Your iPhone Exploits Chinese Workers
5 Min Read
A study by Ngai and colleagues expose the inhumane working environment and conditions at Foxconn, where Apple products are made.
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Foxconn is Apple's main man - and a slavemaster.
In what looks like a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the image of the long queues for iPhones’ new releases every now and then takes a toll on departing from our memory.
Hideously expensive and well-marketed (although Apple is highly dependent on word-of-mouth to sell its products), Apple has mastered, over the years, an international obsessional frenzy by building its prestige, its unique operating system and slimmer physique.
Other than acquiring a profit margin which amounts to almost 60% - which makes the iPhone crazy expensive – the company has also been known to force children into cobalt mines in the Congo and hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers into sweatshops. Although colossal corporates don’t have the most ethical records when it comes to labor rights and environmental matters, Apple takes the cake in complicity in human rights violations.
Foxconn – a tell-tale of suicide
“It wouldn’t be Foxconn without people dying,” an ex-employee said, who goes by the name Xu.
A study by Ngai et al. writes extensively about the working conditions at Foxconn: Foxconn is one of the world’s most famous factories; notorious today for its forced, cheap labor and sweatshop-like working conditions. Based in China, the factory is Apple’s right hand in assembling the parts together, and the reason for why the US corporate would outsource the ‘pride’ of its produce all the way to China is none other than one reason: long hours on cheap labor.
Much research has lamented the emergence of a new working class that has come as a result of the 11-hour shifts, abuse, and low pay that the workers are enduring. With the extreme centralization of profit – which comes to billions of dollars – and the minimal to no pay for the thousands of workers, Foxconn takes neoliberal capitalism to another level as it creates an increasingly consumerist global class and its ‘slaves’ that work up to 70 hours a week to assemble devices. Essentially, Chinese workers are abused to run the US economy. Apple constitutes 10% of America’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In just 3 days from the launch of the iPhone 6s, Apple announced the sales of 13 million 6s and 6s Plus devices.
This factory breaks every rule in the book, including Chinese labor laws. While labor laws in the world’s second largest economy bound people to no more than 40 hours of work a week, reports have exposed Foxconn to run their employees – 23 years of age on average – on 70-hour labor time a week. Guarded with high security apparatus, fingerprint scans and other ‘tracking’ devices, not many journalists are given the freedom to roam. As reported by the Guardian, a Reuters journalist was dragged and beaten for taking images of the premises – outside the factory. Factory buildings and dorms are have security checkpoints, and some walls are barbed with wire.
After being inspected at a security checkpoint, employees make their way into the factory where they are met with strict labor division: employees within the same building in different sections, reportedly, are not allowed to communicate with one another. One employee reported that they weren’t allowed to bring cell phones or any metal objects on the job, or else they would be beaten.
16.4% of workers reported being beaten, either by security or a manager. “If security decides that you have stolen a product, they won’t ask about it. They’ll beat you first, and after interrogating you, they will finally take you to the security station. Whatever happens, being taken to the security department means you will be beaten,” one Foxconn worker reported.
Frontline workers are put under constant pressure: they must meet a daily demand of 6,400 pieces to meet strict shipping deadlines. A machine operator in a Foxconn branch in Zhengzhou – a branch that only manufactures iPhones – weighs on his own experience: “The daily production target is 6400 pieces. I am worn out every day. I fall asleep immediately after returning to the dormitory. The demand from Apple determines our lives. On the one hand, I hope I can earn higher wages. On the other hand, I can’t keep working every day without a day off.”
With unpaid overtime hours and little protective equipment or safety measures (there are reports of blocked exits), suicide rates have soared. In 2010 alone, it was reported that 18 workers aged between 17 and 25 attempted suicide, which resulted in 14 deaths – the 4 that survived were severely injured.
To deal with the increasing suicide rates in the factory, Terry Gou, Foxconn’s CEO, installed safety nets on the buildings to catch falling bodies – a clandestine solution to broken spirits in a factory. Since 2010, Gou required workers to sign pledges that they would not commit suicide rather than solving the core of the problem relating to the working conditions which lead to suicide.
One less iPhone might be one more life
Numbers matter to Foxconn to the extent that workers are scolded for not meeting demands. Many workers have reported verbal abuse as they'd get scolded in front of their colleagues upon any hick-up or mistake. Foxconn manufactures more than 50% of the world’s electronic products -
