Hon Hai Precision Industry Co assembles I Pads for Apple, cell phones for Nokia and computers for the likes of Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest PC maker. Other electronics companies such as Dell and Nintendo are also customers of Hon Hai, which uses the trade name, Foxconn.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese based company with over 800,000 workers throughout China and is described in the Wall Street Journal as “secretive”. It has come under some scrutiny lately due to the suicides at its factory in the Chinese city of Shenzhen that employs 400,000 workers. Walls surround the numerous factory buildings and dormitories that house the workers inside the guarded gates and Wednesday, 19 year-old Li Hai, became the 10th worker this year to jump to his death from one of the dorm’s fifth floor windows.Fearful of what bad publicity like this could do to sales and therefore profits, the hip corporate bosses at Apple, HP and other trendy Tech companies are investigating the matter and looking in to how “the supplier has responded to the spate of workers’ deaths there.” Writes the Wall Street Journal*
One response that hasn’t gone down too well was the company’s plan to install safety nets to prevent more workers from jumping. The net deal was definitely in bad taste and even Chinese commentators reacted negatively The western capitalists aren’t too hip to this because it hurts their public persona’s as modern friendlier capitalists, not like the old Robber Barons of the industrial revolution. Plus, western consumers finding out too much about the conditions at these sprawling sweat-shops might cut down on purchases; or worse, there will be organized protests or boycotts of their products.
For the western Tech bosses they want to keep as much under wraps as they can because Chinese Labor is such a good deal for them. How else could Steve Jobs afford to cough up the money to get him to the head of the line in organ transplants? The workers are paid a base salary of $132 month which is the legal minimum wage and work overtime to boost their pay.
Factories like this one are nothing but sweat shops or more like the old company towns that fought Unionization in the west, company towns with company stores and company housing and company scrip. They are much worse as workers’ lives are regimented and controlled in a militarized atmosphere. They are forced to work long hours of overtime and the work is incredibly repetitive critics argue. The stress on workers is enormous. It is not much different to working in San Quentin.
Apple is quite happy with the company, “we believe they are taking this matter very seriously,” Apple announces. The same with HP, “we have contacted Foxconn to ensure any issues are identified and addressed.” Says the company.
This pressure from these western industrialists has been a huge success it seems as Foxconn has taken important steps to prevent further suicides beyond the net deal; they’ve established a hotline that workers can call before they take the final plunge and have invited Buddhist monks to pray for the factory.
The conditions in these sweat towns (400,000 workers within its walls?) must be incredibly oppressive. One China Labor watcher points out that the young workers in these factories “feel like there’s no one caring for them”. Well, there is no one caring for them. The latest jumper, Li Hai left a suicide note apologizing to his family explaining that he had “Lost confidence in his future” and that “his expectations of what he could do at work and for his family far outweighed what could be achieved”. The reality of it was too much for him. This feeling must be ever greater given the rising wealth at the top in Chinese society and the new “freedom” has not sunk in for them all yet, you are free to work for $132 a month for the rest of your life with no rights, no Unions and under brutal conditions.
There are literally thousands of protests and disturbances that occur daily in China. The Chinese working class is hundreds of millions strong and there will be huge, violent clashes in the future, of this there is no doubt.
As I read about these young people and picture the scene in my mind, the dormitories, the walls, guards at the gate and an existence completely controlled and regimented, assembling cell phones and computers for the world market, I feel a strong sense of camaraderie with them. What absurdity that the heads of Apple contact the heads of a factory in Shenzhen to ask them if things are OK; if they are doing the right thing. No point in asking a worker. No worker would dare speak the truth under these conditions.
I also think of that racist bourgeois commentator Lou Dobbs who ranted on about immigrants and foreign workers taking our jobs. They’re not taking our jobs. Our bosses are destroying our jobs and the workplace conditions we fought for over the years, and they are creating new jobs for Chinese and other workers that are so mentally and physically destructive that workers throw themselves out of windows.
The heads of Apple, HP, Nokia, Dell, and any other corporation understand about class solidarity and will join with the bosses at Foxconn and the Chinese bureaucracy to ensure the conditions that keep independent Unions out and the profits rolling in remain in place.
So When we hear fellow workers talk disparagingly about immigrants or workers in other countries being our enemies or taking our jobs, we need to make this point clear, that they are class brothers and sisters and we cannot win a better life for ourselves without international solidarity, without fighting a united international struggle against capitalism, against US bosses, Taiwanese bosses, all of them.
We can have 400,000 allies in a factory in Shenzhen or we can compete with them for crumbs from the bosses table. The choice we have to make is a no brainer if you ask me.
* Suicides Spark Inquiries: WSJ 5-27-10
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