Apple, Microsoft Slave Labour Claims

The world's biggest technology companies are failing to stamp out child labour and abusive working conditions in their Chinese factories despite repeated accounts of human rights violations.

Recent reports reveal our insatiable lust for the latest gadgets is having a shocking impact on workers in countries such as China, who are being made to work more than 80 hours a week in sweatshop conditions for as little as 52 cents an hour.

Human rights group the National Labor Committee (NLC) released a report this week saying KYE, a factory in Guangdong province that supplies Microsoft, recruits hundreds of "work study students" aged 16 and 17, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week.

The report, produced after a three-year investigation, found workers were treated like prisoners and share primitive dorm rooms, sleeping on small plywood planks and having to buy their own food and mattresses.

It even alleged sexual harassment of female workers by security guards.