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Riots, suicides, and other issues in Foxconn's i. Phone factories. Li Yue, a 2. Foxconn in Zhengzhou, China. She eventually would get a job with the company, but in its Taiyuan plant, a 1. Li, wearing a white T- shirt and blue jean shorts and carrying a pink parasol to beat the heat on a scorcher of a June day, was among a group of a dozen or so candidates applying for a job with the Taiwanese firm. Not a specific job, mind you.
She was bright and engaging. She spoke more than passing English. And she conveyed an eagerness to get started. But instead of landing a job at the plant here, which employs more than 1. Li boarded a bus that afternoon for Taiyuan, in the Shanxi Province, a 1. It may have been more than she bargained for. Foxconn said . While Chinese authorities are investigating the cause of the riot, Foxconn said that it .
There have been employee suicides, explosions at two plants that make Apple gadgets, and reports of harsh working conditions. A New York Times investigation of the manufacturing of Apple products in China in January painted a picture of a company that wants to improve the workplace at its partners such as Foxconn but .
Wages may be high compared with other jobs in China, but they are sometimes barely enough to cover rent in the huge dormitories in which employees typically live, and still leave workers with money to send to family members in villages who live on even less. Managers can subject employees to harsh public ridicule that would be unthinkable in Western workplaces.
And employees are often reluctant to make waves simply because there are so many other people who would happily trade places with them. Apple sold 5 million i. Phones over the weekend (up from 4 million for the first weekend of sales for the i. Phone 4. S), and could sell 1.
December 3. 1. Meeting that demand has required an epic buildup of materials, infrastructure, and labor, all while satisfying Wall Street's need for bigger, more historic profits. And she had read articles online about the working conditions at the company's plants. But she still lined up for the interview, during which recruiters asked the most basic questions and look for scars and tattoos, according to Li. And she had no qualms about paying the 1.
Taiyuan, even for a job that pays 1,5. They move among cities such as Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, Shenzhen, and others where i. Phones are made as needs arise. And as soon as they leave their jobs, they're replaced by other workers, just as eager as Li to get started. That's particularly true as Foxconn opens new factories in inland cities, where opportunities are scarce. Putting size in perspective.
Scale matters when you're trying to satisfy global consumer demand. Foxconn, which makes products for Apple and plenty of other tech giants, including Dell and Hewlett- Packard, is huge, employing 1. China. But then, China is massive, with more than 1. Everywhere you look in the part of the city where Foxconn has set up shop, construction cranes loom. Excavators move dusty, dry earth, while skeletons of long factory buildings and 1. Chinese media report Foxconn plans to employ 3.
Foxconn and Apple can do to keep up with demand. Construction near Foxconn's factory in Zhengzhou, China. The city has 8. 6 million residents. Henan province, of which Zhengzhou is the capital, has a population of 9. That's the same number of residents as California.
And New York. And Pennsylvania. If it were a country, Henan would have the 1. Wisconsin. Beyond the exposes about conditions in the factories that make i.
Phones, we've also seen troubling reports of pollution caused by the mining for its raw materials and its ultimate disposal. The company provided a statement last night. The life cycle of an i. Phone isn't all that different than that of a Samsung or an HTC phone, and nearly every modern mobile phone is made by Asian contract firms, where worker rights aren't protected by federal and state laws as they are in the United States. Still, the i. Phone is iconic. Its introduction in 2. But there's a downside, as the riot in Taiyuan reminds us.
The company has hired a group to audit workplace conditions, the Fair Labor Association or FLA, as a result of the issues raised in recent months. Last month, the group reported that Foxconn addressed several workplace concerns, such as enforcing ergonomic breaks, changing the design of workers' equipment to guard against repetitive stress injuries, and updating maintenance policies to ensure equipment is working properly. But Foxconn, in a statement to CNET made prior to the riot that occurred over the weekend, acknowledged problems and said it is working to improve conditions. A report released the day before the i. Phone 5 debuted, from Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior or SACOM, a Hong Kong watchdog group, painted an entirely different picture. SACOM interviewed 6. Zhengzhou, detailing continuing problems at the Foxconn plant.
Meet the Chinese activist trying to improve conditions for Foxconn employees. The report said that some workers weren't compensated for their overtime. And the group even found that some workers need to acquire an . There, I hired a three- wheeled, engine- powered cart, something that might be called a . The driver suggested we simply walk through the Foxconn gates, past the security guards. No one stopped us.
But the grounds themselves are clean, if a bit dusty. Orange trash bins with Foxconn's logo dot the campus. From the outside, the buildings are modern, if a bit ordinary. Rows of motorcycles are lined up outside in what must be employee parking, and the sidewalks on this side of the gates are almost entirely empty as workers assemble gadgets inside. That's where most of the dormitories are. From the outside, the dorms look like apartment buildings you'd find in an American city.
They are nondescript brick structures, often 1. Laundry occasionally hangs from balconies. Guards prevent visitors from entering. It's a bit dingy.
Litter is strewn on the streets and plastic bags tumble with the breeze. The streets near Foxconn's Zhengzhou dormitories are lined with vendors, selling food and clothes. Other than the vendors, most of the people walking these streets work at the Foxconn factory.
It's a concern of nearly every Foxconn employee with whom I chat. Her glasses frame a round, cherubic face. She's wearing a light shirt with a floral pattern, having changed from the Foxconn polo shirt workers wear on the job. Buy My Scientology Movie (2017) The Movie On Dvd on this page. She's been on the job three months, moving from Shangqiu, a city of 7. Like plenty of Foxconn employees, she took the job because the money was better than any work she could find at home. She left her 1- year- old daughter back in Shangqiu with her mother and hasn't seen her since she left home. The two of them haven't talked since she left home.
Mundane, yes. But not overwhelming. She puts in eight- hour days, five days a week, and tries to get as much overtime as possible. That's because the pay barely covers her needs. But after she pays rent for a bunk bed in a dormitory room that she shares with seven other Foxconn workers and purchasing food that she often buys at Foxconn's canteen, there's generally no money left to send back to her home. And she's terribly worried about rumors that property management company that runs the dorms in which she and 8. Zhengzhou workforce live is going to increase its rent.
Ma tries to add as much overtime as she can to supplement her salary. After media reports surfaced about Foxconn allowing overtime in excess of Chinese law, which limits overtime to 3. When I point out that Apple, which had $1. June 3. 0, more than the gross domestic product of Bangladesh, might be able to afford paying Foxconn more so its workers could earn a larger paycheck, Ma just shrugged. That's not all that surprising given the hundreds of thousands of people who assemble i. Phones. Nearly every worker with whom I chatted had a complaint.