Surely each one of us would like to have the primacy of at least one day being in the factory where the iPhones are built, give the first piece to the last. Ma certainly not everything should be a sea of roses, here we show the experience that a trainee student had inside the factory where our iPhones leave.
Dejian Zeng is a student at New York University, the university student spent six weeks working at Pegatron, one of the factories contracted by Apple in China. The young man of Asian descent studies to work in human rights organizations, so he decided to “infiltrate” a Pegatron production line to check first-hand the working conditions of people paid to build and assemble the iPhones sold by Apple in Worldwide.
Dejian Zeng told what he saw in the six weeks he worked on the iPhone production line in China. The student worked in the sector responsible for completing the assembly of the device, and who had contact with both the iPhone 7 as with the iPhone 6s.
It's not a recent story, as Apple has already been criticized for its decision to hire Chinese factories to produce parts and assemble units of its flagship product. The American President Donald Trump, for example, was elected under the promise that would make Apple bring the production of the iPhone to the American territory and thus generate employment for the citizens of the own country.
On the other hand, the company has also been criticized for allegedly negligent working conditions in these Chinese factories. This in the BBC (on 2014) and Bloomberg (in 2016), have shown that in several cases, employees are required to work beyond the hours contracted in factories such as Pegatron
The young man was in charge of installing the speaker on iPhones, and says that his job, for many days, consisted of just attaching a single screw to the back of the device. "It's simple, but that's your job every day". Inside the factory, employees have a lot of free time after finishing work, but says that electronic devices are prohibited on the factory floor, so “There is nothing to be done.“. Sometimes employees' supervisors even ask them to lower their voice while talking.
During the night shift, which starts at 19:30 pm and usually lasts eight hours, not counting a ten-minute break and another 50-minute break. He says that most employees take the first ten minutes to sleep at their stations or go to the bathroom - "you can only do one thing".
However, on the second break, the workers have lunch together in the local cafeteria. The food “There are usually three vegetables, one meat and rice”, some employees take advantage of their free time on this break to sleep a little more, on “not very comfortable” sofas that are on the factory patio in recreation areas. According to the student, however, it is forbidden to lie down. If supervisors catch someone lying down, a warning is usually recorded. If this happens several times, the employee may have money from his salary discounted at the end of the month. The same goes for anyone who accidentally forgets the rules and takes a cell phone to work.
As for the salary, a student received about 3.100 yuan, equivalent to practically 450 USD (equivalent to 74.300 Kz in the Banco Nacional de Angola exchange rate) in direct conversion. That was the amount received in the only entire month he worked there. The amount already included the payment of overtime, while the company paid separately for his house and many other employees. Most of them come from rural China and, contrary to what many believe, there are no children working there.
The student also informed that, in order to guarantee a good product for the end user, Apple representatives visit the production line regularly, carrying out all types of audits. According to the student, "employees call Apple 'the customer'. 'The customer is here', they say ”. Employees know they are making Apple products and even know when production changes from one generation of iPhone to another. Security, especially inspection processes and metal detectors, becomes more rigid when the company starts working on a product that has not yet been announced.
When demand for the iPhone grows, production also gets more accelerated. After leaving Pegatron, Zeng said he heard from ex-colleagues still at the factory that they also had to work on Sundays, 11 coming to stay days in a row, when Apple demanded an increase in the volume of seventh-generation iPhones produced.
Would you work for this company with these conditions?
