The horrific human cost of producing the iPhone 5 is exposed in a Sunday Mirror investigation today.
The demands placed on workers made headlines last week when thousands walked out on strike at one of the Chinese factories where Apple’s latest must-have gadget is made.
But we can reveal how walk-outs and riots are commonplace at the iPhone plants across the Far East.
Low-paid factory staff claim they have been set targets of producing one of the gadgets every 30 seconds – 1,000 a day – or face the sack.
They say the exhausting workload is so high they are banned from talking to one another on the production line – and even have pay docked if they go to the toilet more than three times in a gruelling shift of up to 14 hours.
Take-home pay, after accommodation at the factory has been paid for, adds up to just £230 a month, making owning one of the £599 devices they make a pipe-dream for workers.
Details of the hellish conditions were uncovered by our investigators at the plant in Taiyuan, northern China.
It is one of dozens owned by electrical giants Foxconn, which employs more than a million in its factory “campuses” across the country.
Lieu Hu is one of 79,000 men and women who trudge in every morning from their live-in dormitories, situated at the factory, to the production line.
Humiliation begins at the factory gates, where Hu, 27, has to walk through a barrage of metal detectors and is subjected to a full body search.
The measures, recently introduced following a spate of thefts, often include having his underpants searched.
Once at his workstation, Hu spends day after day, hour after hour, tightening four screws on an iPhone.
A handset passes through his hand every 30 seconds. In the three months up to the launch 180,000 passed through his hands. They would have a retail value of at least £90million in the UK.
Five million iPhones were sold in the first weekend they went on sale and tens of millions more will be snapped up before Christmas.
But the phenomenal demand is making life incredibly tough for those producing it.
“It’s hard work,” Hu says. “There is an endless production line of phones to get made and out the factory. It is never-ending.”
Work is monotonous. Talking is frowned upon and there is an unwritten rule that no more than three toilet breaks are allowed a shift.
Hu says being more than 20 minutes away from a workstation results in a worker’s pay being deducted.
Speaking to us outside the factory Hu stares up at a sign advertising the iPhone 5 and sighs: “That phone is for people with money. Not us workers.”
Hu is one of thousands of workers who live on site, eight to a room, in tiny dorms. They share toilets which are often broken in rooms which have little or no natural light with people they don’t know.
Hu’s colleague Joe Zheng, 22, says work is so intense “we rarely get a lunch break”.
“The line managers, who are under a lot of pressure to hit targets, will scream at you if things don’t run like clockwork,” he adds. “Some days it is just impossible to work any faster.”
The wages paid for Foxconn are relatively high for China. But the grim conditions are driving many away. Each day 600 quit the factory.
Discipline is enforced by 1,500 security guards who berate workers for infringements as slight as an undone tunic button.
Conditions have led to such ill-feeling that, two weeks ago, the plant was hit by a riot which forced it to shut for a day and left 40 injured
Worker Sugh Li, 22, told how he watched the carnage unfold from his balcony as thousands clashed with Foxconn’s security guards and police.
“The guard office was smashed to bits and police cars turned over,” he recalls. “Workers used firehoses and extinguishers as weapons. There were at least 10,000 on the streets.
“Only when the police arrived with AK-47s did it stop. Protesters were dragged out of their rooms in their underwear, beating them with batons.”
Last Friday there was more violence, this time at another Foxconn plant 250 miles away in Zhengzhou.
There is a history of troubles at Foxconn. Two years ago 13 workers jumped to their deaths under pressure of producing the then-new iPad.
A Foxconn spokesman said: “As our production lines are complex we encourage employees to keep conversations to a minimum for health and safety reasons.
“Like most companies, we adhere to a time limit for scheduled breaks. They are 10 minutes every two hours with an hour meal break in a standard shift.
“Workers get a housing allowance to rent private quarters or are given accommodations in employee housing. This meets all government standards for size, safety and services.”
?We have changed the names of the workers to protect their identities.