After all the parts are manufactured, they are sent to China and Brazil where they take the finished parts and put them into a finished, working iPhone. Foxconn and Pegatron are the companies that put the iPhone together [5]. Pegatron produced 30% of all iPhone 6 orders [9].
I critically investigated Foxconn and the suicides of their employees. Foxconn headquarters is located in Shenzhen, China. Foxconn puts all of the iPhones together by hand. To put it into prospective, Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the last four months of 2011. The company couldn’t keep up with Apple demand. Many of the workers are very young, as young as 12 years old. Suicide rates are very high at Foxconn. Employees were jumping off the roof. In order to prevent deaths, the company put nets all around the building. Eighteen committed suicide in 2010 and many others tried. They were committing suicide because of the high stress of the job and the pressure to produce to keep up with high demand. They were working long shifts, 12-15 hours.
In response, Apple places a 60 hour, 6 day work week. In investigation, they found out that only 38% of their suppliers followed this policy [2].