The Life of a Chinese Migrant Worker at Foxconn 自殺未遂 ある富士康移民労働者の暮らし
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Volume 11 | Issue 31 | Number 1 | Article ID 3977 | Aug 06, 2013 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus A Suicide Survivor: the life of a Chinese migrant worker at Foxconn 自殺未遂 ある富士康移民労働者の暮らし Jenny Chan contract supplier. Foxconn is the trading name for Hon Hai Precision Industry Company and, with a workforce of 1.4 million, it is the largest Abstract private sector company in China and one of the world's largest employers (iSuppli, 30 May In 2010, 18 employees working for Foxconn in 2006; 27 July 2010; BBC, 20 March 2012). China attempted suicide. These shocking Through its manufacture of products for firms, events focused world attention on the markets and consumers in the United States, manufacturing supply chains of China's export Europe and elsewhere, it epitomises the industry and the experience of working within commanding heights of China's export-oriented them. What had driven these young migrant industry. Foxconn's remarkable expansion assembly line workers to commit such a throughout China gave rise to a mythology of desperate act? This article provides a first-hand corporate success until a much-publicised spate account of the experiences of one of those who of employee suicides at its factories and survived a suicide attempt, 17-year-old Tian Yu. dormitories in 2010 that focused the world's Her personal narrative is embedded within the attention on the dark side of its employment broader context of labour process, work regime. One of those who attempted suicide organisation and managerial practice at was 17-year-old Tian Yu. Foxconn, the Taiwanese-owned multinational whose 1.4 million Chinese workers provide At about 8 a.m. on March 17, 2010, after only products and components for Apple and others. 37 days of employment, Yu threw herself from Factory conditions are further shaped by the the fourth floor of Foxconn's Longhua company trade union and Chinese government dormitory in Shenzhen (South China Morning policies. The paper concludes with additional Post, 19 July 2012; 25 April 2013). Miraculously contextualisation indicating the emergence of she survived, but suffered three spinal an alliance of workers, students, scholars and fractures, four hip fractures, and was left transnational labour movement activists who paralysed from the waist down. Her job at the are campaigning for Chinese workers' rights. Longhua factory had been her first, and probably will be her last. This paper is Keywords: structured around her account of the circumstances behind, and consequences of, Foxconn; suicides; Apple; global supply chains; the desperate attempt to take her own life. wages; working hours; Chinese workers; ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) Introduction Among the most prominent firms in the global supply chain that operates in China is Foxconn, the Taiwanese-owned multinational electronics 1 11 | 31 | 1 APJ | JF During 2010, 18 young workers, ranging in age from 17 to 25, attempted suicide at Foxconn facilities in China. Fourteen died, whereas four survived with crippling injuries (Chan, 2011b). International media dubbed these events the ‘suicide express’ (Daily Mail, 29 May 2010). Facing public criticism, Foxconn strove to minimise reputational damage by claiming that the suicide rate at its plants was below the national rate of 23 per 100,000 people (Phillips et al., 2002). Liu Kun, the corporate public communications director, emphasised that Foxconn had more than 1,000,000 employees in China alone, and that the reasons for suicides were multiple. ‘Given its size, the rate of self- killing at Foxconn is not necessarily far from China's relatively high average’, reported The Guardian (28 May 2010). But no scientific study would draw a comparison which ignores the fact that the suicides were by young people employed by a single company, the great majority working in a small industrial district of Shenzhen. Scientific comparisons would require that data be randomly drawn from a district with similar population size and age Tian Yu groups. It would make little sense, for example, to compare the workers’ suicides to patterns among the disadvantaged rural women and the Her personal narrative, examined within the elderly who made up a large proportion of the broader context of the spate of suicides at country's suicide cases (Ji et al., 2001, Lee and Foxconn, provides an insight into the human Kleinman, 2003; China Economic Review, 28 consequences of the labour regimes of the May 2010). The Foxconn suicide cluster globalised manufacturing supply chains of represents a phenomenon that has no China's export industries (Lee, 1998; Pun, precedent in China's industrial history. 2005; Lichtenstein, 2009; Bonacich and Hamilton, 2011; Chan, 2011a). TheIt is hoped that the following testimony of Yu counterpoint to the contemporary fascination will contribute to an understanding of this wave with i-products is a regime of managerial of suicides and, more broadly, will assist in the autocracy and assembly line drudgery at the necessary scrutiny of the Chinese and global point of production, a contradiction that contexts of international capital, which link reminds us of the enduring relevance of Marx's Foxconn, electronic consumer product brands, concept of commodity fetishism. Thousands of and the Chinese government (Chan, 2010; miles from the shelves of the Apple store, and 2012; Chan and Pun, 2010; Pun and Chan, ordinarily concealed from consumer concern, 2012). This paper interweaves Yu's testimony lies the reality of alienating toil that, in extreme with Foxconn's shop floor practices and conditions, contributes to individual tragedies concludes with a discussion of the roles of the such as Yu's. local government and the All-China Federation 2 11 | 31 | 1 APJ | JF of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the organisation that provinces, in which Foxconn has huge ostensibly represents workers, and their investments in production and research and responses to the suicides. development facilities (Chan et al., 2013). Fieldwork in China Tian Yu's story Since summer 2010, and in the wake of the The first meeting with Yu was in July 2010 at suicides and reports of corporate abuses, the Shenzhen Longhua People's Hospital in faculty members and students from 20Guangdong province, where she was universities in mainland China, Taiwan and recovering from the injuries sustained in her Hong Kong have formed the Universitysuicide attempt. Aware of Yu's fragile physical Research Group on Foxconn. Together with and psychological state, the researchers were Students and Scholars Against Corporate fearful that their presence might cause Yu and Misbehavior (SACOM),1 a Hong Kong–based her family further pain. However, both Yu's transnational campaign group, international mother, at her bedside, and Yu herself when researchers have conducted independent she awoke, welcomed their presence. investigations into Foxconn's labour practices and production systems (see January 2013 The researchers sought to understand the nature of the ‘private troubles’ that had driven special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly, her attempted suicide and to channel this Litzinger, 2013; Pun and Chan, 2013; Pringle, insight as a contribution to making these 2013; Hung, 2013). The author is one of the conditions a ‘public issue’ (Mills, [1959] 2000; principal Hong Kong Chinese field researchers Webster et al., 2008). Over the following weeks, who have interviewed Foxconn workers, as Yu regained her faculties and established managers, government officials and labour bonds of trust with the researchers, she rights activists in Hong Kong, Shenzhen recalled her family background and the (Longhua and Guanlan towns in Guangdong circumstances that had led to her being province), Chengdu (provincial city of Sichuan) employed at Foxconn, her experiences working and Chongqing municipality, and a labour on the assembly line and living in the company rights advocate affiliated to SACOM. dormitory. During interviews it became clear In addition to extended interviews with Yu, 42 that Yu's problems were not individual or additional interviews have been conducted by ‘psychological’ but were faced by many Foxconn employees. the author with current or former workers offsite, where they were not subject to From farm to factory managerial surveillance and thus retaliation. When undertaking such fieldwork the research The personal journey undertaken by Yu, team members identified themselves as a group migrating from the countryside to employment in order to protect the anonymity of individual as a young worker in the expanding workforce university researchers (particularly those full- of China's export-oriented manufacturing time undergraduate and postgraduate students industry is not atypical: ‘I was born into a based in mainland China) and frontline labour farming family in February 1993 in a village activists from company harassment or local near Laohekou City, Hubei Province, central government censorship. Such anonymity was China. My grandmother brought me up while essential given the close alliance between my parents were earning money as factory Foxconn managers and government officials workers far away from home’. across all four municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing) and 15 Yu belonged to the generation of ‘left-behind 3 11 | 31 | 1 APJ | JF children’, as the first rural-to-urban migration leave the province to seek new wave enveloped China's countryside. Since the opportunities, with my parents' mid-1980s, the deterioration of the rural support. economy under the urban-based state development policy, and the increased market pressures following China's accession to the Soon after the Spring Festival in early World Trade Organization in 2001, brought February 2010, Yu's father gave her about 500 about unprecedented challenges to China's vast yuan (approximately US$80) to support her peasantry. search for work in the coastal Guangdong province, and provided her with a second-hand cell phone so that she could call home. He At best my family could earn about asked her to be safe. 15,000 yuan on the land in a year [approximately US$2,380], hardly enough to sustain six My cousin brought me to the long- people … Some years later my distance coach station.