Skip to main content

Apple is investigating a report that illegal student labor was used to build Apple Watches

By

Apple is looking into its Apple Watch supply chain after a report published last week claimed its manufacturer relied on student interns to complete the devices, according to the Financial Times. Sacom, a human rights group, claims Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese Apple supplier, employed students illegally and required them to work overtime and nightshifts with only one day off per week. Sacom says Quanta exclusively manufactures the Apple Watch Series 1, 2, and 4, and is the main manufacturer of the Series 3.

The group says it interviewed 28 high school students at the Quanta Computer factory in Chongqing, China this summer. Most of them were aged between 16 and 18 and performed rote tasks on the production line.

The students claim their teachers told them they wouldn’t be able to graduate on time without this work. One student majoring in auto repair told the group: “I told my teacher I do not want to do this job. He then called my father and talked to him for more than an hour. My father then pressured me, so I had no choice but to come.”

Sacom claims that many of the students’ majors had nothing to do with electronics, and that they saw no benefit from this internship that involved assembling parts for 12 hours a day, sometimes from 8PM to 8AM. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the story, but in the meantime, the company issued a statement to the Financial Times and said:

“We are urgently investigating the report that student interns added in September are working overtime and night shifts. We have zero tolerance for failure to comply with our standards and we ensure swift action and appropriate remediation if we discover [supplier code] violations.”

We’ll update if we hear more from Apple.



from The Verge - Teches https://ift.tt/2PZTIiQ
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Magic Leap is shipping across (most of) the US

By
As Magic Leap holds the first developer conference for its Magic Leap One mixed reality headset, that headset has started shipping across the contiguous United States, instead of in a set of select markets. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition costs $2,295, just like before, but there’s now an installment plan that starts at $96 per month. All orders are supposed to arrive within 60 days. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition went on sale in early August, and while Magic Leap has touted it as a fully functional device, it’s basically meant for people who want to design apps, games, or art for mixed reality. We were ambivalent toward the hardware, which we found limited, and we noted that Magic Leap hadn’t shown off a lot of material that showcased its potential. The company’s developer conference keynote has revealed several new projects. Among other things, Spider-Man studio Insomniac Games is building an experience that will let you grow a holographic creature on your tabletop, and...
Post a Comment
Read more

The company behind the adorably doomed robot Kuri is shutting down

By
Less than a month after Mayfield Robotics said it was stopping production on its Kuri home robot, the company announced today on its blog that the company will be shutting down. Mayfield Robotics launched in 2015 as part of Bosch’s Startup Platform, but struggled to integrate with and find a business fit within Bosch. Since the cancellation of its Kuri robot, Mayfield Robotics had been looking for external partners for long-term technology development, but was unable to find investment to support its future. The company will cease all operations by October 31st. We first met Kuri at CES 2017, and it wasn’t yet able to showcase all the features it was promised to have in the future. The robot was supposed to have smart assistant functionalities like an Amazon Echo, but with a much cuter face and movable body. Promo videos showed it working as a moving home security camera that was controllable through the Kuri app, but in the demonstration we saw, it only had as much functionality a...
Post a Comment
Read more

US carriers introduce Project Verify to replace individual app passwords

By
Four major US carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon — are joining forces to launch a single sign-on service for smartphones. The service, called Project Verify , authenticates app logins so that users don’t need to memorize passwords for all their apps. The companies say their solution verifies users through their phone number, phone account type, SIM card details, IP address, and account tenure. Essentially, your phone serves as the verification method with details that are hard to spoof. Users have to manually grant apps permission to use Verify, and it works similarly to how you might log into some services through Gmail or Facebook instead of using a unique account password. Of course, these apps also have to choose to work with Verify, and the program hasn’t listed any partners or when it intends to launch. The service can serve as your two-factor authentication method, too, instead of an emailed or texted code that can be intercepted. Users might not be totally sa...
1 comment
Read more