We're Not Machines

Zhang's elder brother, Zhang Junfeng, 30, who also works at Foxconn, said turnover is particularly rampant among younger factory workers, particularly those born in the 1990s. "They'll resign the minute they get angry," Junfeng said. "Very few of them can eat bitterness."
Eating bitterness is an expression used by Chinese who have endured decades of natural and man-made hardships throughout China's history

In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last. "Factory work is too tiring," she said when asked about life after Foxconn, which she plans to leave by June. "Since last year, I've kept on telling myself I would never want to enter a factory ever again, but I'm still doing it in spite of myself." In a Foxconn factory in Longhua in a suburb of Shenzhen, Zhang said she was hospitalized for two weeks in late 2011, blaming her supervisor for setting unreasonable quotas. In one day, Zhang is required to paste 5,000 round dots by hand on a component for motherboards. She lives four to a room in her dormitory and is Spartan with just two metal bunk beds and a desk. Workers on the assembly line were banned from talking to one another and taking toilet breaks that exceed 10 minutes, according to Zhang."At that time, that made me think of the phrase: 'We're humans, we're not machines'," she said. The same plaintive protest of workers the world over.

She embodies the shifting expectations and opportunities of tens of millions of young Chinese workers from the countryside. Their changing attitudes pose a deep challenge for thousands of manufacturers, such as Foxconn and its big customer Apple, which have relied on what they once thought was a virtually endless stream of inexpensive, compliant workers. Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China's economy -- officially estimated at 159 million -- is crucial. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions. They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.

"They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them," said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers' rights group China Labor Bulletin. "Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers ... have to agree to some of their demands," he added.

Duncan Innes-Ker, senior China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said there is a "perfect storm of factors" coming together to support workers as they push for higher wages: sustained economic growth and demographics. The number of young Chinese workers aged 15-24 years of age will likely fall by a third in the next 12 years, giving more bargaining power to this younger blue-collar generation, Beijing-based consultancy Dragonomics has projected.

Xie Wen, 22, an unemployed former nurse, looked horrified when asked whether she was considering a job at a factory. "It sounds good, but it's all menial work. If you want to earn a lot, you have to work a lot of overtime," she said, adding that she does not want her next job "to be too tough. I don't want any night shifts and I don't do overtime."

Her friend, Jin Jin, 27, who has been looking for work since she quit her job at a pharmacy a month ago, said she resigned because it was "meaningless" work. Since 2004, she has held four to five jobs and is now seeking one in sales that pays about 2,000 yuan, with about 4-6 days off a month, subsidized meals and overtime fees.

Dou Jing, 20, said she worked in the quality control department in an electronics factory for a year after high school. "It was very tiring. I had to work night shifts that lasted 12 hours," Dou said "I didn't feel I could learn anything," she said.

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Meanwhile in the other emerging hi-tech country, India, Bangalore which has become synonymous with a booming technology sector that has created vast wealth for many. Yet the rapid growth of the technology industry in the city known as 'India's Silicon Valley' has barely touched the lives of the 2 million people who live in poverty. Last year's census showed the city's population rose by 47% in just 10 years, making it the second fastest growing city in India, after Delhi. The reason for the rapid growth is the booming information technology sector: the Indian Institute of Science estimates that 30% of the IT workforce live in Bangalore. Although the presence of technological giants such as Infosys in the city has created vast wealth for many around a quarter of its 8.4 million people live in slums