9 ms·

Crowded dorms,no flush toilets and food crawling with worms at iPhone plant

163 points by DocFeind 5y ago

lnsru 5y ago
Basically it’s outsourced slavery. But who cares in the West? It’s like the deepest levels of cruise ships filled with Asian workers that nobody sees. One sees shiny stores and shiny ships and it’s ok. On the other hand Apple does audit the suppliers and I believe, that internally they know very well what’s happening in the factories.
- quesera 5y ago
  By this logic, just about every job in early-development countries (e.g. and relevantly: large parts of China and India), is slavery. If we accept the colloquial gross misuse of "slavery" to mean "crappy jobs that the workers depend on for survival", then I'm inclined to agree on principle, but I feel similarly about food service workers in the US and subsistence farmers everywhere.
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    in many countries, people count themselves lucky if they have a job making $10/day. It very much is slavery, just with extra steps.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    There's a difference between making federal minimum wage and the indentured servitude these workers find themselves in. McDonalds workers are free to go home at the end of their shift and eat whatever they want. These workers sleep 8 to a room with no temperature control, no privacy, shared bathrooms and rations that we literally would not feed to prisoners. We aren't talking about 100 or 200 people. We are talking about 1 million as of 2011. Foxconn's solution to suicide jumpers was.. netting. There's shitty working conditions and then there's.. this. https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/ https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/
    - quesera 5y ago
      Foxconn workers are free to go home also. Those living conditions are pretty awful, but not unique. Regionally, it's just on the bad side of ordinary. Obviously tainted food is always serious, and it sounds like the oversight there was abysmal. Remember that Apple shut the plant down until it's fixed. 1 million employees, not 1 million exploited suicidal wastrels. San Francisco's solution to jumpers from the Golden Gate bridge was ... counseling services, cameras, and nets. Just like Foxconn! What would you suggest instead?
    - martin8412 5y ago
      The US has forced labor where they are literally not allowed to leave? See some weeks back where workers were killed due to bad weather.
      - xboxnolifes 5y ago
        They weren't physically unable to leave. They were not given permission to leave the work day early. Nothing stopped them from terminating employment to leave.
  - lnsru 5y ago
    Why can’t be these extreme expensive devices be a positive example? Adding 2$ for manufacturing cost would be less than 0,2% of retail price, but give somebody meal without worms. Ok, poor shareholders earning less is an argument. My friend is Burger King worker in Germany. He has some vacation days, low but stable wage and can go home after his shift and cook his special body building meals. Not much slavery.
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
  Most of these jobs you consider outsourced slavery pay better than anything local. If you were getting paid 25% more than any other job back home you would consider it good pay.
- Nbox9 5y ago
  Can we stop comparing low wage workers with slavery? Slavery is much worse, at least how it was practiced in North America. It was more than low wages and and economically exploitative relationship, it was a different set of laws & rights for an ethnic group. Slaves had severe legal restrictions on movement, education, religion, marriage, and participating in commerce. Slaves also had very limited legal protections against bodily harm caused by their masters. This is an inherently different type of relationship than someone working in a Foxconn factory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes
_xnmw 5y ago
In other words, it is like every other factory in India. Why should anyone expect anything different?
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  People believe money is the solution to this problem. Apple has a lot of money. Therefore, Apple should be able to fix this. Since they don't fix it, they aren't spending enough money to fix it. More money makes solving a lot of problems easier. Can Apple actually put in enough money to fix it? If they can, they aren't. If they can't... this isn't a problem solvable by money. Which is it? I don't know. The question comes down to, what does trying hard enough look like? shrug
  - mhoad 5y ago
    Apple promised everyone they can fix it during earlier scandals. That was their claim to make. I think we are free to hold them accountable to that.
black_13 5y ago
hughrr 5y ago
Sounds like my student accommodation 25 years ago. We had human shit flowing down the hall on numerous occasions, the rooms were so small you could only lie down in one axis and the refectory food put people in hospital and wasn't even recognisable as described. It actually turned me vegetarian. All for £120 a week. This is always what happens when you subcontract responsibility out. The middle-man works out how to keep the margin as large as possible and that means the bottom rung gets squashed and everyone up the chain is getting lied to. This has been universally true through my entire life from (real) estate agents, IT contracting agencies, education and service contracts.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  The food for the workers was also seemingly college canteen food because the whole accomodation setup was a converted college + student dorm (which had been closed since COVID) Edit: Found a video of someone complaining about the food when it was still a college hostel. Now imagine what students, who do not have the same organizing abilities as workers, had to go through. https://youtu.be/RH336--NQVg https://youtu.be/RH336--NQVg
- dkarl 5y ago
  > This is always what happens when you subcontract responsibility out. The middle-man works out how to keep the margin as large as possible and that means the bottom rung gets squashed and everyone up the chain is getting lied to. Not always. You can have reliable middlemen who verify claims and investigate and blacklist fishy suppliers, but the buyers have to want it. Consider how we as purchasers of expensive electronics tend to buy from established retailers (middlemen) who invest in processes to ensure the legitimacy of the name-brand products they stock, instead of buying from an unknown company that was created last week and is selling the same products at a much cheaper price. We consider the risk that the unknown company with no history may have sourced counterfeits, intentionally or unintentionally, and we buy from a retailer we trust instead. It sounds like Foxconn's approach to acquiring accommodations for their workers is like buying an Hermes handbag under a bridge for $20.
bongoman37 5y ago
narrator 5y ago
Edit: Touché.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Sorry to distract from your anti-China rant but TFA is about a factory in India.
iqanq 5y ago
The Indian government wanted iPhones to be made in India under Indian standards. I mean, the factory is literally in their country. If they want something to be done about it they can do it themselves.
- atonse 5y ago
  Not a great example. Wasn’t there a revolt at the Indian factory where people threw chairs and broke glass because they weren’t getting paid on time?
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Isn't this the same factory? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VzxTDs5eA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VzxTDs5eA On a side note, I don't know why but it feels so satisfying to watch them destroy the iPhone factory. I wish we had that bravery here in the US. You even think about causing any damage and the cops will come and put a bullet in your head or throw in you prison for 10,000 years.
    - atonse 5y ago
      Wish I could agree but this kind of stuff just shows a lack of good legal recourse. So it’s on the gov to force the company to ensure these employees are paid.
      - nebula8804 5y ago
        I agree. I guess that good feeling comes from a lack of good recourse typically happening in worker disputes so when the little guys "gets a point" then it feels good.
- unbanned 5y ago
  Could you imagine; pig iron casework, 360p resistive touch screen, Siri unironically calls you sir, broken English UI, live chat features where they copy paste you canned responses. Sublime.
908B64B197 5y ago
I would be willing to pay extra for Apple devices made here in America. All American engineering and design, all American manufacturing. I think it's a real possibility; Apple has deep pockets and the ability to plan ahead and is the perfect company to bring manufacturing to the 21st century thanks to innovation and automation.
- mhoad 5y ago
  Right. All of that is true and has been for years. It was famously true the first time they were caught in a situation like this. They chose not to do any of that.
- aimor 5y ago
  "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China" I laughed the first time I saw that because of how proudly it was featured for such a mundane statement. In 2014 I bought the Moto X in part because it was assembled in the US. Remember, it costs $14/hr to pay a US worker compared to $4/hr in China, which makes up some fraction of the cost of a $400 phone but I'm not sure how much. I was also never really clear on how much of the assembly was done in the US. At some point companies were saying things like, "Built in USA" "Final Assembly in USA" or whatever other term they thought could be used to imply "Made in USA"/"Assembled in USA" without alerting the FTC. In general it's not terribly difficult to find products made in the US. It's a hunt, it takes time, it often costs more, and sometimes the material are from overseas. But clothes, toys, furnishings, food, it's still made here by the people and their businesses which care to make it here. So why isn't "Made in USA" etched on the back of iPhones today? I think it's not a priority of the company. Maybe that's cynical given that two years ago there was all this news about Mac Pro towers being assembled in Texas [1]. But Apple is the most profitable company in the world, and chooses to etch "Designed by Apple in California" on the back of every phone despite the means to say more, so I don't know why I should expect Apple manufacturing to move to the US unless there is financial incentive. To be clear: I assume Apple estimates how many people feel the way you and I do (will pay for Made in USA) and concludes now is not the time. As an aside, I once saw a sale for Tommy Hilfiger USA "All American II" towels. Made in India. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsN2LCcXUAErEkr?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsN2LCcXUAErEkr?format=jpg&name=...
pezzana 5y ago
Have any estimates been made for what it would cost to move all iPhone assembly to the US?
mc32 5y ago
Apple is a two-faced Janus/Juno. On the customer-facing side they are all about providing a good user experience and also going through the motions about carbon neutrality and justice and whatever else makes for good marketing these days. On the manufacturing side it they could not care much less. They say they care about pay and justice and so on and so forth, but where the rubber hits the road --where it inconveniences them and does not add to the bottom line, they do not appear to care.
- quesera 5y ago
  That's an oversimplified and cynical take. Apple spends orders of magnitude more money and effort to ensure worker conditions in their supply lines than any other company. Foxconn has a history of treating in-country employees like all the other local companies do. Multiply by a few thousand for scale, and some rate of bad things is inevitable. Apple audits Foxconn, but audits do not catch everything (and not immediately!). Note also that Apple effectively shut down this Foxconn plant by refusing to accept manufactured product until the situation was rectified. Extrapolating from a few cases of dramatic failures on the part of Apple's manufacturing partners is dishonest at best.
  - dutchbrit 5y ago
    The thing is, it's always the same with Foxconn. Apple should know better... (and the same goes for other Foxconn customers)
    - quesera 5y ago
      This is true, but Foxconn is the only game in town for the kind of manufacturing (precision and volume) that Apple requires. Foxconn doesn't uniformly suck, either. They abide by local laws, and they clearly cut corners and fail more often than they should -- but it's not like Foxconn is the seventh plane of Hell and all interactions are tainted with sin.
      - mohanmcgeek 5y ago

163 points by DocFeind 5y ago

Basically it’s outsourced slavery. But who cares in the West? It’s like the deepest levels of cruise ships filled with Asian workers that nobody sees. One sees shiny stores and shiny ships and it’s ok. On the other hand Apple does audit the suppliers and I believe, that internally they know very well what’s happening in the factories.

quesera 5y ago
By this logic, just about every job in early-development countries (e.g. and relevantly: large parts of China and India), is slavery. If we accept the colloquial gross misuse of "slavery" to mean "crappy jobs that the workers depend on for survival", then I'm inclined to agree on principle, but I feel similarly about food service workers in the US and subsistence farmers everywhere.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  in many countries, people count themselves lucky if they have a job making $10/day. It very much is slavery, just with extra steps.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  There's a difference between making federal minimum wage and the indentured servitude these workers find themselves in. McDonalds workers are free to go home at the end of their shift and eat whatever they want. These workers sleep 8 to a room with no temperature control, no privacy, shared bathrooms and rations that we literally would not feed to prisoners. We aren't talking about 100 or 200 people. We are talking about 1 million as of 2011. Foxconn's solution to suicide jumpers was.. netting. There's shitty working conditions and then there's.. this. https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/ https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/
  - quesera 5y ago
    Foxconn workers are free to go home also. Those living conditions are pretty awful, but not unique. Regionally, it's just on the bad side of ordinary. Obviously tainted food is always serious, and it sounds like the oversight there was abysmal. Remember that Apple shut the plant down until it's fixed. 1 million employees, not 1 million exploited suicidal wastrels. San Francisco's solution to jumpers from the Golden Gate bridge was ... counseling services, cameras, and nets. Just like Foxconn! What would you suggest instead?
  - martin8412 5y ago
    The US has forced labor where they are literally not allowed to leave? See some weeks back where workers were killed due to bad weather.
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      They weren't physically unable to leave. They were not given permission to leave the work day early. Nothing stopped them from terminating employment to leave.
- lnsru 5y ago
  Why can’t be these extreme expensive devices be a positive example? Adding 2$ for manufacturing cost would be less than 0,2% of retail price, but give somebody meal without worms. Ok, poor shareholders earning less is an argument. My friend is Burger King worker in Germany. He has some vacation days, low but stable wage and can go home after his shift and cook his special body building meals. Not much slavery.
tastyfreeze 5y ago
Most of these jobs you consider outsourced slavery pay better than anything local. If you were getting paid 25% more than any other job back home you would consider it good pay.
Nbox9 5y ago
Can we stop comparing low wage workers with slavery? Slavery is much worse, at least how it was practiced in North America. It was more than low wages and and economically exploitative relationship, it was a different set of laws & rights for an ethnic group. Slaves had severe legal restrictions on movement, education, religion, marriage, and participating in commerce. Slaves also had very limited legal protections against bodily harm caused by their masters. This is an inherently different type of relationship than someone working in a Foxconn factory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes

_xnmw 5y ago

In other words, it is like every other factory in India. Why should anyone expect anything different?

kayodelycaon 5y ago
People believe money is the solution to this problem. Apple has a lot of money. Therefore, Apple should be able to fix this. Since they don't fix it, they aren't spending enough money to fix it. More money makes solving a lot of problems easier. Can Apple actually put in enough money to fix it? If they can, they aren't. If they can't... this isn't a problem solvable by money. Which is it? I don't know. The question comes down to, what does trying hard enough look like? shrug
- mhoad 5y ago
  Apple promised everyone they can fix it during earlier scandals. That was their claim to make. I think we are free to hold them accountable to that.

black_13 5y ago

hughrr 5y ago

Sounds like my student accommodation 25 years ago. We had human shit flowing down the hall on numerous occasions, the rooms were so small you could only lie down in one axis and the refectory food put people in hospital and wasn't even recognisable as described. It actually turned me vegetarian. All for £120 a week. This is always what happens when you subcontract responsibility out. The middle-man works out how to keep the margin as large as possible and that means the bottom rung gets squashed and everyone up the chain is getting lied to. This has been universally true through my entire life from (real) estate agents, IT contracting agencies, education and service contracts.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
The food for the workers was also seemingly college canteen food because the whole accomodation setup was a converted college + student dorm (which had been closed since COVID) Edit: Found a video of someone complaining about the food when it was still a college hostel. Now imagine what students, who do not have the same organizing abilities as workers, had to go through. https://youtu.be/RH336--NQVg https://youtu.be/RH336--NQVg
dkarl 5y ago
> This is always what happens when you subcontract responsibility out. The middle-man works out how to keep the margin as large as possible and that means the bottom rung gets squashed and everyone up the chain is getting lied to. Not always. You can have reliable middlemen who verify claims and investigate and blacklist fishy suppliers, but the buyers have to want it. Consider how we as purchasers of expensive electronics tend to buy from established retailers (middlemen) who invest in processes to ensure the legitimacy of the name-brand products they stock, instead of buying from an unknown company that was created last week and is selling the same products at a much cheaper price. We consider the risk that the unknown company with no history may have sourced counterfeits, intentionally or unintentionally, and we buy from a retailer we trust instead. It sounds like Foxconn's approach to acquiring accommodations for their workers is like buying an Hermes handbag under a bridge for $20.

bongoman37 5y ago

narrator 5y ago

Edit: Touché.

pphysch 5y ago
Sorry to distract from your anti-China rant but TFA is about a factory in India.

iqanq 5y ago

The Indian government wanted iPhones to be made in India under Indian standards. I mean, the factory is literally in their country. If they want something to be done about it they can do it themselves.

atonse 5y ago
Not a great example. Wasn’t there a revolt at the Indian factory where people threw chairs and broke glass because they weren’t getting paid on time?
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Isn't this the same factory? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VzxTDs5eA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VzxTDs5eA On a side note, I don't know why but it feels so satisfying to watch them destroy the iPhone factory. I wish we had that bravery here in the US. You even think about causing any damage and the cops will come and put a bullet in your head or throw in you prison for 10,000 years.
  - atonse 5y ago
    Wish I could agree but this kind of stuff just shows a lack of good legal recourse. So it’s on the gov to force the company to ensure these employees are paid.
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      I agree. I guess that good feeling comes from a lack of good recourse typically happening in worker disputes so when the little guys "gets a point" then it feels good.
unbanned 5y ago
Could you imagine; pig iron casework, 360p resistive touch screen, Siri unironically calls you sir, broken English UI, live chat features where they copy paste you canned responses. Sublime.

908B64B197 5y ago

I would be willing to pay extra for Apple devices made here in America. All American engineering and design, all American manufacturing. I think it's a real possibility; Apple has deep pockets and the ability to plan ahead and is the perfect company to bring manufacturing to the 21st century thanks to innovation and automation.

mhoad 5y ago
Right. All of that is true and has been for years. It was famously true the first time they were caught in a situation like this. They chose not to do any of that.
aimor 5y ago
"Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China" I laughed the first time I saw that because of how proudly it was featured for such a mundane statement. In 2014 I bought the Moto X in part because it was assembled in the US. Remember, it costs $14/hr to pay a US worker compared to $4/hr in China, which makes up some fraction of the cost of a $400 phone but I'm not sure how much. I was also never really clear on how much of the assembly was done in the US. At some point companies were saying things like, "Built in USA" "Final Assembly in USA" or whatever other term they thought could be used to imply "Made in USA"/"Assembled in USA" without alerting the FTC. In general it's not terribly difficult to find products made in the US. It's a hunt, it takes time, it often costs more, and sometimes the material are from overseas. But clothes, toys, furnishings, food, it's still made here by the people and their businesses which care to make it here. So why isn't "Made in USA" etched on the back of iPhones today? I think it's not a priority of the company. Maybe that's cynical given that two years ago there was all this news about Mac Pro towers being assembled in Texas [1]. But Apple is the most profitable company in the world, and chooses to etch "Designed by Apple in California" on the back of every phone despite the means to say more, so I don't know why I should expect Apple manufacturing to move to the US unless there is financial incentive. To be clear: I assume Apple estimates how many people feel the way you and I do (will pay for Made in USA) and concludes now is not the time. As an aside, I once saw a sale for Tommy Hilfiger USA "All American II" towels. Made in India. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsN2LCcXUAErEkr?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsN2LCcXUAErEkr?format=jpg&name=...

pezzana 5y ago

Have any estimates been made for what it would cost to move all iPhone assembly to the US?

mc32 5y ago

Apple is a two-faced Janus/Juno. On the customer-facing side they are all about providing a good user experience and also going through the motions about carbon neutrality and justice and whatever else makes for good marketing these days. On the manufacturing side it they could not care much less. They say they care about pay and justice and so on and so forth, but where the rubber hits the road --where it inconveniences them and does not add to the bottom line, they do not appear to care.

quesera 5y ago
That's an oversimplified and cynical take. Apple spends orders of magnitude more money and effort to ensure worker conditions in their supply lines than any other company. Foxconn has a history of treating in-country employees like all the other local companies do. Multiply by a few thousand for scale, and some rate of bad things is inevitable. Apple audits Foxconn, but audits do not catch everything (and not immediately!). Note also that Apple effectively shut down this Foxconn plant by refusing to accept manufactured product until the situation was rectified. Extrapolating from a few cases of dramatic failures on the part of Apple's manufacturing partners is dishonest at best.
- dutchbrit 5y ago
  The thing is, it's always the same with Foxconn. Apple should know better... (and the same goes for other Foxconn customers)
  - quesera 5y ago
    This is true, but Foxconn is the only game in town for the kind of manufacturing (precision and volume) that Apple requires. Foxconn doesn't uniformly suck, either. They abide by local laws, and they clearly cut corners and fail more often than they should -- but it's not like Foxconn is the seventh plane of Hell and all interactions are tainted with sin.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago