Report: Illegal overtime on Apple assembly line

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China, on Wednesday.

The FLA has its roots in a 1996 meeting of multinational companies and nonprofits convened by President Clinton, who challenged them to improve conditions for garment and shoe workers. Its 19-member board is composed equally of representatives from member companies, universities and nonprofits like the Global Fairness Initiative. The organization is funded by participating companies.

Labor unions have criticized Apple’s use of the FLA, insisting that audits are a “top-down” approach. Foxconn’s workers would be better served, they believe, by being able to organize.

“The report will include new promises by Apple that stand to be just as empty as the ones made over the past 5 years,” said SumOfUS.org, a coalition of trade unions and consumer groups, ahead of the release of the report.

The FLA found few safety violations, noting that the company had already dealt with problems like blocked fire exits and defective protective gear. It’s also taken step to reduce the amount of aluminum dust in the air, after the metal created an explosion at the Chengdu factory last year, killing four workers.

The FLA said Foxconn has been recording only accidents that caused work stoppage, but is now committing to recording and addressing all accidents that result in an injury.

Heerden said his auditors found Foxconn workers are the happiest with their jobs when they work 52 hours a week, well below the amount they often put in. Reducing their hours to 49 hours should help Foxconn retain workers in the long run, he said.

The auditors examined one years’ worth of payroll and time records at each factory, conducted interviews with some workers and had 35,000 of them fill out anonymous surveys.

Apple has started tracking the working hours of half a million workers in its supply chain, and said that 89 percent of them worked 60 hours or less in February, even though the company was ramping up production of the new iPad. Workers averaged 48 hours per week.

The Foxconn factories are the last step in the process of manufacturing an iPhone or other Apple device, most of which have hundreds of components. Research firm IHS iSuppli estimates that Apple pays $8 for the assembly of a 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S and $188 for its components. It sells the phone wholesale for about $600 to phone companies, which then subsidize it to be able to sell it for $200 with a two-year service contract.

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