Apple's Chinese staff work 60 hours a week, independent audit finds Foxconn employs 1.2m workers in China to assemble products not just for Apple, but for Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and other pillars of the US technology industry. The FLA didn't find instances of child or forced labour. Apple has kept a close watch on its suppliers for years, and in January took the further step of joining the FLA. The organisation has audited overseas suppliers for fashion companies and other industries, but Apple was the first electronics company to join. It also commissioned the FLA to produce a special audit of Foxconn's factories. "Our team has been working for years to educate workers, improve conditions and make Apple's supply chain a model for the industry, which is why we asked the FLA to conduct these audits," Apple said in a statement. Labor unions have criticized Apple's use of the FLA, insisting that audits are a "top-down" approach. Foxconn's workers would be better served, they believe, by being able to organize. "The report will include new promises by Apple that stand to be just as empty as the ones made over the past five years," said SumOfUS.org, a coalition of trade unions and consumer groups, ahead of the release of the report. Apple CEO Tim Cook visited a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China, on Wednesday. In February and March, FLA auditors visited three Foxconn complexes: Guanlan and Longhua near the coastal manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, and Chengdu in the inland province of Sichuan. They employ a total of 178,000 workers. The auditors examined one year's worth of payroll and time records at each factory, conducted interviews with some workers and had 35,000 fill out anonymous surveys. The FLA found few safety violations, noting that the company had already dealt with problems like blocked fire exits and defective protective gear. It's also taken steps to reduce the amount of aluminum dust in the air, after the metal created an explosion at the Chengdu factory last year, killing four workers. The FLA said Foxconn has been recording only accidents that caused work stoppage, but is now committing to recording and addressing all accidents that result in an injury. Heerden said his auditors found that Foxconn workers are the happiest with their jobs when they work 52 hours a week, well below the amount they often put in. Reducing their hours to 49 hours should help Foxconn retain workers in the long run, he said. Apple's and FLA's own guidelines call for work weeks of 60 hours or less. Apple has started tracking the working hours of 500,000 workers in its supply chain, and said that 89pc of them worked 60 hours or less in February, even though the company was ramping up production of the new iPad. Workers averaged 48 hours per week. The Foxconn factories are the last step in the process of manufacturing an iPhone or other Apple device, most of which have hundreds of components. Research firm IHS iSuppli estimates that Apple pays $8 for the assembly of a 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S and $188 for its components. It sells the phone wholesale for about $600 to phone companies, who then subsidize it to be able to sell it for $200 with a two-year service contract.