Return to Foxconn

Workers at Foxconn. Source

Some time ago in American Studies class we discussed the news about abuses in the Foxconn factory that produces many electronics, including Apple's iPads. I recently came across an article in the New York Times "What Cameras Inside Foxconn Found" that talks about what further investigation into the factory has found and what it all means.

I'll begin with the caveats that the article ended with. ABC's "Nightline" was allowed to visit Foxconn and talk to anyone they wanted and film the assembly lines. But the article notes that ABC "is owned by the Walt Disney Company; its chief executive serves on the Apple board, and the Steve Jobs Trust is Disney’s largest shareholder." ABC shared this conflict of interest on the program. I do not think that reporters would completely change a story based on such connections, but there could quite easily being pressure to soften their findings and phrase things in a more positive light. The fact "Nightline" alone was given the ability to tour Foxconn is perhaps an indication that Apple and Foxconn were looking for some favors. Also important to note is that Foxconn chose to allow Nightline in when they wanted to, so had plenty of time to polish up the factory for the cameras.

Now, no one found a factory full of happy workers, but the report is a little more optimistic.  The ABC report noted that "We looked hard for the kind of underage and maimed workers we’ve read so much about, but we mostly found people who face their days through soul-crushing boredom and deep fatigue." Now this is somewhat unfair. There were reports of underage workers that apparently these people couldn't find, but  I also remember that the "soul-crushing" work was pretty joint-crushing as well. The article admits that some people had to do the same task 6,000 times a day, but does not mention the kind of damage that this can do to a person's hands. It just states that "that’s the nature of assembly-line work" as if that somehow makes things okay. The original New York Times article on the subject also mentioned safety violations, workers dying from using poisonous chemicals, and explosions killing people. I doubt anyone would see these at the factory when it had time to prepare.

In response to the fact that the majority of the workers were very young, the article reports that
"a former Apple executive told me... Foxconn is not a career. You don’t see 30- and 40-year-old heads of households on the assembly lines. The young Chinese see it as 'something like a first summer job,'" It is nice to think that the low wages are not being used to support families and perhaps this is just a step on the way to a career, and it does make sense. If the majority of the workers are young, obviously they are going somewhere else once they get older. But the idea of it being "something like a first summer job" is a ridiculous disguise of the truth. That makes it sound as if these teenagers are working as camp counselors, and that the low wages are okay because all they're trying to do is get some experience, just get the idea of how a job works. That is not what is happening. They are working twelve hour days in assembly lines, not chasing after six year old for five hours a day.

I could go on, but in short, I think that the majority of "optimistic" finds that the article talks about seem to be just more positive ways of saying what was originally found. Now, I have no doubt that the initial report phrased things in a negative fashion whenever possible, so the truth is probably somewhere in between - but I think it probably leans towards the negative.