US ABC’s Nightline program delivered what they claimed would be an unprecedented look inside the Foxconntroversy: their TV crew would have unfettered access to facilities and people. So what did they expose?
The ABC team, along with members of the Fair Labor Association, toured the plant, occasionally shaking hands with a labourer or being fed nothings by an eager Foxconn executive.
The program was dazzled by Foxconn’s scale — which is admittedly amazing — and spent more time putting together productivity stats and numbers than anything else. Some of them were more arresting than others: Foxconn workers have to pay for their meals and housing, and each iPhone takes 141 steps to assemble. Other factoids you could’ve surmised given the bajillion gadgets ushered out of the plant each day. Massive sales require massive production on a massive scale, of course.
What the exposé touched on, but ended before it could satisfy, was truly getting inside the workers’ heads. A couple were given a few moments to comment on how tired they were, or how they wished for more pay, but given the fact that virtually everything Apple sells is put together by hand in shifts that consume most workers’ conscious lives, we missed the human consequence of this labour. Smoothing out the edges of an Apple logo all day every day, with little time in the outside world can’t be good for you. We saw hints of this — employees passing out at their workstations in the spare minutes after mealtime — but it was glossed over, chalked up as a Chinese dining tradition by a Foxconn exec, as opposed to exhaustion.
The show was worth the glimpse of these faces and the questions they prompt, but hardly a tidy answer to how those faces are being treated. The president of the FLA, Auret van Heerden, cheerily said he expected Foxconn to put on a show during the audit — which Apple paid for — as he walked among the glass-eyed faces picking up iPad parts with tweezers, ad infinitum. It was a revealing tour, but ultimately, just a tour.
rusty
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:19 AMI’d be very interested to see the results of that anonymous survey some employees were doing.
chrisp
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 9:15 AMIf Nightline tried to air anything too damning they would expect a quiet tap on the shoulder from their lords and masters the way Mythbusters did over the RFID show.
A Chinese dining tradition? WTF. I guess this guy would try to explain all the suicides as base jumping enthusiasts as well.
Commander Sheppard
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 9:18 AMso lets get onto samsung, and toshiba, and all the others that use Foxcon and others… why are they not being looked at?? apple bias!
miranda
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 2:46 PMthe reason why is cause apple own a huge percentage of the pad and smart phone market. something like 90percent of the pad market and 70percent of the smart phone market. wouldnt it be just smart thinking to hit the biggest share holder in the market create an example so others dont do the same? common sense not apple bias
keith
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:07 AMFoxconntroversy? Well I guess thats more clever and a whole lot less annoying than adding”gate” to the end of it which has well and truly jumped the shark.
Hmm Foxconngate… I bet you it has been used somewhere…
Carl
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:14 AMFirstly, this felt like propaganda.
Granted the working conditions are of serious concern, but it’s easy to put it out of context. When we talk about how much people earn in a foreign country, it’s not fair to compare it to your own when different countries have different economies. We happily go to Bali and boast about how cheap everything is, yet we don’t stop to think that the street vendor you bought that handbag for AUD$2 might only be making $15 a day and only a fraction of that is profit. You could’nt survive on that here, but over there you can.
If Foxconn was the bottom of the Chinese job pool then there wouldn’t be just a high rate of job applications – If these people had a better choice they would take it. So, the issue shouldn’t be with Foxconn, it should be with China.