\"MICROSOFT\'s Chinese workforce, too tired to stay awake\" . Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won\'t want the world to see. Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions andd 86f (28C) heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks. For as little as 34penny an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company. Photos of this and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe. The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room. They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC. The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They \'shower\' with a sponge and a bucket. ...................