MCLC: the real Foxconn

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: han meng (hanmeng at gmail.com)
Subject: the real Foxconn
***********************************************************

Source: Bloomberg (3/20/12):
http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-start-talking-about
-the-real-foxconn/

Now Can We Start Talking About the Real Foxconn?
By Tim Culpan

So Mike Daisey¹s been outed. The things he said he saw, he didn¹t. The
people he said he spoke to, he didn¹t. The discoveries he said he made, he
didn¹t. He lied.

It matters a lot that Mike Daisey lied, and it matters that he was caught.
You really should listen to the episode of This American Life
<http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/460.mp3> in which Ira Glass
takes a deep breath and lets it all out. It¹s great storytelling by Rob
Schmitz, as fantastic as the story Daisey himself told. Anyone who has
become invested in this story of Apple and Foxconn needs to listen to that
episode. If you¹ve ever tweeted about how bad Apple is, blogged about the
evils of Foxconn¹s sweatshops, or ³Liked² a Facebook post excoriating how
iPads are made, then you should listen. Don¹t take the word of the dozens
of bloggers and news outlets who¹ve tried to summarize the whole saga into
bite-sized morsels‹go listen for yourself. Go on, do it now. I¹ll wait.
You heard it? Good.

Now let me tell you what I¹ve seen at Foxconn. I¹ve covered the company as
a reporter for more than a decade, since before the iPhone was a twinkle
in Steve Jobs¹s eye and just after Foxconn landed Dell as a PC customer.
Then in 2010, when a series of suicides caught the world¹s attention and
made sure you now know who makes your iPhone, my colleague Frederik
Balfour and I started looking deeper. The result was ³Inside Foxconn,²
<http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htm> a
6,000-plus-word cover story for Bloomberg Businessweek.

We interviewed Foxconn¹s founder Terry Gou for many hours. But before
sitting down with Gou (and walking the Shenzhen campus with him), we spoke
to dozens of people who worked at, dealt with, supplied to, bought from,
or otherwise had firsthand dealings with Foxconn and its founder. Foxconn
doesn¹t know who most of these people are, and they never asked. We also
had a Foxconn-led tour inside dorm rooms, the pool, the cafeterias, and a
factory line. We knew very well they were trying to show their best side.
We smiled and nodded and did our own research anyway.

Among those we spoke to were about two dozen workers, mostly factory
personnel, who spoke without supervisors present and spoke freely. Again,
Foxconn doesn¹t know who we spoke with, and they never asked.

Mike Daisey claimed to have come across 12-year-old workers, armed guards,
crippled factory operators. We saw none of that. And we did try to find
them. Nothing would have been more compelling for us and our story than to
have a chat with a preteen factory operator about how she enjoyed (or not)
working 12-hour shifts making iPads. We didn¹t get such an anecdote.

In our reporting, as ³Inside Foxconn² detailed, we found a group of
workers who have complaints, but complaints not starkly different from
those of workers in any other company. The biggest gripe, which surprised
us somewhat, is that they don¹t get enough overtime. They wanted to work
more, to get more money.

Less than a year later, I went back again with another colleague.

We went inside the same Longhua campus in Shenzhen, which required
Foxconn¹s approval, and chatted with workers. We stood outside the gates
(possibly the same gates where Daisey claimed he found underage workers),
with Foxconn unaware we were there. We wandered farther into the local
neighborhood shopping strip, among the bubble-tea stands and food vendors,
where the young workers went on dates and caught up with friends. These
weren¹t Daisey-esque scenes of woe and horror.

Rather than forced labor and sweatshop conditions, workers told of
homesickness and the desire to earn more money-two impulses that seemed to
drive each other for workers planning to go home once they¹d earned
enough. The homesickness had been alleviated, somewhat, by more
Foxconn-led extra-curricular activities, with one worker elated to share
that ³now I have a girlfriend.² And the drive for money satiated,
somewhat, by a large pay raise a few months prior.

It wasn¹t paradise, either. Some workers were confused about their
payslips, others said some of their managers were harsh (but none had an
example of abuse or physical violence), and yet others found their job
boring. Some were just plain homesick.

There are also some nasty facts, most of which I¹ve written about in the
past two years, including about a dozen suicides among Foxconn workers
throughout China in 2010 (not just at Longhua). Workers died last year
after a factory explosion that could have been prevented. Labor group
SACOM was prescient in talking about the dirty conditions at Foxconn¹s
Chengdu facilities just before last year¹s explosion. That organization
and China Labor Watch have spent considerable time detailing other
problems among Apple¹s suppliers, such as the continued and illegal
overtime. Even one death is horrible, and I remember the knot in my
stomach each time I had to write about them. Yet we could do well to put
that in context. As Forbes has pointed out
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/01/29/the-apple-boycott-peopl
e-are-spouting-nonsense-about-chinese-manufacturing/>, the number of
deaths and suicides that have been reported in Foxconn¹s factories
indicate rates that may be lower than at other places in China‹and in the
U.S. You can see that in this graphic
<https://twitter.com/#%21/nicepaul/status/163797296306331648/photo/1/large>
.

There are also things happening at Foxconn that just aren¹t sexy to talk
about: the cheap accommodation and subsidized food for workers, the
Foxconn-run health centers right on campus, the salary that¹s well above
the government minimum and other companies, the continuous stream of young
workers who still want to work there.

The problem with Mike Daisey¹s lies is that they¹ve painted a picture of
the Evil Empire, a place devoid of any happiness or humanity. A dark,
Dickensian scene of horror and tears. They also make anyone who tries to
tell a fuller, more balanced account look like an Apple or Foxconn
apologist because your mind is already full of the ³knowledge² of how bad
it is there.

To the public, a story about a 19-year-old shrugging her shoulders and
claiming work is not so bad just can¹t stand up against a 12-year-old
working the iPad factory lines. The naïve and youthful smile of a kid
having found his first girlfriend at a Foxconn work party pales in
comparison to a crippled old man holding an iPad for the first time.
Compared to the lies, the truth just doesn¹t make good theater.