Original subtitles

Tonight on Panorama, the truth about Apple and your iPhone.

For the first time, secret filming from inside

the high-security Chinese factories where Apple's products are made.

The reality of life on the iPhone production line.

That is surprising, and really shocking that they haven't been able

to get this under control yet. With staff falling asleep as they work.

When they fall asleep that way again and again, that means that

the conditions of work are totally and physically intolerable.

And we travel further down the supply chain to find

children digging for the tin the industry needs.

When you're up close, it is horrifying to see this.

And find evidence that tin from illegal and dangerous mines

The most valuable company in the world, that builds

Described by those inside the machine.

I just want the customers to know that Apple

Apple is launching a new product - the iPhone 6 -

Because the people round here you can see them cheering and

I don't think any other company would do that.

They do small things that make the customer feel a little bit happier,

a little bit more excited about their products, and that's what

At London's swanky Covent Garden store, there's

Apple has an extraordinary relationship with its consumers.

These people, they don't feel like customers,

The iconic consumer accessories of our time,

People describe Apple's products with words like:

When have you ever heard anybody talk about other technology

The stores are like boutiques - designs

and products that people around the globe want to be seen using.

I have an iPhone and a MacBook computer.

Its image is part of its attraction and its success.

It's almost like there is a kind of aura - that somehow Apple is

better, in the things it produces, and the way it behaves.

The products make Apple feel good too.

Last year, Apple sold 169 million iPhones and 68 million iPads.

And that makes them a spectacularly successful company.

They made $39 billion profit last year, with $155 billion in the bank.

All told, they're worth more than half a trillion dollars.

Ralph Nader, who campaigns for more ethical business,

says Apple should spend more of that money on its global workforce.

Well, I would say that Apple is in the best position

of any company in the world because of this massive surplus profit to

clean up its supply chain and set an example for the rest of the world.

But Apple says they're already doing more - that the business model is

Apple doesn't just sell you its products.

It offers an ethical production model.

This promotional video is voiced by Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook.

And an even stronger commitment to the environment for the future.

He says Apple cares, from protecting people to protecting the planet.

From environmentally to how you work with suppliers with labour

questions, to your carbon footprint of your products, to

the things you choose to support, to the way you treat your employees.

Apple has made a series of promises about how the workers in

Apple is clearly trying to make sure that it is seen to be an ethical and

responsible company and therefore everybody's eyes are on the company

to say, actually, are you fulfilling your purpose, are you being

Apple seems to be the company that offers the whole package.

But now, more than ever, we will work to leave

Well, we want to investigate Apple's supply chain.

The workforce, the raw materials and the factories.

This is where the Apple dream is manufactured.

China. Companies from around the world operate here, but an estimated

An army manufacturing, testing and assembling.

Without China, Apple wouldn't be the company it is today.

No other country can provide labour so cheaply and make its products

The products the world wants start their life

at vast plants - like this one in the southern city of Shenzhen.

It was 2010 when the world started to hear that

14 workers killed themselves at Apple's biggest supplier,

Long hours, harsh discipline and poor living conditions were all

The company put up anti-suicide nets to make it harder for

Foxconn says working conditions were not to blame,

that wages have since been increased and working hours reduced.

They say their new measures are saving lives.

Apple's promise is to make things better.

Since the suicides, it has published a set of standards to protect

factory workers, spelling out how employees should be treated.

I think what Apple's produced on paper all looks very good,

in that they don't seem to shy away from reporting on the violations

and the problems that they're finding in the factories.

But they've got to go beyond these mere commitments

on paper saying we're bound to do better, because it's not actually

This company, Pegatron, now does some of the work.

It has huge factories on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Pegatron got Apple work after 2010 and the scandal of

This is a company where the standards are supposed to be high.

So have things really changed for the workers?

A labour rights group has published critical reports about Pegatron

and they say Apple must be aware of the problems.

To test Apple's promise to protect workers, we need to go undercover,

but that is not easy in an authoritarian state.

Because of the risks, we will be protecting their identities.

We want to know what life is like for an Apple worker.

To get ready for the launch of the iPhone 6 and the Christmas

rush, Pegatron is recruiting thousands more workers from

Our reporter is at a recruitment centre hundreds

He's fingerprinted, then asked to hand over his identity card.

Every person in China must hold an ID card by law.

When they got it, they didn't return it to me.

So our reporter has only just joined Apple's supply chain, but

the standards introduced to protect workers have already been breached.

They state, "workers shall retain possession or control

Without the ID, workers can't even buy a train ticket.

Last year, we also found that workers at Apple factories were

They responded publicly and yet, this year,

It's a 28-hour coach journey from the recruitment centre to

Workers are then sent to their new homes, dormitories around the site.

To give you a sense of the scale of this plant:

These enormous buildings here, that's where the workers live.

These are buildings just to house the workers who've come from out

80,000 people eat, sleep and work here.

It's like a city - where most of the population lives

Apple has clear rules about accommodation:

Well, 12 people sleep in this cramped room.

So that's another breach of Apple's promises.

We've seen those pictures that you have filmed, with 12-bed

Dormitories. What was it like in there?

I mean, this is something that could literally change throughout Apple's

supply chain in less than six months.

I mean, they can throw up a factory and get production going in three

months, when they've got orders and they've got the motivation to do so.

Apple say the dormitory overcrowding has now been resolved.

But listen to how the workers are treated.

A supervisor from the recruitment agency says if

Before our worker can start his new job, he must go through training.

Hundreds gather. It's peak production

and these sessions are happening almost every day.

Apple told us factory managers are trained to behave appropriately,

but we saw people being picked on. Doing as you are told

continues with the admin. The forms seem to give workers

choices - about doing shifts that involve standing

for long hours or working nights. But in reality,

there's no choice at all. If you ticked the box showing that

you are not willing to give consent, he would ask us to do it again.

If we did it again, he said he'd kick us out

and not let us stay there. He said, if you don't do what

the company asks you to do, what is the point of employing you here?

It's an example of a fake audit trail.

The paperwork will look as if all the workers have agreed to

work nights. Apple say they investigate

every concern brought to them. I mean, these are just ways to try

to meet, very superficially, the demands of auditors, because

it's all about trying to live up to promises that have been made without

really changing business as usual. And what about the health and safety

in these hi-tech factories, with chemicals and dangerous machines?

Our reporters say they got no more than a couple of hours' training,

followed by an exam they had to pass.

And they will. This is what happens.

Exam papers are handed out and the workers chant the answers in unison.

She's more like a bingo caller than an examiner.

And the questions are hardly tough. So, the paperwork shows

workers have passed. Apple say they'll investigate,

though they've seen no evidence of coaching.

This is common. But if you ask Apple,

they would tell you that the workers have signed a document which says

they received 24 hours' training. The companies only need

the signatures. Apple looks only at the signatures.

Pegatron, who run the factory, say worker safety and well-being

are "our top priorities". They set "very high standards"

and conduct "rigorous training". External auditors regularly visit

to find "areas for improvement". Pegatron say they "meet or exceed"

customer codes of conduct. Our undercover teams are now

ready for the shop floor. But it will be risky.

These are high-security buildings in a surveillance state.

It's the ultimate secret filming challenge.

Our reporters face body searches and airport-style scanners.

These are heart-stopping moments. They could be jailed

if they're caught. On this occasion,

the guard reaches for the camera. But he sees nothing suspicious.

We're in. These are the first secret

camera pictures from inside factories making Apple products.

This is where your iPhone comes from.

The workers are treated like members of a production army.

We saw a culture of intimidation. This is a group of supervisors being

shouted at by a senior manager. But one thing more than any other

stood out on the factory floor - Apple's exhausted workforce.

I have personally seen something very outrageous in the factory.

Workers falling asleep while standing and operating the machines.

I'd see many workers sitting or lying down to sleep

during break time. This reporter worked in a factory

that made computer parts for Apple. It was very noisy.

But even with so much noise, he saw people so tired that they were

falling asleep on their breaks. And sometimes, when they

were supposed to be working. Apple say napping on breaks is not

unusual and they look after workers. We're measuring working hours

for 700,000 people. I don't know anybody else doing

this and we're reporting it. And we're showing a level of care

that I don't see in other places, and I think it's really important.

But it was the same wherever we filmed.

People exhausted at work. Here, one of our reporters films

someone falling asleep as they work. And this iPhone 6 testing area

has virtually no-one awake. After work,

I would be so tired that I could fall asleep standing up on the bus

on the way back to the dormitory. If the bathroom queue was too long,

I'd fall asleep on the bed within two minutes.

When they fall asleep that way again and again, that means that

the conditions of work are totally and physically intolerable.

So why are the workers so tired? Well, we found Apple's promises were

being broken on the factory floor. All of our reporters are

routinely on 12-hour shifts. The longest shift was 16 hours, the

overtime was built in as standard. Our workers didn't seem

to have much choice. It's a breach of Apple's promises.

They say: "All overtime must be voluntary."

We had to work more than 12 hours every day, from 8am till 8pm,

sometimes 8:30pm, or 9pm.

We had to leave our dormitories at 7am to travel to the factory.

It was 8pm when I finished my work and I'd only get back at around 9pm.

That is surprising, and really shocking that they haven't been able

to get this under control yet because if they had the staff

on the ground making sure that the factories were operating in

compliance with the law, they could address these issues rather quickly.

Overtime was routine, and it wasn't just the adult workers.

The factory employs under-18s, and this 17-year-old was also

working long night shifts. This is another

of Apple's rules being broken. In Apple's promise to protect

workers who are under 18, they state:

'Juvenile workers shall not work overtime.

Juvenile workers shall not conduct night work.'

We saw payslips that suggest illegal working hours are commonplace.

One undercover reporter was even asked to sign a form consenting

to hours that would be a clear breach of Apple's 60-hour limit.

Another reporter's long hours weren't shown on his payslip.

His overtime payments were disguised as a "work bonus".

So nobody could tell how long he'd worked from looking at his payslip.

We informed Apple of this last year, but Apple never pays attention to

it. The factories keep doing

the same thing. They try to meet Apple's

requirements. The problem is still there.

Apple investigated. They said hours were correctly

logged, but they've asked Pegatron to change the pay slips,

to make them more transparent. Well, there's a lot of ways that

the factories are able to kind of massage the books and it's all

electronic and it's digitised, and so they can basically produce

any kind of payroll they want, to present to the authorities,

to present to the various brands that come through

with their codes of conduct. Pegatron says workers are the

"heart of our business" and that they are encouraged to

"confidentially communicate any workplace issues".

But all our reporters were completely overwhelmed by the work.

Every time I got back to the dormitories,

I wouldn't want to move. Even if I was hungry,

I wouldn't want to get up to eat. I just wanted to lie down and rest.

I was unable to sleep at night because of the stress.

His working environment and those standards are controlled from the

other side of the world, California. Last week,

I was invited to Apple's HQ. It's six weeks since we told them

of our findings, and I was hoping for an interview.

So this is it. This is the home of Apple.

I spent three hours meeting Apple's top people.

So having come all the way to California to meet them, Apple have

just told us that they won't be putting anyone up for interview.

It's perhaps not what you would expect from

a company that says it wants to be the most transparent in the world.

Instead, we got a statement. Apple say they'll investigate

our findings. They will examine

"sleeping during production". On ID cards, Apple says they've done

more than any company to prevent the widespread abuse

of migrant workers. They work with suppliers to prevent

"excessive overtime" and that Pegatron is averaging a

"55-hour working week". We want to go deeper into Apple's

supply chain. I've come to a place known

as 'Tin Island'. This is Bangka, in Indonesia.

Many of the world's electronic companies get tin from here.

Offshore, an industrial flotilla is about to start dredging the seabed.

The way they work is a 75-foot drill smashes down into

the seabed and then pulls up the tin sand to be processed back here, but

that is not great for the seabed and the coral when that drill arrives.

The power of the dredgers churns the ocean.

This is the water that that boat has just dredged through and it's

This mining ship is owned by PT Timah, an Apple supplier.

But Apple has promised to protect the environment.

It says 'suppliers should act in environmentally responsible ways'.

Campaigners say these underwater pictures show how

PT Timah told us the damage is temporary and it takes

Its mining activities are licensed by the Government.

But environmentalists say Apple has been warned the mining

Apple knows, because I was interviewed in person

I also e-mailed them once and told them that this is the data about

If a coral reef is covered in sediment due to offshore tin

30% of the world's tin comes from Bangka province.

Legal mining alone can't keep up with demand.

We've been told of a place that's become a symbol

You can hear the noise from a mile away.

It looks and sounds like one enormous floating machine.

The sound and the smell of diesel is completely overwhelming.

This is a man-made island of absolute chaos,

It's very, very unsafe, but it's all about tin.

We've been told that tin ore from this site ends up with

In bare feet, the men force a pipe into the seabed.

The tin is sucked up to the deck and water is used to separate sand

It's so loud, but that's what they're after.

It's dangerous, but the workers say it's worth it.

On land, whole areas of forest have been ripped away to get at the ore.

This smashed landscape might seem a long way from Apple's shiny

products, but the tin produced here is a key ingredient.

Tin is used inside your mobile phone to solder the components together.

So your laptop, your tablet and your mobile phone

All electronics companies depend on tin.

And just as at sea, on land, the legal mines can't keep up.

We are very concerned about the situation on Bangka-Belitung.

Particularly about the situation of the illegal miners.

Follow the destroyed land and you'll find the illegal mines.

Now Apple says it will drive 'the responsible sourcing of minerals'.

But we've been told that tin ore from around here ends up

The miners use jets of water to break it up.

But if too much mud slips, a miner could be buried alive.

When you're up close, it is horrifying to see this.

Whilst we've been here, we've seen huge chunks of the walls

And this is not just a kind of vague threat,

We saw 14-year-old Wahid working in the mud.

This is a rescue effort after a landslide.

Once someone is buried, they rarely survive.

A local doctor says the bodies show the same characteristics - broken

I came to meet Sumiati because she lost her husband to the mud.

The first body was recovered quickly, that was my husband.

But as we talked, I discovered something even worse.

That my husbands died because of landslides.

Both husbands were buried at the mines.

I was shocked when it happened the second time.

I felt like I wanted to die. Just like the first time.

Apple has confirmed it gets tin from Bangka.

What's never been confirmed is whether illegal tin from sites

Nobody knows the tin industry here better than this man.

He's worked his way up through the industry,

This house, all the money, I got from tin.

He's a director of a processing plant, a smelter.

Apple has published a list of the smelters that supply it with tin.

He says all the smelters around here buy at least some

The smelters can't tell whether it is legal or illegal.

70% of the tin ingots exported overseas

So this is gathered by collectors and then sold to smelters.

At the smelter, there's everything from both large

There's no way to know what is legal and what is illegal.

What does he think of Apple's environmental promises to make

So a boss at an Apple supplier says smelters can't distinguish

Can that be true of other smelters on Apple's list?

Well, Apple buys tin from the majority

So if illegal tin is being mixed up, it's very likely to be in Apple's

Getting confirmation from other smelters is not easy.

To get more evidence, we need to talk to the middlemen.

The collectors who buy illegal tin and supply legal smelters.

To meet a contact, we head into rural Bangka.

This collector buys from the area where we filmed

the dangerous muddy mine, where the 14-year-old was working.

He agrees to talk if we don't identify him.

Do his gang supply the smelters that supply Apple?

So, is this from legal mines or is this from illegal mines?

Could you write down the smelters that you sell to?

I just need to see them written down.

Just to be clear, you buy from illegal mines, miners

who mine in dangerous conditions, and you sell to Nurjana, a smelter

Nurjana was not the only Apple smelter this collector supplied.

I checked with Apple's list of suppliers.

He told me he dealt with RBT and I didn't recognise that name,

but that's PT-refined Bangka tin, so two out of the three smelters

Apple says it goes "deep into its supply chain to enforce standards."

But in only a few days, we found a connection

But then we heard another gang were prepared to meet us.

They felt more like criminals than businessmen.

Once again, they tell us they buy from illegal miners and sell to

So, your only smelter that you sell to is RBT?

Do they ask questions about where the tin ore came from?

So this criminal dealer says he's only been doing business with RBT,

a smelter that supplies Apple. RBT says it doesn't

take illegal tin. And the other smelter, Nurjana, says

it abides by all the local laws. Apple blames corruption

and government inaction. They told us they're

the first company to talk to smelters about the shocking

conditions, and they helped create a group to look at the problems.

But not all the members of that group seem convinced.

So far, there's been no concrete action.

In reality, Apple should know that tin they use

to produce electronic products originates from illegal mines

and is cast, or made, in private smelters and then sold to Apple.

Apple says it came here to Indonesia to investigate the mines.

But we were only here for two weeks and we found something shocking.

We've been told collectors who sell to a smelter on Apple's

list get tin from this area. So all of the men and women who are

working in the pit at the bottom of these cliffs are taking their lives

in their hands, but here, we've found something really upsetting.

This is about 70 feet of sheer sand and at the bottom, trying to start

the little landslide, is a father and his 12-year-old son.

We stayed on at the mine until dusk and watched

as the tin ore was washed. It's the last work

the miners do before the ore is sold on to collectors.

And when we left, 12-year-old Rianto was still at work.

And there seems little to stop the tin he's mining ending up

in Apple's products. Apple says it's a complex situation,

with tens of thousands of miners "selling tin through many

middlemen". The simplest course would be to

"refuse any tin from Indonesian mines".

But that would do "nothing to improve the situation".

Apple has chosen to "drive changes on the ground".

Back in China, I am leaving the cities

and heading for the countryside. 1,000 km from Shanghai,

this is the village of Hou Jia Pu. It's harvest, but around here,

the workers are all old. The young people have gone.

These villages have kind of changed. There are young and old people,

but most of the young adults have moved away,

there's nothing for them. They head to the coast, the cities,

the factories and the money. Zhu Yunhe has been a farmer here

for 40 years. His sons have gone to the factories.

His granddaughter is only 15, but she left this week to work

for another electronics factory. In farming, they can only feed

themselves and nothing else. So they need to go to

factories to work. All the farmers here are

in this situation. Many young people go to the

factories to help their families. But it doesn't always work out.

Shi Zhaokun was 15 when he left his village.

That's too young to legally work at an Apple plant, but using

his older cousin's ID card, he got a job on the iPhone production line.

He knew that our family was very poor and other people work in

the factories so he wanted to go. I told him he should wait

for a couple of years, but he said, "Don't worry, let me go".

He wanted to earn some money which would make life better, so he went.

He was in one of the factories where our reporters are working and,

like them, he worked long shifts. The family were told 280 hours

in just four weeks. And at the end of that month,

he died. My son was fit and healthy, but

died after working in the factory. He didn't have any medical problems.

I wouldn't have let him go if he was unwell.

Mr Shi took me to his son's grave. The family are farmers

and Zhaokun is buried in a field. Apple say independent medical

experts found no evidence linking his death to working conditions.

The family were given a one-off payment from the owners

of the factory. But they had to sign

a gagging order to say they wouldn't talk about their son's death.

This is one of the factory's dirty tricks to shut the workers' mouths.

They try to seal the mouth of the family in the hope of not

damaging Apple's brand image. They worry this will have

a negative impact. What do you think of the company?

No-one should enter that factory. If I'd known, I'd never have let

my boy work there. The workers

in Pegatron earn the Shanghai minimum wage, about ?1 an hour.

We were told they work long and illegal hours because it's

the only way to make a living. Now, the cost of an iPhone in the US

is $650. Analysts say Apple makes $248

in profit on every phone. But factories like this only spend

about $5 putting them together. Well, I think that most people would

agree that it's OK to maximise profits, but when you're breaking

the law, that should send a signal to the company that they need to

take a new approach and they need to start looking at the problem

a little bit more creatively and a little bit more proactively.

It was the sheer volume of work that overwhelmed our reporters.

One had to work 18 days in a row, despite repeated requests

for a day off. He was working more than 70 hours

a week. And that's yet another of Apple's

broken promises. "Supplier shall limit the actual

hours worked by each worker to no more than 60 hours per work week."

All of our reporters were left exhausted by their shifts and

by the way they were treated. When I was in the countryside, there

was an ox at my parents' farm. We used the ox to plough the fields.

If the ox refused to plough, it would be whipped until it did.

It was similar in the factory. If we did not do as we were told,

we would get insulted and scolded. It wasn't just the paid work.

Many workers had to go to meetings like this before and after shifts

without being paid for the time. Apple promises,

'All meetings must be within the regular eight-hour shift'.

They're not. Apple says

if it discovers unpaid meetings, it expects suppliers to backdate pay.

But we found the meetings and the workload left a shattered workforce.

And that's dangerous. Listen to what one

supervisor tells his team. This is quite dangerous

because sleeping while working is likely to result in an injury.

The reason why industrial injuries are numerous in China is mainly

due to workers' exhaustion. Workers' fatigue leads

to industrial injuries. And yet when one of our reporters

tried to resign, saying he couldn't handle the hours anymore,

he was told he should toughen up. Pegatron say they are

"carefully investigating Panorama's claims" and "will take all necessary

actions" if any deficiencies are found at their facilities.

Apple told us they 'strongly disagree' with our conclusions.

No other company is doing as much to ensure 'fair

and safe working conditions.' They require employers to treat all

workers with 'dignity and respect'. They check the hours of

'more than one million workers', and audit hundreds of workplaces.

They see 'continuous and significant improvement', but add,

'We know our work is never done'. But this is what we found.

This is where Apple products come from.

These are the people who make them. I just want

the customers to pay attention to Apple's appalling work conditions.

Apple has been championing itself as a perfect enterprise,

but it is all a facade. I don't think they care

about the workers at all. If you know that there's wrongdoing

in your supply chain, if you know the standards are not being applied,

if you are profiting from all this, you have an obligation to do

something about it. But they say that they, they want

to do all that they can to protect workers in their supply chain.

Are they serious? Well, they have limited ambition

if that's what they're desiring to do, because it's not working

and the proof is the conditions in those factories and in those mines.

Apple's model works. Ten million iPhone 6s sold

in its first weekend. But we went deep into their supply

chain, to test Apple's commitment to the environment and to its workers.

For the children digging in the mud and sand

and the workers falling asleep on the iPhone production line,

there are too many broken promises.