Apple supplier Pegatron is using face recognition to combat the problem of underage workers in its factories in China, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Pegatron and Apple recently came under fire over the death of 15-year old worker Shi Zhaokun due to pneumonia. The two companies say their investigations showed that the boy’s death had no connection to the working conditions in Pegatron’s factory, but the incident did raise concerns over underage employment.
Pegatron says that although it has thorough checks in place to ensure that employees are above the legal working age of 16, some manage to obtain fake IDs, and cheat the system:
Pegatron said applicants for its assembly line have their government-issued IDs checked for authenticity. Their faces are then matched to their ID photos through facial recognition technology, to weed out those using borrowed ID cards. Their names are also checked against police records.
In theory, these measures should keep out underage workers, as they should catch people using fake or borrowed IDs. In Mr. Shi’s case, he was able to obtain a government-issued ID card that included his photo but another person’s identifying information, the company said.
Pegatron is a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company that operates the bulk of its factories in China and Taiwan. The company made headlines earlier this year when it was reported that Apple was moving away from Foxconn and choosing this smaller firm to assemble its lower-cost iPhone model. Besides the iPhone 5c, Pegatron also was a minor producer of the iPhone in 2011 and the iPad mini in 2012.
WSJ’s report says that Foxconn and Pegatron are making efforts to make their factories more automated, but costs and technology are proving to be a problem.
[via WSJ]
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