An investigation by BBC for Panorama has resulted in a documentary that reveals the miserable working conditions of Apple workers in China and Indonesia.
The documentary focuses on two allegations against Apple, namely that the working conditions in its iPhone factories in China are so dismal that workers are falling asleep right on the factory line, and that the tin that is sourced for Apple's iPhones are from Indonesian mud pits, where mudslides occur frequently, claiming the lives of workers which include children.
Apple told BBC that the claims will undergo investigation.
BBC sent out three teams as undercover workers to different factories in China and suppliers of raw materials record the footage.
"The conditions of work are totally physically intolerable," Ralph Nader, one of the team members, said.
The videos recorded from the Chinese factories build upon the previous news coverage on the Apple factories. China Labor Watch, an organization for the rights of workers, is one of BBC's sources in the report.
According to BBC, one factory fabricated paperwork to make it look like all the workers agreed to work at night. One of the recordings shows a worker warning his fellow worker to stay awake because he could electrocute himself with one of the factory's machines.
The BBC also discovered that there were 12 workers sharing each dorm room in a factory, when the rules only allow eight workers to share a room. There were also instances of factory managers bullying the workers, workers falling asleep while standing due to their tiring 12-hour shifts and workers becoming too tired to even eat.
Some of the findings have already previously been reported. However, the report on Apple's tin mining operations is entirely new, as BBC followed the supply chain of the company to its source.
BBC found workers that include children, with one on video being only 14 years old, digging in mud pits for tin in Bangka, Indonesia. The workers are always at risk of being buried alive by landslides, as the walls of the open-cast mines are blasted with hoses to spray away mud to be able to expose even more of the tin ore that is being collected.
The documentary also revealed dredgers hauling up sand and coral from the Indonesian seabed to collect tin, transforming the ocean into a muddy sea that leaves no chance for the corals to grow back. Illegal islands have been created, made up of several boats connected together with the purpose of raking up the tin ore from the seabed.
