As the iPhone 14 buzz continues, Foxconn's large-scale labor recruitment has begun to be put on the agenda. However, the hustle and bustle on the line has nothing to do with the workers, who only care about how much overtime they work and how much they get paid per hour.
Over the years, Foxconn has been known as the "Forbidden City" for many years, but it has always remained a bit of a mystery.
With the popularity and popularity of short videos, more and more Foxconn workers have become self-media people, active in various short video platforms, and many of them are famous, such as the B station UP master "Tang Ren found ordinary", "lone wolf" and "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the" and "the". The first is the "B" station UP master, "twenty-one", "old real blind beeping", "summer and autumn cold vlog", "Xiong Zi Ji", etc. ....
They used rough but real images to record their assembly line life, and what was uncovered in the process was the mysterious corner of Foxconn.
In this Internet era where everyone is a director, through these videos, some people lament seeing their former selves, some people flirt with seeing their future selves, and more people just hunt for curiosity, from which they immersed themselves in the experience of Foxconn life, and peeped into the life of a hundred different kinds of people on the assembly line.
O1
Foxconn, always in short supply
Walking around the Longhua Qinghu neighborhood, you can see this scene every day: buses parked on the side of the road, dragging suitcases and buckets. The people who look around.
Young people from all over the country are brought by a bus, pouring into the large and small electronic factories in Longhua District, Shenzhen, most of the people in the eyes of the "good factory", is Foxconn.
The first step in the process of getting to the factory is the intermediary.
B station UP master "Tang Ren found ordinary" (hereinafter referred to as "Tang Ren") once teased in the video: "In Foxconn, wake up is not the desire to make money, not the alarm bell, but also to wake up," he said. In Foxconn, the thing that wakes you up is not the desire to make money, nor the alarm bell, but the agent downstairs."
Every year in July and August, Foxconn's recruiting season. The young people who are pulled in by buses will converge under the dormitory building and line up in the square like a school military training walk in square formation.
In the eyes of the agent, these surging heads are a sheet of RMB. An intermediary to recruit ten people and all work for a month, you can get paid about 3500 yuan - higher than the factory workers in the base salary of 2460 yuan.
Around Foxconn, there are countless intermediaries and human resource agencies, which are a mixed bag. Large and small, first-hand and second-hand, formal and black hearted, "introduction fee", "raise the price of labor", "make up the price difference", these quite "set of "These words are commonly used by them. The same work, different intermediaries will give a different hourly rate.
Some young people are inexperienced and are tricked into entering the factory on the side of the road, doing the same work for a lower wage than others.
Foxconn is always short of people and always hiring.
According to people familiar with the situation, Foxconn has about 500 people leaving the company every day.
"Tang Ren" has told in the video, work three days, his eight roommates left two : there are automatic departure, but also dissatisfaction with the post and the line chiefs had a big fight, and there are also people who left without even asking for wages. "The video mentioned that a colleague in the workshop said he went to the bathroom and never came back, and complained to the next worker, "This work is too fine, I can't do it".
Compared to other factories, it is special that in Foxconn, "seven in, seven out" is not rare , some people get paid and run home, no money and back to the factory, and others want to go out and try to get a better chance, and finally go back to Foxconn.
Dormitory hallways, often abandoned cooler, bedding, basin ...... These inconsequential things, taking them away would be a burden to run, because by the time you get to the next electronics factory, there are new alternatives. Someone in the factory will specialize in picking up things that others leave and throw away, and there's always something to salvage, even worn clothes, to bring in to be re-sterilized and re-worn themselves.
The bucket has long been a special symbol in factory discourse.
In the blackest factory, the reddest bucket is a joke, like the slogan of the workers who moved from factory to factory, struggling to make a living in the mobility of life.
The bucket is portable and practical, and at a glance, everyone knows what's inside. It opens up the space, as many people unknown and drifting life.
O2
More than three months, even if it is able to stay up
Foxconn factory area is large, generally divided into "southeast, northwest, north and west" four sides of the door.
There is strict management here, except for customers and factory people, few people can get involved in the inside. People need to go through a process of inspection: face swipe at the gate, full body security check, uniform ......
In order not to affect the cleanliness of the workshop, some parts of the factory need to wear dust-free clothes, and different colors of clothes divide the workers into different classes.
There's a saying that goes around the factory: "Purple ones do the work, pink ones look at it, yellow ones go around, and blue ones say it's all right".
This suggests that Foxconn is like a mini-society.
The final monthly wage in the factory is directly proportional to the amount of overtime worked, and that's why people in the factory greet each other with "Did you work overtime today?
During the shift, the flow of people is divided into teams, and the lockers are full of people: those coming out of the production line, and those who are "ready to go".
Changing into their uniforms and putting their cell phones and other personal belongings in the lockers, they are silent and skilled in this set of customized actions.
UPmaster "Twenty-One" earns $23 per hour by repeating 400 small parts. She is surrounded by deaf, introverted boys who don't need to speak to each other, and only occasionally make eye contact. So Twenty One is often working with her hands, but her mind is elsewhere.
Every day at 3:15 p.m., the factory plays soft music: this is the time when the production line workers are united in the air. Workers come out of the building in groups, pick up their cell phones and cigarettes, and squat on the stairs and in the park. For them, this is the best way to relax.
Management is strict, boring and repetitive, such a life, some people stay three days, some people stay three months.
"If you can stay at Foxconn for five or eight years, you must not have any idea what you're doing." UPI's "Old Truth" lamented his ten years at Foxconn.
At Foxconn, about half of the people still work at night.
At 5:00 pm, "Tang Ren" walks out of the campus cafeteria after dinner and changes his clothes for a new day of work.
10 hours later, "Tang Ren" is full of gaunt face out of the workshop: " The body sits there, the heart has long been asleep, people live a little meaningless kind of feeling. "
Relative to the night shift in the assembly line, the "old true" had been in the department of the night shift is relatively easy , no supervisor has been guarded, they only need to watch the machine running regularly.
When tired, colleagues will go downstairs to the grove to touch fish, smoking, playing games. There are also some bold people, after 12 o'clock to go back to sleep in the dormitory, at the risk of being caught to be dismissed, lying until five or six o'clock in the morning and then come back to punch the clock.
The night shift for the workers is all about getting through.
At three or four in the morning, when hunger and drowsiness come at the same time, some workers refresh themselves by drinking hormone drinks, and some will secretly squint for a few minutes, but they have to be scared and hang on for fear of monitoring, and even more afraid of being caught by the leaders.
In the factory, those who don't work the night shift are either leaders or have a need to prepare for pregnancy - they need to go for a run at night to ensure sperm quality. Once they have a baby, they resume night shifts.
This "anti-human" routine forces a separation of body and soul.
O3
Longhua "night city"
Foxconn is surrounded by a lot of urban villages, food streets, and Internet cafes, which are located every few steps away, small hotels, they light up the night in Longhua.
"Old Truth" joined Foxconn in 2010, and his greatest joy every day was to walk across the wasteland (now known as the Longhua Xinghe ICO) to an internet café with his fellow workers after work.
As in the past, the major Internet cafes around Foxconn are still full at night.
Compared to going back to a crowded dormitory, the 32-inch monitors, comfortable ergonomic chairs, and hearty games in the Internet cafes are much more tempting.
Young people who haven't yet found a job can get a comfortable place to stay for a tenth of the price of a hotel.
At eleven o'clock at night, outside the Foxconn factory, the streets are filled with working men.
Some people have just finished working overtime, and some are preparing for the night shift. Before entering the factory and having their cell phones confiscated, their greatest interest is to squat down or find a stone bench to lie flat, smoke a cigarette, aimlessly swipe their cell phones, and laze around.
Longhua Cultural Square at night is also a hunting ground for Foxconn people.
The square is playing disco music, and men and women are swinging to the beat.
The ratio of men to women in electronics factories is severely disproportionate, and it's harder than ever for men to find a partner in a factory.
The old real" colleague "7" is in the Longhua Square dance to find an object. He looked at the girl who led the dance, every time to the girl to buy a whole box of water, continuously buy a few months, to the other side of the contact information.
Eat a big meal, recharge the balance of the network card, all-night games, in the dance floor to release hormones ...... After leaving the assembly line, these timely pastimes bring satisfaction to the workers.
Until the early hours of the morning, Foxconn's night is gradually quiet. The life on the production line in the park is repetitive and boring, and the night outside the park is thus infinitely elongated.
O4
Foxconn, like a walled city
The Longhua factory covers an area of about 2.3 square kilometers, with more than 100 buildings, and a 50-minute ride around the outside of the factory. Employees here once topped out at about 300,000+.
Now, according to the owner of a barbershop in a neighboring urban village, 80 percent of the people who used to come to get a haircut were Foxconn people, but now only 20 percent.
Foxconn, like a walled city, where those inside want to go out and those outside want to come in.
After leaving Foxconn, the "old real" full-time self-media, contact with people from all walks of life, reflecting on the time in Foxconn, he said: "I still think that the feelings of the people in the factory between the most pure. "
In the video, he has repeatedly expressed hesitation, entanglement, " Should we still go back to Foxconn? "
In the past couple of years, the old man has heard that many of his colleagues at Foxconn have been promoted and given pay rises.
Some people originally in the Foxconn base salary of six or seven thousand, now went to Huawei, base salary of thirteen thousand. This worker has been working on a niche machine for more than ten years, and it is estimated that less than a hundred people in the country will use it. Others went to other small factories, and some became senior engineers. ......
"They were the ones who had the skills, and they just got through it."
More workers are just leaving Foxconn and going to another factory, life has not changed much, there are also business ventures to open a milk tea store, barbecue store, some lost money, some barely making ends meet.
Talking about the changes in these coworkers, the "old truth" is inevitably a little sad.
Compared to them, he seems to be the "loser" for. He only has a resume of Foxconn work, and in the factory ten years, in his words, "I did not devote myself to the manufacturing industry", so the result is "less than the top, more than the bottom".
"It's rare to get promoted to management at Foxconn, but doing a good job with technology can really earn you money."
Now that the self-publishing media is not doing well, the "old truth" kind of wants to leave Shenzhen. These ten years he has not left Longhua, and he as many years did not leave Longhua workers, the factory infrastructure is perfect, the factory outside the price is affordable, the workers in Longhua can be "so life for thirty years".
"Where is our future?"
Somewhere along a quiet lane lies a small door to Foxconn. The fence is lined with rows of tall coconut trees is very striking. At three o'clock in the afternoon, workers habitually come to squat under the trees, play with cell phones and touch fish.
Not far from the park, there is a hundred-meter long queue, and a new batch of young people with suitcases are coming from far away.
Some of the images in this article are sourced from
"Old True Blind Beep" "Lone Ranger XXI"
"Tang Ren Discovers Ordinary" "Xiong Zi Ji" "Summer Autumn Cold vlog"
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