- An employee tells the rest of the world what it’s like to work at the Foxconn factory where iPhones are assembled in China.
- The worker said that he noticed that a co-worker had reduced his salary because he had been drinking too much.
- Nicknamed Hunter, the activist told Rest of the World that she felt her “rights and dignity” had been taken away.
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A report says that a man working in a Chinese factory assembling the iPhone 14 saw one of his colleagues reduce his salary for spending too much to drink water.
Hunter, a 34-year-old working at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China, shared with nonprofit tech publication Rest of the World what it’s like to work in a windowless workshop assembling iPhones.
Hunter told Rest of the World that he has worked at the plant in multiple roles over a decade, and his last assignment included working on the iPhone 14 Pro assembly line last year. He worked 10-hour shifts and had to assemble 600 iPhones every day.
He said that his every move inside the factory was monitored by “jianzhang” or line leaders who often reprimanded people. Hunter told Rest of the World that he had a strict one-hour lunch break and if he had to go to the toilet, he would have to make up for lost time.
Hunter said it was difficult to distinguish between day and night at the facility.
He saw one co-worker get a pay cut for taking too long drinking water, while another was yelled at for only completing 40 tasks in an hour, while another managed 60.
Hunter, while rarely the target of line leaders, told the nonprofit publication he hated humiliation at work and felt he was being stripped of his “rights and dignity” but the paycheck kept him going. Helped keep it together.
Rest of the World reported that if new recruits worked 10-hour shifts six days a week, they could earn more than 10,000 yuan – or $1,474 – a month.
The Foxconn factory, also known as “iPhone City”, is the world’s largest manufacturing facility for Apple’s iPhones and according to Reuters, was recently at nearly full capacity after experiencing the COVID-19 outbreak. Production resumed. BBC News reported that in November last year, hundreds of workers protested at the plant over strict COVID restrictions and claims they were being paid late.
At the time, the company issued a statement amid protests apologizing for a “technical error that occurred during the onboarding process” that led to the delay in payments. Apple reportedly enlisted Luxshare, one of Foxconn’s biggest rivals, to help make iPhones after the protests.
On January 9, Hunter left the factory to return to his hometown. He told Rest of the World that he expected the next mass production of the iPhone would not return to Foxconn, but he could not be “absolutely sure”.
Foxconn and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider made outside normal working hours.
