EXCLUSIVE: Inside the eerie deserted dorms where Apple iPhone workers lived eight to a room, showered in groups of 20 and even PAID for the privilege
Sprawling dormitory complex outside Shanghai housed workers who spend 12 hours a day making Apple products
Eerie images show austere eight and 12-bed rooms and filthy 'bathrooms' where workers used communal showers
Workers operated water taps by pedalling and squatting toilet cubicles positioned over open sewerage drains
Dorms can house 6,000 workers at a time but were abandoned hurriedly, with mementos left behind
Impoverished men and women from countryside work 12-hour shifts for £250 a month and pay £16 to live in dorms
By George Knowles In Shanghai, China, For Mailonline And Tracy You In London
Published: 10:12 EST, 11 May 2016 | Updated: 14:18 EST, 11 May 2016
Mould and mildew crawl up the walls of the communal bathrooms and the tiny, austere rooms are crammed full of bare bunkbeds.
Welcome to the grim dormitory complex where factory workers who made expensive Apple products lived in shockingly bleak conditions.
MailOnline gained exclusive access to the four blocks, which housed migrant workers employed by Apple contractor Pegatron until they were hurriedly abandoned just over eight weeks ago.
Six thousand employees lived in the dormitories at the peak of iPhone 6 production but many of the roughly 1,000 left were told not to come back after the Lunar New Year holiday in February, while others were transferred to dorms in the main factory complex.
The exodus from the buildings on Shanghai's Kangqiao Road East provides a rare and fascinating insight into the austere living conditions for staff at Taiwanese electronics giant Pegatron who work exhausting 12-hour shifts and are reckoned to make up to one half of the world's iPhone 6s.
Cramped: Inside one of the eerily deserted dormitory blocks, Mail Online found rooms with up to 12 bunk beds for which each worker would be charged the equivalent of £16 a month, deducted from their pay packets.
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Filthy: These exclusive images show the sanitary facilities at a dormitory where workers who create Apple iPhones live, washing in mildewed sinks and squatting over open sewers to go to the toilet
Cattle-class: The dormitories on the outskirts of Shanghai can house 6,000 but do not have private bathrooms, so up to 20 workers showered at a time
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Basic: Nearly all workers are migrants from China's poorest provinces who live year-round in grim factory dorms such as the one above
Apple and Pegatron recently allowed cameras into the iPhone factory in Shanghai in response to years of accusations that their staff were having to work gruelling hours on low pay.
But it did not include access to the domitories where thousands of the factory employees live. Paid basic salaries of just under £250 a month for gruelling six-day weeks which they can increase by about £200 by working daily overtime, nearly all workers are migrants from China's poorest provinces who live year-round in grim factory dorms.
MailOnline visited the huge Kangqiao Road East dormitories on the outskirts of Shanghai where Pegatron workers lived, and which were in use until February. Four blocks, named Huei Yang, have been mothballed while a separate dormitory is still in use.
Inside one of the eerily deserted dormitory blocks, MailOnline found rooms with up to 12 bunk beds for which each worker would be charged the equivalent of £16 a month, deducted from their pay packets. Pegatron insisted only eight workers lived in each room.
Even when empty, there is barely space in the rooms for anything other than the bunk beds and workers' metal lockers and there are no washing or toilet facilities in any of the dorms.
Instead, each floor in the four-storey block has around 50 dormitory rooms and one communal shower where workers would wash alongside up to 20 other people, using foot pedals to operate the water.
There is a similar, stark lack of privacy in shared toilet blocks on each floor where squatting cubicles are positioned above open sewerage drains running the length of the toilet block, and in washrooms with long rows of wash basins.
In the corner of some toilet blocks and corridors were pools of filthy green water. Throughout the building we entered, walls were moulding and peeling heavily in places with hand-written signs posted at regular intervals spelling out rules for workers.
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