Apple China investigation: Overtime 'exceeds legal limits'

Fair Labor Association concludes Apple's Chinese suppliers have improved working conditions, but staff still work too many hours

Despite an improvement in working conditions in Chinese factories that make Apple products such as iPhones and iPads, excessive working hours are still a major concern, a report has claimed.

This was the finding of a two-year probe into alleged sweatshop conditions in China by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which was asked by Apple to look into working conditions of the plants run by its largest supplier Foxconn.

Problems uncovered included students on internship programmes being forced to work long hours, a high number of suicides and industrial unrest among employees.

The report concluded that working conditions have improved for about 170,000 workers at three Foxconn factories in Longhua, Guanlan and Chengdu; the working hours, in particular overtime hours used by workers to supplement their salaries, "exceed legal limits".

It added that workers at the Longhua and Chengdu factories "worked no more than 60 hours per week" during March to October 2013, with the same being true of the Guanlan facility "with the exception of seven weeks during the period when working hours exceeded 60 hours".

"All three factories exceeded the overtime limit of 36 hours per month during the period March-October 2013," it said.

On average at Longhua, 67 per cent of workers exceeded 36 hours of overtime per month, compared with 56 per cent at Guanlan, the report said. At Chengdu, five per cent of workers exceeded 36 hours of overtime per month during March to June 2013.

In conclusion, the report said: "Over the past 15 months, steady progress has been made at the three facilities... Progress has been made with respect to hours of work, but the three factories are not in compliance with Chinese labor [sic] law regarding hours of work.

"The FLA expects that participating company Apple will continue to monitor compliance at Foxconn with respect to this standard and others, and will report on their monitoring efforts to the FLA on an annual basis."