An undercover reporter for Chinese newspaper The Shanghai Evening Post claims to have infiltrated the iPhone 5 assembly line at a factory of Apple and global electronics supplier company Foxconn in Taiyuan, China, penning an expose, translated by the blog M.I.C. Gadget, in which the reporter details his employment at the factory for a 10-day-period, describing harsh working conditions, lack of adequate rest for workers, and bug-infested dorms, among other deplorable conditions.
Here are selected passages from M.I.C. Gadget‘s grammatically challenged translation of the original article in The Shanghai Evening Post, which was printed in the August 27th edition of the newspaper and does not appear to be available online:
The first night sleeping at Foxconn dormitory is a nightmare. The whole dormitory smells like garbage when I walked in. It’s a mixed of overnight garbage smell plus dirty sweat and foam smell. Outside every room was fully piled up with uncleared trash. When I opened my wardrobe, lots of cockroaches crawl out from inside and the bedsheets that are being distributed to every new workers are full of dirts and ashes…
The day after signing of the contract, we are being gathered in a hall and briefed with the history of Foxconn company, policies and safety measures. During the whole conference, we are being highly emphasized on one point: “When you leave the lab, there’s no advanced technology, you only need to obey instructions.” We are being distributed with a checklist with only 13 rewards policies but over 70 penalties policies. The instructor said: “You might feel uncomfortable of how we treat you, but this is all for your own good.”…
For the past several days, I have been to many Foxconn facilities such as dormitory, canteen, bathing room, playground, gym, hospital, postal office, library and shopping street etc. Although most of them are free of charge but the facilities seriously needs improvements. For example, inside the entertainment center there are 2/3 of the arcades games are malfunction. The so-called theater room only shows a screen shot picture of a meeting room. The most interesting part is out of the whole Foxconn factory, I can’t find a single place selling beer, sitting stool and poles for hanging laundry clothes…
An iPhone 5 back-plate run through in front of me almost every 3 seconds. I have to pickup the back-plate and marked 4 position points using the oil-based paint pen and put it back on the running belt swiftly within 3 seconds with no errors. After such repeat action for several hours, I have terrible neckache and muscle pain on my arm. A new worker who sat opposite of me gone exhausted and laid down for a short while. The supervisor has noticed him and punished him by asking him to stand at one corner for 10 minutes like the old school days. We worked non-stop from midnight to the next morning 6 a.m but were still asked to keep on working as the production line is based on running belt and no one is allowed to stop. I’m so starving and fully exhausted.
By my own calculations, I have to mark five iPhone plates every minute, at least. For every 10 hours, I have to accomplish 3,000 iPhone 5 back plates. There are total 4 production lines in charge of this process, 12 workers in every line. Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5 back plates in half a day, this is scary … I finally stopped working at 7 a.m. We were asked to gather again after work. The supervisor shout out loud in front of us: “Who wants to rest early at 5 a.m !? We are all here to earn money ! Let’s work harder !” I was thinking who on earth wants to work two extra hours overtime for only mere 27 yuan (USD$4) !?
