An NYU student managed to get into an iPhone assembly factory of Pegatron, operated by Apple in China. Here's his report on the working conditions of the employee's, working hours and wages that provide an insight as to why iPhone manufacturing might not return to the United States.
Dejian Zeng, an undergraduate the New York University worked at a factory in China that assembles Apple's iPhone devices. The place is owned by and operated by Apple with a continuous presence and supervision of Apple employees throughout the process.
The report from Fortune briefs about the cover story of the student who worked at the facility. His only job at the Apple-owned facility in China was to just insert a single screw to the hardware throughout the entire duration of his daily work.
He apparently had to rise up at 18:00 every day and head into the facility at 19:30 who then worked for the next twelve hours including meals and breaks which repeated for months. In an interview with the Business Insider, Zeng mentions that he shared a dormitory with eight other colleagues and was just paid a meager sum of an equivalent of US $450.
Zeng worked at the facility for six months and also mentioned that he had to work overtime if needed. With that said, he also mentioned that the actual workers behind the assembly of Apple iPhones, in reality, couldn't afford to get hold of a product they assembled themselves, due to the low salary they were paid.
Apple is one of the many companies that outsource manufacturing of hardware to China which is fairly obvious due to low manufacturing costs and labor availability among other things. However, Apple has been hugely criticized in the past and recently, current US President Donald J Trump was furious about it and vowed to bring back manufacturing of iPhones back to the United States.