Manufacturing
Foxconn, China
Once the raw materials have been mined from places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, and other countries, they are shipped to China where the minerals are refined and manufactured on assembly lines into fully functioning iPhones. Companies such as Apple outsource to China because China promises low labor costs and a massive workforce. In fact, it is China's estimated 99 million (as of 2009) factory workers that have catapulted China to have one of the largest economies in the world.
The most infamous of one such manufacturing plant used by Apple is Foxconn. Foxconn is the largest employer in mainland China, with about 1.3 million workers on its payroll. The iPhone is made in several different plants around China, but it used to be that that majority, and still some today, were made at Foxconn's 1.4-mile flagship plant in Shenzen. It is here that suicides are so common, nets have been installed outside the towers, and workers are forced to sign an agreement when they start work that they will not attempt suicide.
Worker's Conditions
Foxconn is very heavily guarded and secretive. It is difficult to gain an understanding of what exactly conditions look like within the factory, beyond the still photos. Journalists have even been beaten up by guards before for attempting to uncover that very question. Despite this, we do about conditions within Foxconn due to employee testament. Worker's themselves have reported terrible working conditions, which include overwork, harsh and humiliating managers, unfair fines, and broken promises of benefits. The conditions got to be so bad that in one year alone, Foxconn saw 18 attempted suicides, and 20 more were talked down by officials.
"It is not a good place for human beings"
-Foxconn worker
“It wouldn’t be Foxconn without people dying. Every year people kill themselves. They take it as a normal thing.”
-Foxconn worker
Class Connections
This stage of the production process most closely reflects the reading Factory Girls. Factory Girls is similar to the information shared on this page in that factory workers make up a large part of the Chinese workforce and work in unsavory, often unethical, conditions for low wages. Like the women in the novel, the workers at Foxconn sleep 8 to room, are often cheated out of their fair pay, and work far too many hours. Furthermore, the worker turnaround at Foxconn is typically less than a year, a pattern the women in the book clearly demonstrated as they hopped from one factory to another every few months.
Perhaps it simply wasn't mentioned in the book, but the reason Foxconn is so infamous is because of its numerous suicides, which is never touched on in the book. Therefore, it is difficult to glean a clear picture as to whether Foxconn is more uniquely abusive to its workers, or factories in China in general. We may not know the answer to that question, however, one thing is clear: Apple relies on this system of exploitative labor to produce its products for cheap.
Solutions to these problems are necessary, albeit they don't come easily. A major problem to dealing with these conditions is the overarching corruption that plagues the local governments, the factory owners, and the managers. It is difficult to implement policy in a society where it could so easily be corrupted. Corruption is an incredibly difficult issue to tackle, however, it develops a more equitable manufacturing system, it is certainly necessary. Though none of these propositions are without their own set of issues, perhaps the framework of one of them could be implemented to alleviate the problem.
1. Develop a National Department of Human Rights or a similar department to oversee local municipalities and create some sort of checks and balances system that would hold officials accountable for doing their work properly and ethically.
2. Allow for the formation of unions to fight not only against corrupt practices by higher-ups but also to advocate for more worker's rights, such as overtime pay, injury insurance, a living wage, etc.
3. Have state-affiliated NGOs develop a set of standards that they verify are being upheld using a third-party auditor.
4. Hold Apple responsible for conducting a full investigation into their factories, and create a report using a third party, that details conditions and what can be improved. This report must be fully transparent to the public, and Apple will be held responsible for ensuring all changes are completed and truly working to foster a less harmful working environment.
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All in all, the problems presented here and in Factory Girls are similar in that they both require large structural change in order for working conditions to improve and corruption to decrease.
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