Apple is investigating allegations that one of its suppliers illegally used high school students to assemble its watches at a factory in China.
A Hong Kong-based labor rights group said in a report last week that it found students being made to work on Apple Watch production lines at a plant run by Quanta Computer in the city of Chongqing.
The group alleges that students aged 16 to 19 were forced by their schools to work at the factory through compulsory internships, placed in jobs unrelated to their field of study, often made to work excessive overtime, and in some cases, put on overnight shifts.
All four of those practices violate Chinese regulations and Apple’s own standards.
Apple responded to the report in a statement that reads in part, “We have zero tolerance for failure to comply with our standards and we ensure swift action and appropriate remediation if we discover code violations.”