14 DAY TRIAL // ABC "Nightline" anchor Bill Weir has been offered exclusive access to Apple suppliers' factories in China to interview workers on the conditions inside the facilities where iPhone and iPads get assembled.
Weir is reportedly the first journalist to go inside the factories to ask workers about their welfare. Most people working on Foxconn’s assembly lines have never touched or even seen an iPhone or an iPad in real life.
Weir's report is set to air on a special edition of "Nightline" this Tuesday, February 21 at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC. Until then, the network teases us with this brief report from their anchorman:
"For years, Apple and Foxconn have been synonymous with monster profits and total secrecy so it was fascinating to wander the iphone and iPod production lines, meet the people who build them and see how they live. Our cameras were rolling when thousands of hopeful applicants rushed the Foxconn gates and I spoke with dozens of line workers and a top executive about everything from hours and pay to the controversies over suicides at the plant and the infamous "jumper nets" that line the factories in Shenzhen. After this trip, I'll never see an Apple product the same way again."
In related news, Foxconn recently announced that it had increased the wages of its workers in Shenzhen.
Three years ago, the people assembling Apple’s iPhones were paid 900 yuan a month. In the interim they saw one raise, and now Foxconn is paying them 1,800 yuan a month (almost 300 American dollars) and plans to compensate some workers even better (2200 yuan a month) if the workers pass a technical examination, according to Cnet.
"As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn's China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments," Foxconn said in a statement last week.