been allowed three breaks
a day recently because of the audit, whereas she is accustomed to only
receiving one break a day.
