Apple's iPhone Workers Must Strip For Tattoo Checks And Wear Only Approved Hairstyles

Workers assembling iPhones must pass a bizarre range of random requirements before they are eligible to work 60-plus hours a week for $1.50 an hour in Apple's Chinese contract factories, according to China Labor Watch.

CLW, a labor rights organization, sent under cover workers into the factories Apple uses for a two- to six-week period recently to document abuses at the factories Apple uses to build its iPhones.

The organization found a poster at Pegatron factories with these requirements:

The Pegatron factories had a list of discriminatory hiring practices, including refusing to hire people shorter than 4 foot 11 inches tall, pregnant women, those older than 35, people with tattoos, or people of the Hui, Tibetan, or Uighur ethnic groups. At AVY [a Pegatron subsidiary], male applicants were made to strip off their shirts for a tattoo check in public areas two separate times.

Also at the AVY factory, CLW alleges, the following employment rules included prohibitions on certain hairstyles:

• Must possess basic reading/writing abilities; more than three months of work experience; no tattoos or cigarette burns; and no unusual hairstyles or hair colors.
• Do not hire those over the age of 35;
• Do not hire those with tattoos.
• In public areas and in front of many people, workers are made to strip off ?clothing and undergo tattoo examinations. Such examinations are carried ?out twice in different places.

Traditionally, the Chinese have associated tattoos with criminals.