Giant Company That Makes Chinese People Work Like Slaves: Foxconn

First of all, it is necessary to know that the Apple factory in China is not technically an Apple factory. Nokia, Samsung From plastic covers to speakers of many devices such as; Many important parts, from keypads to circuits, are produced by Foxconn.

This giant technology manufacturer produces phone parts through the companies it owns. while producing 70% He also made his name known to the world. But with a bad reputation.

Foxconn is a huge company based in Taiwan.

Company, Taiwanese businessman Terry Gou was founded by It is one of the largest employers in China, with 1.3 million employees recorded in 2018.

It also has giant facilities covering an area of ​​2.1 km around the world. In these facilities, surrounded by city-like complexes, Foxconn’s products are produced almost in an industrial city.

The company’s leader, Terry Gou, draws attention with his $7 billion fortune and is referred to as Taiwan’s Donald Trump. He strangely prefers to be addressed as “general”. Although Gou is one of the names driving Foxconn’s success The company’s power and influence faded into the background over time.

Its most important production is Apple products.

such as Samsung, HP, Nokia Among the products produced by other brands, the most popular is the iPhone. The region where production takes place is a state where people have historically suffered from poverty. It should also be noted that people call this place the ‘iPhone state’.

Employees come to this region from other cities and live in the facilities. prison lifeIt would be more accurate to say ‘i’, because these workers are worked like slaves.

to this factory You may wonder what conditions are required to be hired as a worker. Let’s say it right away; All one has to do is join the queue to be hired outside the factory!

The company has been subjected to serious criticism over time with suicide cases.

In order to cope with this crisis following the suicide of its employees, Foxconn “General” Under Gou’s leadership, it had decided to cooperate with the US-based public relations company Burson-Marsteller. Foxconn, “Use foreign game rules when fighting” He tried to manage the crisis based on his principle.

Workers live in the factory facility busy working hours, The fact that they were not rewarded for their labor and the difficult conditions in the facility showed that they were driven to suicide.

Although the company does not accept this situation, it is an indisputable fact that the factory employs people like slaves. Workers cannot go out of 12-storey buildings, 8 people share a room and each floor has a shared bathroom for 200 people.

As a result of the investigations into the incident, it was realized that workers were prohibited from resigning.

While workers working under difficult conditions complain about this situation, it is also stated that there is nothing they can do. Nearly 300,000 employees work at Foxconn’s giant Longhua factory facility; iPhone, Sony PlayStation and Dell The company organized a celebration to raise the morale of its employees after the suicides occurred while they were spending their days producing computers.

For similar reasons, their employees jumping off buildings Over time, his suicide made Foxconn owner Terry Gou the center of criticism in the press.

The suicides took the company worldwide, especially In order to bring products such as the iPhone to the market at affordable prices, young workers are subjected to harsh conditions. He introduced himself as a beast of the industry he worked for.

It’s not a lie either; What employees say about the company supports these claims. IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Apple These events emerged as a serious pressure and public relations problem for companies such as Foxconn, which have close commercial relations with Foxconn.

Gou expressed that he did not take suicides seriously as follows:

“The first, the second and the third… I didn’t see these as problems.. We have approximately 800,000 employees here and a 2.1 square kilometer campus. I feel responsible now. But at the time, I didn’t feel like I needed to take responsibility for what happened. “After the fifth suicide in March, I decided to do something different.”

As a matter of fact, after the 5th suicide case, Foxconn did not enter into a crisis management situation. However, after this date, in order to prevent suicides, they decided to surround their buildings with 3 million square meters of wire fences, establish a 24-hour support line, and pay workers’ salaries. He offered a 30% increase as a solution.

In order to use workers’ power more effectively, Gou; He decided to meet his food, health and shelter needs at work.

This strategy greatly reducing costs He almost had the upper hand in outperforming his rivals. That’s exactly what he did.

used in cooking eggs are obtained from chickens raised on campus, A specially formed team was assigned to produce the tools that the workers would use.

On the campus, whose entrance resembles a prison atmosphere, there are fast-food shops, There was a monotonous city with ATMs, Olympic swimming pools, LED screens with service announcements and bookstores.

In bookstores, Gou’s biography books were prominent.

Gou, who gives extensive space to his interesting principles in these books, “Work is also a form of entertainment, zHe used expressions such as “A friendly environment is a good thing” and “An army of 1000 people is easy to find, but a general is hard to find.”

To herself Not “boss” but “general” He wanted to be addressed as. This is actually a sufficient reason to reveal what kind of system he works with.

The important turning point of the company is It was through his collaboration with Atari in 1980. This agreement was a critical step in the company’s growth process. The collaboration, which started with the production of 2600 consoles, also resulted in Foxconn’s first major business partnership. It later grew rapidly in the field of consumer electronics and became a leader in the private sector in Taiwan.

This rapid rise of the company went unnoticed by the media. No news about Foxconn was published until June 2006.

But in 2006 In the London Daily Mail An article published drew attention to Foxconn. In the article, he discussed that 30,000 workers were working under difficult conditions in the company’s factory in Longhua.

After these statements, there was chaos; Apple sends a team to the factory decided to examine the employees. According to this inspection report, it appeared that working conditions were very difficult indeed. Workers are working more than usual, experiencing difficulties in paying salaries, and in three-layer bunk beds They were living in prison.

Following the report, Foxconn made adjustments on the issues for which it was criticized, but it was in vain. In the following years, the company would announce its bad reputation to the media for completely different reasons. One of them is Food poisoning in 2022 Its factory in India was closed due to the protests of living factory workers.

The phones and tablets that many of us currently have are coming from the hands of workers working under these difficult conditions. Even though it is audited by taking into account complaints about the company We hope for a production center where conditions are improved.

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