Apple has come under fire in the past where it has been pointed out that a few of Apple’s suppliers and manufacturing partners have used illegal labor, namely workers who are below the legal working age. To Apple’s credit they have worked swiftly to deal with this issues, but it looks like the problem has reared its ugly head again.In a report from The Financial Times, it seems that a workers rights group based out of Hong Hong called SACOM has alleged that Quanta, the supplier for the Apple watch, has used illegal student labor to help with the assembly process of Apple’s smartwatch. The report claims that Quanta allegedly hired these students as “interns”, but they were actually working assembly line shifts, sometimes throughout the night, 6 days a week, and in 12-hour shifts.
It is unclear as to how true those allegations are, but Apple has since responded to those claims in a statement to the publication which reads, “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.”
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