The Undercover Report on How the New iPhone 5 is Made Inside Foxconn Factory

Hey guys, just came across this today and figured I would share.
My heart goes out to all people, in all parts of the world, who not only work, but also live, in such poor environments. Maybe one day we, as consumers, will realize that We, as human beings, need to look out for one another instead of taking advantage of others.
Peace.

This is the story of an undercover reporter who worked in the Foxconn factory manufacturing the new iPhone 5 for just ten days. 'Enjoy.'

Undercover Report on How the New iPhone 5 is Made Inside Foxconn Factory

Day 1:

The first night sleeping at Foxconn dormitory is a nightmare. The whole dormitory smells like garbage when I walked in. It’s a mixed of overnight garbage smell plus dirty sweat and foam smell. Outside every room was fully piled up with uncleared trash. When I opened my wardrobe, lots of cockroaches crawl out from inside and the bedsheets that are being distributed to every new workers are full of dirts and ashes.

Day 2:

The contract didn’t mention much on the overtime works. Under the section of “Possible harmful effects that may cause to worker during production”, the management has asked us to tick “No” for all of them. This includes “Noise pollution” and “Toxic Pollution”, I was wondering if the production floor will caused any harmful effects while working.

Day 3 - 6:

The day after signing of the contract, we are being gathered in a hall and briefed with the history of Foxconn company, policies and safety measures. During the whole conference, we are being highly emphasized on one point: “When you leave the lab, there’s no advanced technology, you only need to obey instructions.” We are being distributed with a checklist with only 13 rewards policies but over 70 penalties policies. The instructor said: “You might feel uncomfortable of how we treat you, but this is all for your own good.” After that we are asked to watch an orientation video on the Foxconn factory. When someone has asked about the suicide issues, the management staff didn’t avoid the topic but not willing to discuss too much on it. During the suicide topic discussion, someone has voiced out that the bad living environment will sure lead to more suicides. Also I have noticed that all the windows in the dormitory has been framed behind bars.

Day 8 - 10:

By my own calculations, I have to mark five iPhone plates every minute, at least. For every 10 hours, I have to accomplish 3,000 iPhone 5 back plates. There are total 4 production lines in charge of this process, 12 workers in every line. Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5 back plates in half a day, this is scary … I finally stopped working at 7 a.m. We were asked to gather again after work. The supervisor shout out loud in front of us: “Who wants to rest early at 5 a.m !? We are all here to earn money ! Let’s work harder !” I was thinking who on earth wants to work two extra hours overtime for only mere 27 yuan (USD$4) !?

Isn't amazing to discover that our greatest technologies, which mostly define our "advanced" society come at a very expensive cost to other human beings? All those fancy products costing us a little fortune, and without which we cannot live anymore, produced by slavering others... And we hold people like Steve Jobs as our modern heroes.

Now I'm sure I'll never purchase an iphone, nor anything from Apple. Thanks for posting this.

Oh, World. Weren't we capable of much more??

I will never have an apple device. I will not take a bite from the apple.

I really do fear for our world and what it has come to. We simply don't need these phones to function. We never have.


This video needs to go viral.

Apple needs to keep its manufacturing in the USA.

Imagine the jobs created for the USA?


There simply is not any hope left if people who own these phones don't feel disgusted after watching this video.

There's many reasons why something like this happens

Firstly.... more money!

Secondly.... other countries acting like this and then back home we see this and demand more government oversight, maybe more govt. owned such companies here in the west

Life can be complicated

Originally posted by Dan001
Apple needs to keep its manufacturing in the USA.

Imagine the jobs created for the USA?

Do you seriously think americans would work for the same wages? ....fat chance.

And because they wouldn't, do you seriously think people would pay the new huge cost of the same phone?...fat chance.

So what's the solution?
Do we fault and attack Apple for manufacturing these devices?
Or the consumer for placing such a high demand for these products?

As always, it's easier to attack a corporation than your fellow neighbor.

Originally posted by Alxandro
So what's the solution?
Do we fault and attack Apple for manufacturing these devices?
Or the consumer for placing such a high demand for these products?

As always, it's easier to attack a corporation than your fellow neighbor.

Well, for starters, I suppose 'attacking' and 'faulting' people isn't much of a solution, eh? That's just an argument.

It would be better if we came up with a true solution. Perhaps Apple - who is so great in coming up with new technology - could build iPhone manufacturing robots to do all (or at least most) of the work?

Or, maybe Apple could be a little more generous with the mutli-multi BILLIONS of dollars they are making off of their products. This shouldn't be 'government regulated,' but if We the People demanded better living wages and work conditions for the people making the phones before we would agree to buying the phone, then I guarantee you Apple would do something about it. I know that's a long stretch, but I can dream, eh?

reply to post by eleven44


Making robots?
And have many more unemployed people roaming the earth?

That's not a solution that's a cop out.
What makes you think having robots do the job will lower the price of any high demand product?

We are all to blame, face it, some more than others.

that is so true ..... In the area I work in, I repair many computer peripherals, and just because we are an NPO, we don't have money to replace stuff. If I really have to put a price to the time it takes to repair something, like a monitor, it becomes a personal issue to me. It might cost me 5 US$ in components to repair a computer monitor, but with the time disassembling it, repairing it, and testing it, we might just as well have bought a new monitor. So from a manager's POV it might not be worth it, but from and environmental pov it is worth it... That is why I have a huge problem with Apple's newest products, in which everything is glued, or utrasonically welded together, making repairs impossible. Should I choose between a product that can be repaired, and Apples products that are not repairable, what would I choose. Guess what, I wouldn't recommend an Apple product to anybody.....

reply to post by eleven44


I have talked aboujt this in many threads now, I am glad to see a thread about it, hopefully it gets A LOT of attention!

I worked at foxconn in their plainfield indiana HP production facility, I was quality control, it wasn't a terrible gig, if you don't mind watching 90% of the workers in the building being illegal immigrants, and being treated quite badly, for next to nothing.

If your like me it was next to unbearable, most of the illegals were pretty good people over all. I felt terrible for them.

our daily quota for the production floor was 12,000 units a day, ranging from top of the line military comps.( 16 2gig ram sticks, with up to 2 1terrabyte GDU card mounted processors, with state of the art encryption) to you run of the mill cheap stre bought standard models.
I went to school for computers so I was mostly on the top of the line builds, checking that all the components were properly installed, we did it all. Fire wire, sata, E-sata etc.

My best experience at the place was without a doubt my last day!

FYI:

For those that don't know it, pretty much every single electronic gadget, computer, Television, digital camera, phone, ipod, ipad, and/or information technology oriented hardware has something built, assembled, made, fabricated, or developed by foxconn in it.

Usually this takes the form of component connectivity communications cables, like IDE, Serial, Parallel, firewire and other IEEE standardized communications cables inside a device.

Sometimes it's assembly of the device in question, or, in some cases, the majority of the device itself.

Everything you own that has a chip in it likely has something from Foxconn, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Hitachi inside of it, sometimes all of them.

Owning any electronic gadget that doesn't have any Foxconn inside it, whether labor, parts, or both is like asking for steak without the cow.

Boycotting Foxconn would involve giving up essentially all modern transportation (chipsets, wiring, electronic board printing etc), all communications, all computers, media, everything.

To boycott Foxconn, one would need go live in the wilderness, completely off the grid.

This is your capitalism at work.

Exploitation of labour of the worst kind, that would happen here if it wasn't for the labour movement and unions.

It might even happen here yet, the way our economy is going. When Chinese workers finally organise enough to start demanding better pay and conditions, capitalists will start looking elsewhere for cheap labour.

Are you willing to work for very little pay and dangerous working conditions?

If not it's time to start looking at worker ownership, and stop with anti-labour nonsense that has been conditioned into people.

Worker Ownership for the 99%: The United Steelworkers, Mondragon, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center Announce a New Union Cooperative Model to Reinsert Worker Equity Back into the U.S. Economy

It's the only way to create a stable economy and stop the capitalist model of 'boom and bust'.

I dont know what scares me the most - the slavery in today's world conducted by the megacorps all over the world or the fact that people are deceived to the point they actually expect something different.

Take a good look at the video people because that is the future of the U.S. that`s our future.

if you won`t work 12 hours a day for minimum wage to keep a roof over your head and food on the table,there are 500 people in line behind you that will.
Don`t kid yourself and think that they can`t or won`t do the same with your job no matter what job you have, nobody is irreplaceable.
For every person with a job there hundreds of qualified unemployed people who are just waiting to take that job for less pay just so they can have a job.

Don't blame the consumers for this. Blame the company making humongous profits! More profits than any company should ever want. Look at how much folks pay for these cheap plastic trinkets! With say a few more parts than a $10 cell phone? Oh and I guess the software that costs a lot to "manufacture" on each phone? Insert smirk here... If they would just take a portion of those profits and give them to the folks that make their products this wouldn't even be happening. So Apple would just have a few less dollars in their pockets. The rich get richer on the backs of the poor. So Apple, don't even dream of blaming this on consumers!

So how much does Apple make? Try nearly 12 billion in the first 3 months of this year alone. So who is at fault here? Thought so...

This is a perfect example of what is wrong in this country. Tremendous profits on the backs of increasingly poorer employees. I vote for huge tariffs on imported products. Then they will be forced to manufacture in America.

reply to post by eleven44


it amazes me that people read stories like this , and denounce apple - you you really think that the scores of factories producing other brand consumer electronics [ like the ones you are reading this on ] are any different ?

This is the same type of factory that Mitt Romney said he was doing China a favor by outsourcing to them.

Originally posted by Druscilla
FYI:

For those that don't know it, pretty much every single electronic gadget, computer, Television, digital camera, phone, ipod, ipad, and/or information technology oriented hardware has something built, assembled, made, fabricated, or developed by foxconn in it.

Usually this takes the form of component connectivity communications cables, like IDE, Serial, Parallel, firewire and other IEEE standardized communications cables inside a device.

Sometimes it's assembly of the device in question, or, in some cases, the majority of the device itself.

Everything you own that has a chip in it likely has something from Foxconn, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Hitachi inside of it, sometimes all of them.

Owning any electronic gadget that doesn't have any Foxconn inside it, whether labor, parts, or both is like asking for steak without the cow.

Boycotting Foxconn would involve giving up essentially all modern transportation (chipsets, wiring, electronic board printing etc), all communications, all computers, media, everything.

To boycott Foxconn, one would need go live in the wilderness, completely off the grid.

edit on 22-9-2012 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)

Good point. As much as "poor working conditions" are not liked, it's a truism that we need these types of factories that put manufacturing above all else.

Hey, I say we take all of the prison population in the US and force them to do similar work!! you know... instead of the tax payer paying some 20k a year to house them in our prison systems!

reply to post by RealSpoke


We disagree alot of the time, this is not one of them. Star for you sir! Romney already has plenty of money, more then anyone would ever need, it should be criminal to be so greedy.

reply to post by eleven44

I had been hearing this, but as a pure coincidence I worked on an older Dell Vostro 200 last evening, and it has a Foxcon motherboard. It pains me to see how the people who make these boards we find in our manufactured computers these days ate treated. A giant question always comes to mind too, whenever I hear something like this.

When are Americans going to manufacture computer motherboards and components?

Is anyone going to tell me we cannot do this?