The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom) have published a research report documenting the terrible working conditions at the giant Chinese manufacturing company Foxconn, best known for making the iPad and iPhone:

â– Excessive overtime is routine, despite a legal limit of 36 hours a month. One payslip, seen by the Observer, indicated that the worker had performed 98 hours of overtime in a month.

â– Workers attempting to meet the huge demand for the first iPad were sometimes pressured to take only one day off in 13.

â– In some factories badly performing workers are required to be publicly humiliated in front of colleagues.

â– Crowded workers' dormitories can sleep up to 24 and are subject to strict rules. One worker told the NGO investigators that he was forced to sign a "confession letter" after illicitly using a hairdryer. In the letter he wrote: "It is my fault. I will never blow my hair inside my room. I have done something wrong. I will never do it again."

â– In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer, workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to "treasure their lives".