Tech Won't Save Us - How Foxconn Treats the Workers Who Built Your iPhone w/ Jenny Chan

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

Paris Marx is joined by Jenny Chan to discuss the difficult lives of Foxconn factory workers, the company’s relationship with Apple, the structural roadblocks to better working conditions, and how Chinese workers are trying to push back.Jenny Chan is the co-author of “Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of China’s Workers” with Mark Selden and Pun Ngai. It’s available from Haymarket Books and Pluto Press. She is also an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.Support the show

The most basic level is we do support workers to fight for a more decent life and to make the global supply chain more sustainable. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast that doesn't think we should be so focused on consumer narratives and should actually look deeper into the tech products that we use in our everyday lives. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today I'm joined by Jenny Chan. Jenny is a labour rights activist, author, and public sociologist. She's the co-author of Dying for an iPhone, Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China's Workers. Her co-authors are Mark Seldon and Pun Ai. She's also an assistant professor of

sociology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. We're now moving into fall, which is when Apple announces a bunch of its new products. In September, there will be new iPads and Apple watches. In October, it looks like there will be new iPhones. And the tech media and mainstream media will be focusing a lot on all of the new features in these products, how nice they look, how great they are to use, whether or not people should buy them. But there won't be very much focus on the workers who actually produce these products in the Foxconn factories in China. And so part of the goal of this podcast is to get a closer look at what the lives of these workers are like, how they're treated by Foxconn and by

extension Apple, and why we need to stand in solidarity with these workers to improve their conditions and ensure that they're not being mistreated so that we can have nice, shiny, new tech products. I just want to give you one statistic that really kind of puts in perspective how little these workers who build the iPhones and all of these tech products are paid compared to what we actually pay for them. So one of the statistics included in Jenny's book is that when you consider the retail cost of the iPhone 4 in 2010, Chinese labor made up just 1.8% of the total cost of that, which is a really paltry figure when you consider that Apple's profit margins on these products are absolutely massive. And then by the time the iPhone 7 came out in 2016, the percentage of the

retail price that actually went to Chinese labor was just 1.3%. So the prices of these products are increasing, but the percentage that's actually going to pay for the labor that assembles them is going down. So I think we need to keep that in perspective. If you like our conversation, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and make sure to share the episode with any friends or colleagues who you think would enjoy it. If you want to support the work that I put into making this podcast possible, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Jenny, welcome to tech won't save us. My pleasure. So obviously, you've done a lot of work looking at the factories where, you know, a lot of Apple

products and other tech products are created, you know, these Foxconn factories that are primarily located in China and Taiwan, but also, you know, increasingly Foxconn factories that are primarily located in China and Taiwan, but also, you know, increasingly in other parts of the world, right? And so I wanted to start by getting a better idea of what Foxconn is. You know, a lot of Western consumers who, you know, are most of the listeners of this podcast would know Foxconn from the stories of the suicide nets a number of years ago now, right? And, you know, some Americans might know it from the subsidy deal that was supposed to go through in Wisconsin and that really did not pan out the way that the Republican governor thought it would.

Can you give us a bit of an idea about the company itself and how it operates and the things that we should know about it? Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. It was founded in 1974, and then Apple started to do its business in 1976. So they are actually quite close to each other, just like brothers, and this is also what they are now today. You're right, in 2010, it was also the critical moment when we came to know more about what Foxconn is actually producing in China,

and it was amazing. Since 1988, when China opened up, it was the very first group of Taiwanese investors, including Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn. But in Taiwan, they have another name that is called Honghai Precision Industry. So Honghai is the Chinese name, HH, but we are more familiar with its logo or the brand name, and that is Foxconn. And I want to tell you more why it matters. Foxconn is still the largest electronics manufacturer in the whole world, and it is also the biggest private employer in China. At the peak, Foxconn alone employs more than 1.3 million employees.

Okay, 1.3 million in Hong Kong. Nowadays, we have 7.5 million in terms of the total population. But one company itself will have 1.3 million at its peak. So in terms of the size, it is quite stunning. And you're right, Taiwan's headquarter is in Taipei, in Taiwan, but the most important supply base is actually in China. Of course, over the past 40 years or so, Foxconn has expanded to the US, nowadays in India, in Vietnam, as well as Eastern Europe countries like the Czech Republic and other places. And I can tell our readers, our audience right now, perhaps more than one of our electronics

items is assembled by Foxconn. It has more than 50% of the global market share, producing our iPhones, computers, as well as smart watches. For those who are runners, who love sports, on your body, there might be a wearable that is actually assembled by Foxconn, but have other brand names. So Apple is still the biggest client of Foxconn. But Foxconn is actually producing for Google, Samsung, IBM, Sony, all these Western brands that we are really a big fan of. So everyone is connected with Foxconn in one way or the other. But you're correct. In the global supply chain, we identify with the brands like Apple because they are doing marketing.

They have the higher value add, but for those low value add, massive labor intensive production that are being outsourced. And Foxconn is the most important supplier to Apple and multiple tech companies in the world. So I hope that this brief introduction will give us a sense about the global scale of production. But behind this production network is us, the consumers who are driving the production of the electronics products. That's such a fantastic and important point. It's hard for us over here in Europe or North America, where many of the listeners are, to really comprehend how large Foxconn is and how important it is to the manufacture of all of these tech products that we depend on, right? Also, as you noted there, how Foxconn is increasingly not just in China

and Taiwan, right? It's increasingly moving out into other countries around the world and trying to replicate this model that it's created within China. So, you know, obviously you mentioned there, there are a lot of companies that Foxconn works with, produces products for, but the one that we focus most on is Apple. And there are particular reasons for that, right? So can you explain why the relationship between Foxconn and between Apple is so important for us to understand and so unique compared to the other companies that Foxconn deals with? It is important for us to highlight the direct business relationship between Apple and Foxconn. Apple is the most profitable tech company in the whole world.

And most recently, Apple had already exited $2 trillion in terms of its market capitalization. It's really exactly a double when we compare it to what it was in 2018. For these massive amounts of profits and revenue, we have to dig into the secret. Definitely, it's about design, very smart design. You and me, we all love Apple products in one way or the other, but that is beyond the engineers and the product designer. There are also human hands and they are not robots who are assembling these pieces at quite a low cost. So in this book, Dying for an iPhone, there are the double meanings. On the one hand, workers, to some extent, are put into the very desperate

conditions so much so that they kill themselves. So they are literally working to death. But at the same time, consumers cannot wait longer enough for a new brand of iPhone. iPhone was born in 2007. And after the global financial crisis, China recovered so quickly. And there was the rush order that are coming in. It was the important background for us to know Foxconn was the exclusive producer of iPhone at that time. And iPhone, as I said, it was born in 2007. But because of the engineers and the designers effort, it had been upgrading, transforming a little bit, but catch a wider number of popular consumers. And it was in 2010, when iPhone was upgraded to iPhone 4, that we record almost the greatest number of worker suicides. So later on, I talked to one suicide survivor, a 17-year-old girl, which opened our book with her story.

It really tells us a lot more about the intimate relationship between Apple and Foxconn. As I just mentioned, Foxconn was the only assembler for Apple's iPhone. So you could imagine that the transfer of the pressure onto the shop floor, it was a night and day. It is two shifts of 12 hours a shift, and that was lasting for a whole month before the product launch. So when I put into all these details about the overtime work or excessive overtime work, you just lose all the balance between work and life. After two weeks time, you only got one day

off, and then you clip on another two weeks as a normal human being or as they the young workers who are from the countryside they really cannot put up with those high pressure but that is just one point that we pay attention to indeed the management system itself is also military-like this is is a Taiwanese company. Sometimes to ensure the high quality or the efficiency and productivity, they also keep pushing the workers to their maximum or beyond their maximum. So this is a story that is about the direct pressure between the global buyer and the global supplier, as if they are the two separate companies or two business entities. They are unrelated, but in reality, they are highly overlapped. Apple sent its engineers onto the factory floor to direct, to manage, to supervise the whole production process. However, the priority will be about production time,

the delivery time, rather than workers' health and their well-being. I truly believe that some of the human tragedy could have been prevented. While we do highlight or target Apple, the story is also not to be oversimplified as only about Foxconn and Apple. We want to have an industry solution. That means we are not just satisfied with the Apple production workshop or the specific assembly lines that are producing iPad or iPhone on those days.

We need all these global tech companies who sit down together and rethink carefully their purchasing model, whether their purchasing practice is ethical and sustainable. Because based on our research that has been lasting for 10 years, we uncover many specific details that could it is all the way how the structure of production that had been keeping the wages down, that had been also squeezing workers to the maximum, to the point that they sacrificed their health, emotional health, psychological and their physical health. That is really the key points in the whole story. By focusing Apple, one political reason is that they are powerful enough to make the change. And if they are rich and powerful enough to initiate the reform,

other companies might be following. So, or at least we do have high expectation on Apple, because Apple, you claim to the whole world, you claim to your consumers that you care and you care more than anyone else in the whole world. You care about humanity. You care about workers' rights and their responsibilities. So why not you take action until the critical alarm, but that is paid by the cost of the lives of all these young rural migrants. I think that's a fantastic point. The marketing and the story that Apple tells about itself is very different from what is actually happening on the floors of these factories where its products get created, right? Sure, its image to consumers in the West, in China, everywhere else it sells its

products is certainly something that is very appealing to people, but it can't also lead us to ignore the real hurt and the pain and the damage that is in the supply chains, that is in the factories, that is in the mines where the minerals come from that go into all these technology products, right? So I think that's a really good point. And you've been doing this research now for 10 years. And so I think that really gives not just you perspective, but when we read the book,

it really shows in the knowledge and the depth of detail that you really have in there, right? Because you know what's happening. You've spoken to the workers to see how all of this is affecting them, right? And so, you know, you've already kind of touched on this a bit, but can you give us an idea of what life is like for the workers who are in these factories, who are creating these products? You know, I think many people will find it's quite different from what we would associate with, you know, manufacturing work. Foxconn is indeed a modern technological workplace. You've got air-conditioned factory floor, very grand windows, because it is also the model to showcase whenever local government officials

present their representatives, also Apple's own customers. They want to take a look at how the products are being made. This is a showcase factory. In the southern part of China, only one what they call campus, just like my university campus, where there are also Olympic-sized swimming pools, restaurants, cinemas, football courts, stadiums, all these fantastic facilities. When workers who are from the village, they never anticipate that they would get into a factory, but it is just like a factory city where at the high points before they remove and relocate some of the productions elsewhere, they have more than half a million workers in just one campus. That is quite stunning in terms

of the dormitories. They are high-rise buildings and in each dormitory room, usually there would be about 12 workers altogether, but they are from different villages, different provinces. So sometimes when I talk to you, you just cannot even understand me if I'm using my own dialect rather than the national language, and that is Mandarin. So I feel quite lonely indeed, even though I'm in a dormitory, there are similar teenagers like my age, but I just do not feel that they are my sisters. They are just like a stranger. We do not quite know each other because it is also one of the reasons why alienation or the sense of pressure would be so high. Management seems to be quite insensitive in this sense that some of us are going on to the night shift while the other at the night shift.

You see, sometimes when I speak to you, I just identify myself with them. As I recall, there are many times that I'm using the audio tool to record their interviews or at the other time when we find a safer place but not inside the dormitory to do the interview, they would really describe all the details, show us with their smartphones, they miss their parents, they miss their lovers. So I was really quite touching about all these, and some of them also write poetry. Some of the others sing songs. So these are the daily life or the leisure activities that young people like us would really love to do.

We like to go out for shopping. We enjoy having a date. But without much time, they end up being treated like a machine on the assembly line. Their parents and their families are not being with them, even for those who already got married, but they are put into the single-sex dormitory. Because dormitory is not a worker welfare. Dormitory is just a site, a socio-spatial site for you to reproduce your daily labor. That means I go to sleep, I eat, and then I regain energy to work the other day. It is the lowest possible means to keep the migrants' labor alive and to work on the other day. Imagine if these workers would have their own homes, just like me after I finish teaching a day, I go back home,

I have someone who talks to, but they do not. So dormitory is actually part of what they call the campus. But it is also a way when the management needs them to do overtime work, they will be pushed to work right here because the dormitories are nearby or just at the adjacent to the buildings. So these are the ecology, the production and social environments that we have to guard our sense. And you're right, I don't think I have ever seen such a gigantic and huge factory anywhere in the world, except in the southern part of China. So workers spend just a few hours of sleep in the dormitory, and then they have to work for about 12 hours a day or at night on the factory floor.

There have been very rigid limits in terms of the defective products they can produce. So you cannot have room to make error or mistakes because then you are wasting the raw materials, you will be punished. So quality assurance is very important. The second thing is definitely speed. If you are doing just rubbish work and you are doing slowly, the only result would be you get fired. In China, even though there have been labor law and more rigorous regulations over the past decade, the key point here is the implementation is so weak, too weak that it seems to be appeared only on the books rather than in the reality.

And here, the open secret is the fact that Foxconn is the largest investor. Every local state would like to have the investment from Foxconn. And Foxconn somehow can feasibly change the rules of the game. That means to extend the working hours. Yes, workers are being paid. But let me tell you, until 2010, a worker could only get the minimum wage, even though they are the biggest high-rate company in China. So the legal minimum wage is what a worker is getting. So they also want to get more by doing overtimes, because if they do OT, they will get more. And the reason is they really need to make some money for their parents at home, or for those who had already got married, they need to support their children. And nowadays in China, everything is being commercialized or prioritized. It is no longer like the old days,

you can hardly get the social support or welfare, especially you are the migrants. So maybe just to sum up, when we talk about Chinese working lives, there are the micro and macro level of analysis, and the state itself, no matter you intervene or you deliberately not to intervene, there would be real consequences on the workers. So this is not just about the market forces that we are going back to the capitalist economy where we have big capital who are driving these workers to the maximum labor power they will get. So the longest possible day is only 24 hours, right?

So there are some limits as a human being that you could drive them to work like that. But without government regulation, things will be just getting even worse. Just to maybe put it point here, workers are also not passive or they are not weak. They never want you and me who are just like outsiders or who are paying sympathy to them. They would rather like to work with us to amplify our voices from below and find our own path ahead. And this book serves as a testimony to their voices. We do hope that their hope, their aspirations, and their pains that will not be in vain, that has some value,

even though some of them already unfortunately passed away. But for those who have survived and for their families, we hope that the book would open up some moments for us to reflect on and to connect ourselves as the consumers and workers. It's seemingly we are in two different worlds, but we are indeed connected every day at work, in our study or in our entertainment. I want to touch on a point that you mentioned there about how a lot of these workers are from the village, right?

From the rural areas in China. You know, when you describe the story of the woman who attempted suicide, but, you know, survived that attempt and you spoke to her afterward, I saw her story as kind of an example of this larger trend in Chinese society where people are moving from the rural areas because, you know, the agricultural work and stuff is gone and moving to the cities to try to earn a wage in factories and these new businesses and industries that have been created over the past several decades, right? So can you explain a little bit about how the labor market, how the lives of Chinese workers have changed in that kind of larger way with that kind of

migration from the rural to the urban, and especially what that does to these younger workers in particular who, you know, you have spoken to and, you know, how that leaves them without that connection and disrooted in that way. Rural to urban migration in China is the largest scale in any other human history we have covered. Nearly 300 million are the rural migrants. They are quite young. Some only really finished their middle school. That means after six years of primary school, three years junior secondary school, at about 15 or 16, 16 is the minimum working age in China, they are already having quite some anxieties in their lives.

You are right. Whether I would follow the steps of my parents, feeding the pigs or growing the corns, it will not leave me starving. But if I just want to have more for my life, to see a bit of the whole world, perhaps I would love to move to the cities or bigger cosmopolitan cities like Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou to have a kind of experience. Of course, it is difficult. I'm not going to romanticize what will happen after you move away and you are alone, but there is indeed a driving force here culturally and economically. It seems like if you are staying behind, you are the people who are not competitive enough. So you seem to have this driving force as a young person to strive for something better. But if your education nowadays,

even we know college or university graduates are having trouble getting a decent paid job. So these moderately educated rural migrants will even have more difficulties and challenges in their life. But still urbanization and actually more choices in the bigger cities. That is a key point of attraction. And that is also the agenda of the national development. China has been quite following an urban bias model. So we have very grand hotels, industrial parks, commercial and service work, all different kinds of opportunities that you can try on.

Indeed, over the past 10 years, I feel one point that is quite striking to me is also not many would love to go to a factory nowadays, even though this is as big as a Foxconn factory. Work has been so repetitive, boring. It is just like doing the assembly jobs, putting the parts onto a printed circuit board or to clean the glass screen to pack the products. And the whole day or a whole year will be gone like that. So we have been observing or even following

some of these young migrants. They want to, first of all, get to another workplace to try something new. That is more exciting. You might find your boyfriends, girlfriends. You might get more income. And that is why in China nowadays we see so many who engage in food delivery, like Uber Eats, Food Panda Deliverer, and all the different food delivery platforms you can name. I'm not suggesting that the work are more exciting or more fulfilling,

but in those food delivery service sector, some of the interviewees, they reported back that they can earn a little bit more. So we will see how the labor market is actually changing. And is it changing for better, especially these groups who are in the hundreds and millions, like in the 300 millions? What are their future, are there job retraining or skills enhancements programs that they could access? Especially in the West, some people might hear China and think, okay, the Communist Party of China, it's a communist state. So why are workers being

treated in this way that is really bad, receiving low pay, long hours, bad working conditions. As you mentioned, capitalism has been embraced and there has been an attempt to kind of promote this industrial model. And a lot of the trade unions that are available are really focused on the state's goals and not actually serving the workers. So can you explain a little bit about how workers' rights work in China and how the state is pushing a model that's not necessarily in favor of the workers or looking out for the workers first? Thanks for raising this significant question. In an authoritarian regime, the concern for these Beijing leaders is still political control. It is a political monopoly that we only have a communist party, one party state.

You do not have electoral politics. We do not have competing political parties. You are not doing by elections how we are going to elect President Xi Jinping for another five year terms. And indeed, even the constitution could be changed that there will no longer be any cap in terms of the number of years or the two five year term that would be the maximum provisions in the past. So all these are telling us that there is the tendency for the monopoly of power and the organized effort to challenge the status quo or to threaten the state, that would be something that must be prevented. And even at the very initial point, not at the time when workers would form their independent union, or most of the time,

they are the underground non-governmental organizations, NGOs. But these are more carefully covered because everyone knows if they are mobilizing tens of thousands of workers to block the highway or to encircle a government building, it does happen time and again as we see it from the headlights. So there must be very brave but also very angry workers who must fight back. Otherwise, as some of them are already getting the dying diseases, even in our book, we do have some critical cases of ending up being a handicapped person. They cannot function anymore. And it takes ages for you to claim your rights or to do the justice through the courts.

So it is just really like all the bureaucratic procedures that you are draining the time, cost. Even your parents will not have money to support the long years of suits, right? You cannot take your boss easily to the court. So if that door is being closed, what else you can do? Most of the time, you might go on strike or to protest. And the official unions or the Foxconn union, which have the big size, again, the very huge trade union, that is not absent. That is right there in presence. But these unions are being controlled by the management

and they are registered under the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the ACFPU, which is the only official trade union bureaucracy in China. You will not have confidence in them because your unions are being chaired by the personal assistants of the company CEO. So no one will be really speaking on behalf of you. And the last resort is either to engage in collective action and taking the risk of being detained or get fired the very next day. I must just add one more point. Nowadays, the Chinese governments are also more skillful in terms of tackling these local crises. It is not all the good time to have New York Times or The Guardian to make it onto the headline.

That would ruin the image or make the harmony, at least from a distance, it looks or it appears really in harmony. Things are not as good as you see from a distance, but still we try to make it covered up. And how the local officials might not take everyone into the jail, rather they would become the broker. So I come here immediately, I negotiate with the boss, and the boss have to pay you a little bit if you are asking for wage increase or you are asking for a severance pay,

OK, the boss is not going to give you 100%, but 60%, take it or leave it. So under huge pressure, most of the time the workers will have to compromise. And this is how the so-called collective actions or the anger are being dispersed. So it's most of the time crumbled almost overnight. There is no organized vehicle to continue the protest. Yeah, sometimes for a few days or perhaps a week or so, but you never really see a very sustained or independent organized force that would be in a way bargained with the strong state. The situation is difficult. The balance of power between management and workers or management with the state at the back, these two forces just highly unbalanced.

When we look at what's happening with the workers now in China who work at Foxconn, but also beyond Foxconn, and you say there's not really avenues for them to go through the official trade unions to try to seek better conditions, improved wages, things like that. How have workers been organizing outside of those unions? And have they been making any progress in getting management, getting the company to respond to their demands for better wages and working conditions and things like that? Foxconn definitely have some specific feature at the keynote of production. If just one big factory that comes to a stop, there is the chain effect. It's just like everything would be connected and the parts or the cover, the casing, they also will be affected in a way.

The workers are very clever to seize the timing. So this is a good time. Let's say today Apple has its big announcement about the new products, the breakthrough they have made, and they are anticipating a bright future. If workers are aware of this timing, they are also able to make their voices to the media. And the media sometimes are very quick to go to the site and report about their demands. This is a good strategy, what we call the media publicity, or to name and shame a sweatshop. Then you will get public attention and there will be pressure on Apple or other image-conscious companies. They will also quickly call Foxconn and say,

hey, what is the mess? Are you going to talk and calm down the workers? So quite some time, media effect will also work, but you can just take it so far from here. We do not always follow the same news. After three days, a week, everything cooled down. People even forget things. Just like 10 years ago, we had 14 young workers who died,

and only four survived with crippling injuries. Almost 10 years on, maybe people also forgot about this. But all in all, here and there, workers had never just been completely passive or silent. They did use different ways to make their legitimate demands. In a more cultural way, they sing the songs, they write the poetry. We are also very proud to include some of their creative work in our book. Even though this seems to be a very soft or gentle way, but at least it is also a safe avenue for them to share their frustrations or pent-up anger and their fantasy or their dreams. So I still value a lot about these, what we call workers' literature,

no matter they are in the forms of a song or a poem. The other thing most of us will also think of is the use of a smartphone as an organizing tool. That is right to some extent. They also text the message to their co-workers. But we know in China, there is only one super app, and that is WeChat. We do not have WhatsApp. At one point of time, but later on, it is actually blocked or filtered. Some of the workers who are more advanced nowadays, they will use signal. So yes, I will also see some hope in terms of organizing in the digital space. Workers from Factory A in one province and workers in Factory B in another province, maybe they can communicate and share some important information. But if you are really talking about coordinating some campaigns or actions together,

that is too complicated and a little bit unrealistic right now. It is just too harsh from above, from the state, from the management as well. And the cost is just too big. And that is why if we want to make a significant change in the long run, a smarter strategy and more safer way of doing things are needed. I would also emphasize that most of the time, we are not the kind of national danger or national security problem that is imagined by some leaders. We are still thinking a lot of the legal means, the more rational way of communications and solving the problems. That is why if there would be the elections for workers to form their trade union,

or no matter what you want to call it, a women's group or an occupational safety and health group. But if there are such organized units on the shop floor, I do believe it would be much better for workers to communicate with the direct employers, but also from the representatives from Apple, Dell, or Google. There is no much use for you to just send someone to take a look to audit the documents which are already well-prepared or to talk to this group of workers who are already well-trained or coached to answer to you. That is just a self-treating tactic or it is just a game. You go to take a look just like a cat and a mouse and someone

responding that way. The biggest missing point is workers and where the workers feel secure and safe to speak up. If you are able to create that avenue, I'm sure you will listen, you will know much more than you have never heard or seen ever before. And the best way is actually to work with an independent and credible body, a third party, who might be the academics, who might be trade union organizers from Hong Kong or, okay, not Taiwan, but maybe somewhere else. So there might be some ways that we can figure out. I think that's a fantastic point, you know, about what workers are trying to do and how there are still like a lot of roadblocks in place to be able to make this progress, right? And now, you know, there are so many things I could ask you about, but I want to finish by asking you about kind of what's happening now, what's been happening

recently. Can you give us some idea of how the pandemic has affected the workers in these Foxconn factories and what it has meant for, you know, their work and their lives? Workers, their families, you and me, we are all affected in one way or the other. But workers somehow are the hardest hit. In Foxconn factories, the density is so high. Everywhere is so crowded, jammed with people in the canteen, in the factory, dormitory, and on the shop floor. Foxconn even converts some of its assembly lines to produce masks.

They are providing their workers with masks and some other basic protective tools. However, the time is being lost and how you catch up to regain the lost time. So basically after March, we have our Chinese New Year. By the end of January, the whole February is in the situation of crisis. Everywhere is being locked down. In Hong Kong, we cannot go into mainland China either, not at all.

So there are border checks. That also means that there have been many workers, even though they are already very anxious to get back to report for duty, but they cannot. It was only until the middle and the late March when the governments are organizing the rails, the buses, all the massive transportation networks that are being in use to support these important exporters like Foxconn, which could resume production as quickly as possible. Then the governments are actually transporting workers to the factory floor. And Foxconn would measure their temperature, body temperature. But there is some limit here. I got quite sick. Then whether I got fired or I got 14 days of rest,

I'm rare to get rest. We just do not really have the chance to talk to some victims directly. But there have been incoming calls and text messages to my mobile phone and talk about their anxiety and the worries they have. Because every day, in and out, there are strangers, there are newcomers, there are people who just resigned, there are also new job seekers. I just do not know them well, but we are still in the dormitories. There are upper bunk and lower bunk. So the density remains so high. So the problems right here is where the workers are aware of the infection. Coronavirus is highly contiguous and it can be spread by just

talking and eating together in a close distance and whether the so-called social distance measures can be put in place. So workers, even though in the past six months or so, they still have some worries. However, on the whole, Foxconn is right back on track. The not yet solved issue is still the starting point 10 years ago, and that was the long working time, particularly there were fluctuations within the whole year before the Christmas time, just before the new product launch, where we can ensure

a better time scheduling, as well as to make sure workers have enough. That is not just around the basic wage or a little bit more than that, but you have to understand their higher aspiration as the second generation now. Yes, the most important thing is their health condition, not to get COVID-19 or some other injuries or accidents. It happened time and again in the past of some explosions. We don't want to have that ever more. And while the media attention are no longer that much interest about

suicides, it also doesn't mean that suicides problems are not existent anymore. So things seem to be just cover up because this is also not a good time for workers to so-called make the trouble big. The bigger the trouble you make, the more dangerous you are nowadays. The civil society is shrinking in size. So why, when I say 10 years ago and 10 years later, are there any significant movements and where we are heading? This is still an open-ended question for our readers and our audience. We are not naive or simple to think that Apple will come up and say we will save the world, that we are able to do anything voluntarily. So my best hope is still solidarity, support, international concern, that we understand

this is not acceptable. This is too much to high human cost to pay for our iPhone or our computer, whatever electronics products that you love and you use every day. Let us reflect on what we might do and also ask the government a more decent life and to make the global supply chain more sustainable. We're recording this at a time where Apple is announcing new products, going to be releasing new products. And, you know, the media is going to be filled with reviews and articles about how nice they are and how good they work and how there's this big evolution in the product line, right? But so much of that reporting ignores the workers who create these products, what happens in the supply chains. And we need to have a much greater focus on those things so that we can understand what's happening with those workers and so that we can actually

ensure that the products that we're using are not creating these massive harms down the line that we're happy to ignore. You know, I'm going to recommend everyone check out your book because I think it provides a really key insight into what's happening with the workers in Foxconn that produce so many of these products that we rely on. Jenny, I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Paris. I appreciate your engagement and really grateful for the great insight and knowledge you share with me and everyone. Thank you.

Jenny Chan is the co-author of Dying for an iPhone, Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China's Workers. It was published by Haymarket Books in the US and Pluto Books in the UK. You can find links to buy it in the show notes. You can also follow the show on Twitter at at Tech Won't Save Us. You can follow me, Paris Marks, at at Paris Marks.

If you liked our conversation, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you.