China's factories give new meaning to "Land of the Living Dead".
Carl Jarvis
On 6/2/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
‘DYING FOR AN IPHONE’
By Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.
June 1, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above Photo: “Resist.” Illustration by Mr. Fish.
The Suffering Of The Working Class, Within And Outside The United States,
Is
Ignored By Our Corporatized Media.
And yet, it is one of the most important human rights issues of our era.
Global capitalists have turned back the clock to the early days of the
Industrial Revolution. The working class is increasingly bereft of rights,
blocked from forming unions, paid starvation wages, subject to wage theft,
under constant surveillance, fired for minor infractions, exposed to
dangerous carcinogens, forced to work overtime, given punishing quotas and
abandoned when they are sick and old. Workers have become, here and abroad,
disposable cogs to corporate oligarchs, who wallow in obscene personal
wealth that dwarfs the worst excesses of the Robber Barons.
In fashionable liberal circles there are, as Noam Chomsky notes, worthy and
unworthy victims. Nancy Pelosi has called on global leaders not to attend
the Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Beijing in February, because
of
what she called a “genocide” being carried out by the Chinese government
against the Uyghur minority. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof in a
column rattled off a list of human rights violations overseen by China’s
leader Xi Jinping, writing “[Xi] eviscerates Hong Kong freedoms, jails
lawyers and journalists, seizes Canadian hostages, threatens Taiwan and,
most horrifying, presides over crimes against humanity in the far western
region of Xinjiang that is home to several Muslim minorities.”
Not a word about the millions of workers in China who are treated little
better than serfs. They live separated from their families, including
their
children, and housed in overcrowded company dormitories, which sees rent
deducted from their paychecks, next to factories that have round-the-clock
production, often making products for U.S. corporations. Workers are
abused,
underpaid and sickened from exposure to chemicals and toxins such as
aluminum dust.
The suffering of the working class, within and outside the United States,
is
as ignored by our corporatized media as the suffering of the Palestinians.
And yet, I would argue, it is one of the most important human rights issues
of our era, since once workers are empowered, they can fend off other human
rights violations. Unless workers can organize, here and in countries such
as China, and achieve basic rights and living wages, it will cement into
place a global serfdom that will leave workers trapped in the appalling
conditions described by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book “The Conditions
of
the Working Class in England” or Émile Zola‘s 1885 masterpiece “Germinal.”
As long as China can pay slave wages it will be impossible to raise wages
anywhere else. Any trade agreement has to include the right of workers to
organize, otherwise all the promises by Joe Biden to rebuild the American
middle class is a lie. Between 2001-2011, 2.7 million jobs were lost to
China with 2.1 million in manufacturing. None are coming back if workers
in
China and other countries that allow corporations to exploit labor and
skirt
basic environmental and labor regulations are locked in corporate
servitude.
And while we can chastise China for its labor policies, the United States
has crushed its own union movement, allowed its corporations to move
manufacturing overseas to profit from the Chinese manufacturing models,
suppressed wages, passed anti-labor right-to-work laws, and demolished
regulations that once protected workers. The war on workers is not a
Chinese phenomenon. It is a global one. And U.S. corporations are
complicit.
Apple has 46 percent of its suppliers in China. Walmart has 80 percent of
its suppliers in China. Amazon has 63 percent of its suppliers in China.
The largest U.S. corporations are full partners in the exploitation of
Chinese labor, and the abandonment and impoverishment of the American
working class. U.S. corporations and Chinese manufacturers kept millions of
Chinese workers crammed into factories at the height of a global pandemic.
Their health was of no concern. Apple’s profits more than doubled to $23.6
billion in the most recent quarter. Its revenues rose by 54 percent to
$89.6
billion, which meant Apple sold more than $1 billion on average each day.
Until these corporations are held accountable, which the Biden
administration will not do, nothing will change for workers here or in
China. Economic justice is global or it does not exist.
Workers in Chinese industrial centers—self-contained company cities with up
to a half million people—drive the huge profits of two of the world’s most
powerful companies, Foxconn, ****the world’s largest provider of
electronics
manufacturing services, and Apple, with $ 2 trillion dollars in market
value. Foxconn’s largest customer is Apple, but it also produces products
for Alphabet (formerly Google), Amazon, which owns more than 400
private-label brands, BlackBerry, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, GE, HP, IBM, Intel,
LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba, as
well as leading Chinese firms including Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, and Xiaomi.
Foxconn assembles iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, TVs, Xboxes, PlayStations,
Wii U’s, Kindles, printers, as well as numerous digital devices.
Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai spent a decade conducting undercover
research at Foxconn’s major manufacturing sites in the Chinese cities of
Shenzhen, Shanghai, Kunshan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, Langfang, Taiyuan,
and Wuhan for their book “Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The
Lives
of China’s Workers”. What they describe is an Orwellian dystopia, one
where
global corporations have perfected the techniques for a disempowered work
force. These vast worker cities are little more than labor penal colonies.
Yes, it is possible to leave, but to incur the ire of the bosses,
especially
by speaking out or attempting to organize, is to be blacklisted for life
throughout China’s archipelago of industrial centers and cast to the
margins
of society or often prison.
Workers live under constant surveillance. They are policed by company
security units. They sleep in segregated male and female dormitories with
eight or more people to a room. The multi-story dormitories have bars on
the windows and nets below, put up to halt the spate of worker suicides
that
afflicted these factory cities a few years ago.
“The workplace and living space are compressed to facilitate high-speed,
round-the-clock production,” the authors write. “The dormitory warehouses a
massive migrant labor force without the care and love of family. Whether
single or married, the worker is assigned a bunk space for one person. The
‘private space’ consists simply of one’s own bed behind a self-made curtain
with little common living space.”
Workers, who earn about $2 an hour and an average of $390 a month, are paid
in wage debit cards, an updated version of company scrip. The bank card
allows a worker to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money from 24-hour ATM
machines that are accessible at Foxconn facilities.
Managers, foremen, and line leaders prohibit conversation on the assembly
floor that operates on a 24-hour cycle of 10- or 12-hour shifts. Workers
are
reprimanded if they work “too slowly” on the line. They are punished for
turning out defective products. Workers are often forced to remain behind
after a shift if a worker committed an infraction. The worker who violated
the rules is required to stand before his or her co-workers and read a
statement of self-criticism. Any worker issued a “D” grade in their review
for “unsatisfactory performance” is fired. The workers receive one day off
every second week, or two rest days a month. They can be summarily shifted
between the night and day shifts.
The authors describe the daily routine of a worker entering a Foxconn
factory at 7 a.m. with hundreds of thousands of other Foxconn employees.
Each person, prohibited from entering the factory complex with electronic
devices, is checked by facial recognition systems to confirm his or her
identity.
The human flow continues for more than an hour. Night-shift workers cross
the footbridge and pour into the shopping malls and street markets that
have
sprung up around the factory. Day-shift workers cross the same footbridge,
in the opposite direction, heading to work. From the moment they enter the
factory gate, workers are monitored by a security system more intrusive
than
any that we found in the neighboring smaller electronics-processing
factories. “Foxconn has its own security force, just as a country has an
army,” a stern faced, broad-shouldered security officer stated as a matter
of fact. Workers pass through successive electronic gates and Special
Security Zones before arriving at their workshops to start work.
Once inside, the authors write, workers endure a familiar ritual:
As workers prepare to begin a shift, managers call out: “How are you?”
Workers must respond by shouting in unison, “Good! Very good! Very, very
good!” This drill is said to foster disciplined workers. A laser-soldering
worker reported, “Before shift-time, a whistle sounds three times. At the
first whistle we must rise and put our stools in order. At the second
whistle we prepare to work and put on special gloves or equipment. At the
third whistle we sit and work. “No talking, no laughing, no eating, no
sleeping” during work hours is the number one factory rule. Any behavior
that violates discipline is penalized. “Going to the toilet for more than
ten minutes incurs an oral warning, and chatting during work time incurs a
written warning,” a line leader explained.
The work is exhausting, stressful and repetitive. An iPhone has more than
one hundred parts. “Every worker,” the authors write, “specializes in one
task and performs repetitive motions at high speed, hourly, daily, ten
hours
or more on many working days, for months on end.”
A woman interviewed in the book described her life on the assembly line:
I am a cog in the visual inspection workstation, which is part of the
static
electricity assembly line. As the adjacent soldering oven delivers
smartphone motherboards, both my hands extend to take the motherboard, then
my head starts shifting from left to right, my eyes move from the left side
of the motherboard to the right side, then stare from the top to the
bottom,
without interruption, and when something is off, I call out, and another
human part similar to myself will run over, ask about the cause of the
error, and fix it. I repeat the same task thousands of times a day. My
brain
rusts.
The work can also be hazardous. The polishing machine emits aluminum dust
as
it grinds the casings. This dust gets into the eyes and causes irritation
and tiny tears. Workers suffer from respiratory problems, sore throats and
chronic coughs. “Microscopic aluminum dust coats workers’ faces and
clothes,” the authors write. “A worker described the situation this way:
‘I’m breathing aluminum dust at Foxconn like a vacuum cleaner. With the
workshop windows tightly shut, workers felt that they were suffocating.’”
The aluminum dust can also cause fires, such as one on May 20, 2011 when an
accumulation of aluminum dust in the air duct on the third floor at Foxconn
Chengdu Building A5 was ignited by a spark from an electric switch. Four
workers died. Dozens were injured. It was not the only explosion, which
Foxconn managed to largely hide by imposing a near total media blackout.
“Seven months after the Foxconn tragedy, on December 17, 2011, combustible
aluminum dust fueled another blast, this time at iPhone maker Pegatron in
Shanghai, injuring sixty-one workers. In the blast, young men and women
suffered severe burns and shattered bones, leaving many permanently
disabled,” the authors write.
Workers are required to clean one thousand iPhone touchscreens per shift.
They were cleaned for years with the chemical n-hexane, which evaporates
faster than industrial alcohol. Prolonged exposure to n-hexane damages
peripheral nerves, leading to painful muscle cramps, headaches,
uncontrollable shaking, blurred vision and difficulties walking. It should
only be applied in well ventilated areas by workers wearing respirators.
Thousands of Foxconn workers applied n-hexane in sealed rooms without
ventilators and were sickened, finally leading to its ban.
These vast industrial complexes also discharge huge amounts of heavy metals
and wastewater into the rivers and ground water. Rivers near plants run
black with sewage and are filled with plastic waste. Workers complain that
the drinking water is discolored and smells.
The United States cast its workers aside in the 1990s with
de-industrialization. China did the same by dismantling socialism in favor
of state-controlled capitalism. State and collective sector jobs in China
fell from 76 percent in 1995 to 27 percent in 2005. Tens of millions of
laid off workers were left to compete for jobs run by corporations such as
Foxconn. But even these jobs are now under threat, partly from automation,
with workers on assembly lines replaced by robotic automatons that can
spray, weld, press, polish, do quality testing and assemble printed circuit
boards. Foxconn has installed over 40,000 industrial robots in its
factories, along with hundreds of thousands of other automated machines.
But over the past decade, the authors note, “the major changes inside
Foxconn were not the replacement of workers with robots but the replacement
of full-time employees with growing numbers of student interns and
contingent subcontracted laborers.”
These workers, part of the gig economy familiar in the United States, have
even less job stability and security than full time employees. As many as
150,000 high-school age vocational students are employed in Foxconn plants.
They are paid the minimum wage, but are not entitled to the
400-yuan-per-month skills subsidy, even if they pass the probationary
period. Foxconn is also not required to enroll them in social security.
Those who lead these corporate behemoths often replicate the behavior of
despots, not only exerting total control over every aspect of their workers
lives but dispensing folksy wisdom to the masses. They are often treated by
a fawning media as gurus, asked to opine–as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Elon
Musk and Jeff Bezos do–on a range of social, economic, political and
cultural issues. Their immense fortunes confer to them in our
Mammon-worshipping society a sage-like status.
Terry Gou, the founder and CEO of Foxconn, has published a list of slogans
and aphorisms that adorn the walls of his factories, along with his
portraits. Workers are required to write out passages from “Gou’s
Quotations.” While Mao Zedong called for class struggle and rebellion, Gou
calls for conformity and blind obedience. “Growth thy name is suffering,”
reads one of his quotes. The Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Dean, in a
2007 interview with Gou, characterized Gao as a “warlord,” and noted that
“he wears a beaded bracelet he got from a temple dedicated to Genghis Khan,
the thirteenth-century Mongolian conqueror whom he calls a personal hero.”
“A harsh environment is a good thing,” one of Gou’s quotes reads. “Achieve
goals or the sun will no longer rise. Value efficiency every minute, every
second. Execution is the integration of speed, accuracy, and precision.”
His more than one million employees, as is true at Amazon and other large
corporations, are subjected to mandatory company meetings where they are
taught to obey company rules, pay fealty to the interests of the
corporation
and, as the authors note, strive for “the individualistic model of
success.”
Those who heed the rules, workers are told, are rewarded. Those who do
not,
are punished or banished.
Workers in these global sweatshops are organizing underground and
protesting. There were 8,700 incidents of labor unrest in China in 1993,
the
first year for which official data is available, to 32,000 in 1999, the
authors write. “The number ‘continued to increase at more than 20 percent a
year’ between 2000 and 2003. In 2005, the official record noted 87,000
cases, rising to 127,000 in 2008 during the world recession–the last time
the Chinese Ministry of Public Security released figures.”
In Hubei’s East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, the authors note, known as
Optics Valley, on January 3, 2012, 150 Foxconn workers threatened to jump
from the roof of the factory and commit mass suicide if the managers
refused
to address their demands, which included protests over forced transfers to
other factories’ cities and a wage dispute.
Strikes, protests and work stoppages that take place now are state secrets,
but the past statistics seem to indicate that they are growing. Strikes are
usually swiftly and brutally broken by company security and police, with
strike leaders being fired and often imprisoned.
We will not save ourselves through the perverted individualism, sold to us
by our corporate masters and a compliant mass media, which encourages our
advancement at the expense of others. We will save ourselves by working in
solidarity with workers inside and outside the United States. This
collective power is our only hope. Amazon workers from the Hulu Garment
factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Global Garments factory in Chittagong,
Bangladesh, recently led a global day of action to make Amazon pay all its
workers, no matter where they live, fair wages. This has to be our model.
Otherwise, workers in one country will be pitted against workers in another
country. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels got it right. Workers of the world
unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.