CUPERTINO, CA -- Apple Computer is taking heat for its relationship with Foxconn for the wages and working conditions at the latter's factories.

According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, Foxconn employees typically put in 15-hour days and some earn just $50 per month -- with up to half returned to Foxconn to cover housing and food. Visitors are reportedly forbidden.

Foxconn manufactures Apple's iPod media players.


The report cited Foxconn's Longhua plant, which is said to employ 200,000 workers. However, a Business Week profile of the company put the number employed in China at 100,000.

Most of the workers are women, the Mail on Sunday report said, and they are forced to work overtime and occasionally punished.

Critics are claiming that Apple's self-positioning as a company that is concerned about the outside world is in conflict with the environment at its contractors like Foxconn.

• Prev
• Next