Last Friday, only 12 days
after the riot at Foxconn’s
Taiyuan factory which involved thousands of workers, 3,000 to 4,000 workers at
Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant walked off the job when fights broke out between
quality control inspectors and line workers (1,2).
Workers at the plant were reportedly
being subjected to work intensification as the plant struggled to meet demand
for the recently released iPhone 5. Already operating under tight deadlines and
high quotas, Apple responded to iPhone consumer complaints about cosmetic
defects to the phones’ outer cover by pressuring Foxconn to increase quality
regulations at the plant
(2,3).
This created tensions
between line workers and quality control inspectors as heightened quality
standards mean fewer
products leave the production line and volume targets are harder to meet. Li
Qiang, of China Labor Watch, points out that "they have such high
expectations for these products, even if you raise the demands a little bit it
makes a huge difference to the pressure on the workers”(3,4). China Labor Watch also
found that lack of additional training, paired with already inadequate training,
exacerbated the issue. Some workers were also reportedly upset by having to
work though China’s weeklong national holiday (which began on September 30th and ended on the 7th of October) in order to
meet production demands for the new iPhone (3).
Foxconn denies forcing
people to work and points out that workers who “volunteered” to work on the
holiday received additional compensation as required by the government.
This strike comes at a difficult time
for Apple - having just released the iPhone 5 this September. Though Foxconn
maintains that the strike did not halt production on the phone, China Labor
Watch reports that several lines manufacturing the phone stopped production
while workers protested (1,4).
So, here is a very
straightforward example of how the needs of American consumers directly affect
the quality of life of the Chinese workers assembling our products. Apple Corporation and Foxconn - as well as the American consumer - may each
want to assign responsibility elsewhere, but they are all in some way profiting
off of this process.
