Nation & World

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday last May.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and more than a dozen others were hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast and scrubbed by heat until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

"Are you Lai Xiaodong's father?" a caller asked when the phone rang at Lai's childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the world's largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system.

"He's in trouble," the caller told Lai's father. "Get to the hospital as soon as possible."

In the past decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — and dozens of other U.S. industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by the companies. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work long hours, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they have trouble walking. Underage workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

Health questions

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens.

Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

"If Apple was warned, and didn't act, that's reprehensible," said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the U.S. Labor Department. "But what's morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that."

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and numerous other topics. The company has mounted an auditing campaign, and whenever abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

What's more, Apple's annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.

But significant problems remain. More than half the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple's reports, and in some instances they have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.

"Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost," said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple's most important manufacturing partners. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.

Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: Executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products.

Apple on Tuesday reported one of the most profitable quarters of any corporation in history, with $46.3 billion in sales. Those sales would have been higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.

Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures.

"We've known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they're still going on," said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity. "Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn't have another choice."

Apple, in its published reports, has said it requires that every discovered labor violation be remedied, and that suppliers that refuse are terminated. Privately, however, some former executives concede that finding new suppliers is time-consuming and costly. Foxconn is one of the few manufacturers large enough to build sufficient numbers of iPhones and iPads.

So Apple is "not going to leave Foxconn and they're not going to leave China," said Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard University and a former member of the Monitoring International Labor Standards committee at the National Academy of Sciences.

Apple was provided with extensive summaries of this article, but the company declined to comment. The reporting is based on interviews with more than 36 current or former employees and contractors, including six current or former executives with firsthand knowledge of Apple's supplier-responsibility group, and others within the technology industry.

The road to Chengdu

Foxconn's factory in Chengdu, Lai Xiaodong knew, was special. Inside, workers were building Apple's latest, potentially greatest product: the iPad.

In fall 2010, when Lai landed a job repairing machines at the plant, one of the first things he noticed were the almost blinding lights. Shifts ran 24 hours a day, and the factory was always bright.

At any moment, there were thousands of workers standing on assembly lines or sitting in backless chairs, crouching next to large machinery, or jogging between loading bays. Some workers' legs swelled so much they waddled. "It's hard to stand all day," said Zhao Sheng, a plant worker. Banners on the walls warned the 120,000 employees: "Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow."

Apple's supplier code of conduct dictates that, except in unusual circumstances, employees are not supposed to work more than 60 hours a week. At Foxconn, some worked more, according to interviews, workers' pay stubs and surveys by outside groups.

Soon, Lai was spending 12 hours a day, six days a week inside the factory, according to his paychecks.

Lai's college degree enabled him to earn a salary of about $22 a day, including overtime. When his days ended, he would retreat to a small bedroom just big enough for a mattress, wardrobe and a desk where he obsessively played an online game called Fight the Landlord, said his girlfriend, Luo Xiaohong.

Those accommodations were better than many of the company's dorms, where 70,000 Foxconn workers lived, at times stuffed 20 people to a three-room apartment, employees said. Last year, a dispute over paychecks set off a riot in one dormitory.

Foxconn disputed workers' accounts of continuous shifts, extended overtime, crowded living accommodations and the causes of the riot. The company said its operations adhered to customers' codes of conduct, industry standards and national laws.

Breaking the code

In 2005, some top Apple executives gathered at Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Other companies had created codes of conduct to police their suppliers. It was time, Apple decided, for a code of conduct to police their suppliers. The code Apple published that year demands "that working conditions in Apple's supply chain are safe, that workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible."

In 2006, a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, secretly visited a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where iPods were manufactured, and reported on workers' long hours, push-ups meted out as punishment and crowded dorms. Executives in Cupertino were shocked.

Apple audited that factory and ordered improvements. Executives also undertook a series of initiatives that included an annual audit report, first published in 2007. By last year, Apple had inspected 396 facilities — including direct suppliers, and many of those suppliers' suppliers — one of the largest such programs within the electronics industry.

Those audits have found consistent violations of Apple's code of conduct, according to summaries published by the company. In 2007, for instance, Apple conducted more than 36 audits, two-thirds of which indicated employees regularly worked more than 60 hours a week. In addition, there were six "core violations," the most serious kind, including hiring 15-year-olds and falsifying records.

In the next three years, Apple conducted 312 audits, and every year, about half showed evidence of large numbers of employees laboring more than six days a week and working extended overtime. Last year, the company conducted 229 audits. There were slight improvements; however, 93 audits revealed at least half of workers exceeded the 60-hours-a-week limit. "If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company's ignoring the issue rather than solving it," said one former Apple executive.

Apple says that when an audit reveals a violation, the company requires suppliers to address the problem within 90 days and make changes to prevent a recurrence. "If a supplier is unwilling to change, we terminate our relationship," the company says on its website.

The seriousness of that threat is unclear. Apple has found violations in hundreds of audits, but fewer than 15 suppliers have been terminated for transgressions since 2007, according to former Apple executives.

The explosion

The morning of the explosion, Lai — who was in charge of a team that maintained the machines that polished iPad cases — rode his bicycle to work. The factory was frantic, employees said. Rows of machines buffed cases as masked employees pushed buttons. A large air duct hovered over each station, but the fans could not keep up with the three lines of machines polishing nonstop. Aluminum dust was everywhere.

Dust is a known safety hazard. In 2003, an aluminum-dust explosion in Indiana destroyed a wheel factory and killed a worker. In 2008, agricultural dust in a sugar factory in Georgia caused an explosion that killed 14.

Two hours into Lai's second shift, a series of blasts caused the building to shake.

The screams began.

The toll would eventually total four dead, 18 injured.

At the hospital, Lai's girlfriend saw his skin was almost completely burned away. "I recognized him from his legs, otherwise I wouldn't know who that person was," she said.

Eventually, his family arrived. More than 90 percent of his body had been seared.

"My mom ran away from the room at the first sight of him. I cried. Nobody could stand it," his brother said. When his mother returned, she tried to avoid touching her son, for fear it would cause pain.

"If I had known," she said, "I would have grabbed his arm, I would have touched him."

"He was very tough," she added. "He held on for two days."

After Lai died, a team of Foxconn workers drove to Lai's hometown and delivered a box of ashes. The company later wired a check for about $150,000.

Foxconn said that at the time of the explosion, the Chengdu plant was in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.

After the explosion, the company added, Foxconn halted work in all polishing workshops, and improved ventilation and dust disposal, and adopted technologies to enhance worker safety.

In December, however, seven months after the blast that killed Lai, another iPad factory exploded, this one in Shanghai. Once again, aluminum dust was the cause, according to interviews and Apple's most recent supplier responsibility report. That blast injured 59 workers, with 23 hospitalized.

Given Apple's prominence and leadership in global manufacturing, if the company were to radically change its ways, it could overhaul how business is done.

"Every company wants to be Apple," said Sasha Lezhnev at the Enough Project, a group focused on corporate accountability. "If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology."

Ultimately, say former Apple executives, there are few real outside pressures for change. Apple is one of the most admired brands. In a national survey conducted by The New York Times in November, 56 percent of respondents said they couldn't think of anything negative about Apple. Fourteen percent said the worst thing about the company was that its products were too expensive. Just 2 percent mentioned overseas labor practices.

Gu Huini contributed research.