After repeated exposures in the press and just as many promises to mend their ways Foxconn working conditions are once more revealed as sweat-shop.
Gruelling workloads, humiliating punishments and battery-farm living conditions remain routine for workers assembling Apple's luxury electronics, according to one of the most detailed reports yet on life inside China's Foxconn factories.
The researchers claim that intimidation, exhaustion and labour rights violations "remain the norm" for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese iPhone workers, despite Apple efforts to supposedly clean up its act.
Punishments remain a key management tool.
Workers at the world's 10th largest employer have been told to clean toilets, sweep lawns and write "confession letters", which are then pinned up on noticeboards or read out to colleagues. When one female worker took the day off anyway, she claims her supervisor asked her to move 3,000 boxes a day for 10 days as punishment. On the first day, she suffered from backache and was unable to sleep.
Living conditions in Foxconn campus dormitories remain cramped, with 20 or 30 workers sharing three-bedroom flats, sleeping eight to a room in bunkbeds. They are forbidden to use power-hungry electrical items such as kettles or laptops on pain of confiscation.
Where most assembly staff were previously forced to stand, stools have now been introduced for some workers. However, they are under instructions to sit on only a third of the seat, so that they remain "nimble" enough to do the work.
Staff mistrust a counselling hotline introduced after a spate of Foxconn suicides. One Guanlan factory worker who rang after conflict with his supervisor was advised to resign if he was unhappy. Another rang to complain about unpaid overtime and the hotline diverted the complaint back to his irate supervisor.
The Hong Kong workers' rights group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), believes injuries are under-reported: "The management simply negotiate with the injured workers for a settlement. According to the respondents, cases of industrial injuries have an impact on the annual bonus received by middle management. Therefore, the middle management are very reluctant to report all the cases."
Apple said in April that its suppliers achieved 95% compliance with the 60-hour working week specified in its code, up from 91% for March. But Sacom's findings fly in the face of Apple's figures. Foxconn employees interviewed in April were still working up to 80 hours of overtime a month at Longhua. A payslip from the plant showed overtime at 78.5 hours for April. In the runup to the release of the new iPad on 16 March this year, monthly overtime work for Apple production-line workers in Longhua was 80 hours a month, it was claimed. Line managers work unpaid overtime daily, often up to four or five hours a day. They claimed their administrative work was unpaid, and that shifts were usually followed by unpaid work meetings, at which frontline managers would be scolded by their superiors, causing them to "unconsciously vent their anger on the production workers".
Sacom is demanding the formation of genuine trade unions within Foxconn; a living wage for Chinese workers, whom it says are paid half the salary of workers in Foxconn's Brazilian factory, and receive five as opposed to 30 days' annual leave; and compensation for victims of labour rights abuses.
The mistreatment is not confined to Apple workers, but affects those making products for other western companies including Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Nokia, according to Sacom.
"The findings demonstrate that Apple and Foxconn have not turned over a new leaf," said a Sacom officer, Debby Chan Sze Wan.
Source
Gruelling workloads, humiliating punishments and battery-farm living conditions remain routine for workers assembling Apple's luxury electronics, according to one of the most detailed reports yet on life inside China's Foxconn factories.
The researchers claim that intimidation, exhaustion and labour rights violations "remain the norm" for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese iPhone workers, despite Apple efforts to supposedly clean up its act.
Punishments remain a key management tool.
Workers at the world's 10th largest employer have been told to clean toilets, sweep lawns and write "confession letters", which are then pinned up on noticeboards or read out to colleagues. When one female worker took the day off anyway, she claims her supervisor asked her to move 3,000 boxes a day for 10 days as punishment. On the first day, she suffered from backache and was unable to sleep.
Living conditions in Foxconn campus dormitories remain cramped, with 20 or 30 workers sharing three-bedroom flats, sleeping eight to a room in bunkbeds. They are forbidden to use power-hungry electrical items such as kettles or laptops on pain of confiscation.
Where most assembly staff were previously forced to stand, stools have now been introduced for some workers. However, they are under instructions to sit on only a third of the seat, so that they remain "nimble" enough to do the work.
Staff mistrust a counselling hotline introduced after a spate of Foxconn suicides. One Guanlan factory worker who rang after conflict with his supervisor was advised to resign if he was unhappy. Another rang to complain about unpaid overtime and the hotline diverted the complaint back to his irate supervisor.
The Hong Kong workers' rights group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), believes injuries are under-reported: "The management simply negotiate with the injured workers for a settlement. According to the respondents, cases of industrial injuries have an impact on the annual bonus received by middle management. Therefore, the middle management are very reluctant to report all the cases."
Apple said in April that its suppliers achieved 95% compliance with the 60-hour working week specified in its code, up from 91% for March. But Sacom's findings fly in the face of Apple's figures. Foxconn employees interviewed in April were still working up to 80 hours of overtime a month at Longhua. A payslip from the plant showed overtime at 78.5 hours for April. In the runup to the release of the new iPad on 16 March this year, monthly overtime work for Apple production-line workers in Longhua was 80 hours a month, it was claimed. Line managers work unpaid overtime daily, often up to four or five hours a day. They claimed their administrative work was unpaid, and that shifts were usually followed by unpaid work meetings, at which frontline managers would be scolded by their superiors, causing them to "unconsciously vent their anger on the production workers".
Sacom is demanding the formation of genuine trade unions within Foxconn; a living wage for Chinese workers, whom it says are paid half the salary of workers in Foxconn's Brazilian factory, and receive five as opposed to 30 days' annual leave; and compensation for victims of labour rights abuses.
The mistreatment is not confined to Apple workers, but affects those making products for other western companies including Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Nokia, according to Sacom.
"The findings demonstrate that Apple and Foxconn have not turned over a new leaf," said a Sacom officer, Debby Chan Sze Wan.
Source
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