Undercover Report: How The iPhone 5 Made Inside Foxconn Factory? (Updated: Foxconn Statement)

Posted on Sep 12 2012 - 7:16am by Editorial Staff

Standing on the day when Apple released its next instalment of iPhone, the iPhone 5, an undercover report from the Shanghai Evening Post, translated into English by MIC Gadget, revealed the working conditions of the Chinese factory workers working on to produce the device, reopening the controversy surrounded on what’s going at Apple partner Foxconn’s manufacturing facilities in China. The whole report is an account of 10 days spent by post reported on the Foxconn’s Tai Yuan factory frontline.

On the living conditions:

The first night sleeping at Foxconn dormitory is a nightmare. The whole dormitory smells like garbage when I walked in. It’s a mixed of overnight garbage smell plus dirty sweat and foam smell. Outside every room was fully piled up with uncleared trash. When I opened my wardrobe, lots of cockroaches crawl out from inside and the bedsheets that are being distributed to every new workers are full of dirts and ashes.

The worker contract:

The contract has highly emphasized on 4 confidential areas that need to be kept strictly confidential, 1: All technical information, 2: Sales figures, 3: Human resource, 4: Production statistics. The contract didn’t mention much on the overtime works. Under the section of “Possible harmful effects that may cause to worker during production”, the management has asked us to tick “No” for all of them. This includes “Noise pollution” and “Toxic Pollution”, I was wondering if the production floor will caused any harmful effects while working.

The demands of the work:

By my own calculations, I have to mark five iPhone plates every minute, at least. For every 10 hours, I have to accomplish 3,000 iPhone 5 back plates. There are total 4 production lines in charge of this process, 12 workers in every line. Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5 back plates in half a day, this is scary … I finally stopped working at 7 a.m.

For the full account, be sure to check out MIC Gadget‘s translation.

What make the whole incident and coming of report coming out worthwhile, as we are on the day when Apple will launch the most awaited iPhone 5.

Updated: Foxconn’s full statement (via The Next Web)

Foxconn takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our over one million employees in China a safe and positive working environment and compensation and benefits that significantly exceed government-mandated rates and that are competitive with all of our industry peers in each location where we operate. We also work hard together with the local government and third parties to provide housing, dining, recreational and other facilities that meet the needs of our employees and we are committed to a process of continuous improvement in those and other benefits.

We do this to ensure that we continue to attract the best workers in the industry. Foxconn is not perfect, but we are making progress everyday and we continue to lead our industry in meeting the needs of the new generation of workers in China. Anything, such as the report in question, that indicates that the high standards set by our company are not being followed is immediately investigated and addressed.

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