After exposing storyteller Mike Daisey's fabrications about working conditions at Foxconn, NPR Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz got a rare inside look inside the Apple supplier's Shenzhen plant to see an iPad being made.
In a new video (below), Schmitz reports that 99 percent of the nearly quarter-million workers employed at the factory are migrant workers who travel across China to send money back home. Workers, who begin lining up outside the factory at 7 a.m., are 18 to 25 years old, on average.
Workers rotate their jobs every few days, and make around $14 a day to start, Schmitz reports. After a few years, their salary doubles.
"The work is tedious and boring, but each day hundreds of people line up outside the factory to apply for jobs here," Schmitz said in the video. "On this day 500 applicants, many of them tired from traveling days from their home village, arrive with the hopes of working here."
Each morning, a supervisor gives workers their assembly line assignments. On the first part of the assembly line, workers put together the iPad's motherboard. Machines attach a tiny buckle to the motherboard that is used to trace back when and where the device was made if something goes wrong.
Later on in the assembly line, workers manually install the motherboard and other components inside the iPad casing. After other workers install the LEF touch-screen display, the device is almost complete. But first it must run through a series of tests before it's boxed up.
Compared to other factories in China, Foxconn is considered one of the best, Schmitz reports. Workers have access to amenities like athletic fields, and unlike many other factories in China, Foxconn pays workers on time.
Schmitz, a longtime China correspondent for Marketplace, is only the second Western journalist to have access to the Foxconn factory floor. ABC's Bill Weir visited the factory in February, following reports in the New York Times about lackluster working conditions.
Foxconn made headlines in recent years after at least 14 workers in Foxconn plants in the Chinese cities of Shenzen and Chengdu committed suicide. Apple responded with a recent audit of its Chinese facilities and Apple CEO Tim Cook insisted recently that Apple cares about all its workers.
For more, see PCMag's full review of the new iPad and the slideshow above.
For more from Angela, follow her on Twitter @amoscaritolo.
