10-12 year old kids have small hands.. helps in assembling parts
nothing like some good child slave labor from china
That's pure myth, ground_fog.
The worker's at Apple's assembly contract companies are under constant monitoring by employees of Apple to assure that no workers are underage. Any companies doing work for Apple face draconian penalties for hiring underage workers up to losing their entire multi-billion dollar contract. . . which Apple has done, pulling a $2 Billion contract from a company that ignored guidelines and took the work to another company which cost Apple more and actually delayed a product release because Apple had to move their tooling, but the new company did screen its employees better.
No matter how good the screening a company may do, some underage workers will get in by using stolen or borrowed ID cards. When discovered, the company that allowed it to occur, is obligated under the terms of Apple's contracts, to pay for that underage worker's education all the way through graduation from a university, or age 25. That's a very dire penalty.
In 2013, An audit of the 1.5 million workers in Apple's supply chain over seven years, found a total of 79 underage hirees in 13 companies had slipped through the screening. . . Not counting the organized hiring done at the company Apple cancelled the contract for egregious misconduct. Of these, all were offered the full ride scholarships funded by their employers as Apple's contracts specified. However, surprisingly only about 25% accepted, with the rest opting to leave to find other work because of family pressure to keep sending their wages home!
The workers on Apple's assembly lines run from 18 to 32 years old, and they are paid two to three times more than the average factory wages paid to other assembly line workers making other consumer electronics such as Microsoft Xboxes, HP computers, Sony Playstations, and all the other cellular phones. Their pay averages five to seven times the Chinese minimum wage. About 60% of them live in apartments in town. . . not in the company provided dormitories, although they could if they chose. The higher pay on the Apple assembly lines is the reason why there are queues of thousand of job applicants when openings come available to work on Apple lines. They are premium jobs.
Sorry to burst your "slave labor" bubble with the light of facts, but there it is, popped, ground_fog