Workers claim Foxconn hid underage workers before FLA inspection

After facing criticism from both the media and human rights organizations, Apple has opened up the doors to its manufacturing plants for the world to see. This has allowed the Fair Labor Association in to do an inspection, and ABC to do a report.

If you haven’t seen ABC’s “A Trip to the iFactory” yet, you should really watch it. The documentary actually doesn’t make Foxconn, Apple’s largest manufacturing partner, look as bad as the media has made them out to be. But were they hiding anything?

According to Debby Sze Wan Chan, a project officer for SACOM (Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior), Foxconn was prepared for the FLA’s visit.

She claims that two Foxconn employees told her last week that “all underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any overtime work” during the last two weeks due to the inspections. And some were even sent to “other departments.” Chan also says that factory workers have told her that Foxconn has been putting on quite a “show” for the FLA’s inspectors, giving workers three breaks a day, where they typically only get one.

So what’s really going on inside Foxconn? Hopefully we will know in the coming weeks. The FLA plans on doing interviews from the bottom up over the next month to find out what the workers really think about their employer.

[AppleInsider]