Foxconn iPhone plant at Zhenghzou reopens with 10% of workforce

Apple supplier Foxconn is said to have reopened Zhenghzou, its most critical iPhone production plant, but only a tenth of the workforce has returned.

Following conflicting accounts over Chinese authorities either blocking Foxconn's factories reopening, or not, a new report says the most important plant at Zhenghzou has restarted production.

According to Reuters, Foxconn received permission on Monday to reopen its Zhenghzou facility.

It's not known what time Foxconn received permission, or whether it was able to open for a full daytime shift. Reports say, though, that only 10% of the workforce have returned so far.

While some number of Foxconn employees may have been away from the facility during the Lunar New Year holiday, in general the staff live in barracks on site. It's possible, then, that the 10% figure is the proportion of all Foxconn staff at all facilities, rather than a per-shift total solely at Zhenghzou.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo did recently estimate that disruption caused by the coronavirus, and continued concern over safety, would mean fewer workers returned than needed. He estimated that Zhenghzou would initially see between 40% and 60% of workers as the plant restarted.

Similarly, Kuo believes that the Shenzhen plant will see only between 30% and 50% of its total required workforce returning.

Of these two Foxconn plants, Zhenghzou is believed to be the most critical at the moment because it is were the majority of iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro models are assembled. However, Shenzhen is thought to be where the forthcoming "iPhone 12" is being worked on, so delays now will have repercussions later.

29 Comments

sirozha 801 comments · 15 Years

About 4 years ago

I hope the Apple customers and shareholders are content with the fact that Apple products are manufactured by workers who live in the “barracks” on manufacturing sites.

To me, personally, this brings about some negative connotations, such as labor camps in a number of totalitarian countries, such as Germany and USSR.

Apple gadgets are really nice things to own and to use, but we normally don’t want to know how Apple is able to maintain such high profit margins. Knowing that millions of the Chinese work long shifts and sleep in barracks on site gives me a really bad taste about the duplicity and the hypocrisy of the Apple top management. Apple’s logistical savvy turned these poor Chinese workers into human robots. Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones. Instead, Apple uses hundreds of billions of dollars to buy back shares while exploiting vulnerable people.

I don’t care that other companies may do the same. Apple bills itself as the most ethical corporation, yet when we learn what really is going on, the truth is quite the opposite.

Disclaimer, I use Apple electronic products exclusively unless there is no Apple product in a certain category. I am also a recent long-term shareholder but not anymore. The more I learn about how Apple outsourced all its “dirty business” to their contract manufacturers so that Apple can have a plausible deniability in how it gets such low manufacturing costs from its suppliers, the more I feel like I need to take a long shower because I’ve been complicit in Apple’s policies for so long.

davewrite 65 comments · 16 Years

About 4 years ago

sirozha said:

Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.

so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ?
Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?

Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.

(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )

sirozha 801 comments · 15 Years

About 4 years ago

davewrite said:

sirozha said:

Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.

so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ?
Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?

Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.

(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )

It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.

Using the same logic, the slave owners justified slavery in the US, saying that their slaves have much better lives than they would have had in Africa had they not been captured and sold into slavery. I’m not kidding. The founding fathers who created this wonderful republic and wrote these wonderful documents like the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, etc. were all slave owners who thought of themselves as the most ethical human beings and for sure did not believe that them using slave labor was anything unethical. That includes people like George Washington.

So, keep things in perspective. What Apple is doing today is not much different from
what slave owners did when they manufactured tobacco, cotton, and other crops with slave labor.

Apple’s logistical savvy depends on 21st century equivalent of slavery.

polymnia 1080 comments · 15 Years

About 4 years ago

davewrite said:

sirozha said:

Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.

so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ?
Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?

Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.

(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )

I agree we (speaking as an American) sometimes go overboard with our criticism. It also come off a little paternalistic. We just pat them on the head an say “why don’t your young workers do like ours do: open their organic free range haberdasheries operating in restored urban machine shops built in the 1920’s, where, coincidentally, these young worker’s great great grandparents toiled long hours doing repetitive, dangerous work while facing violent crackdowns on their efforts to unionize at the hands of law enforcement with the complicity of our democratic government.”

not that I condone poor working conditions or government crackdowns, but let’s also try to see the decisions chinese workers make without our lenses of privilege we wear around all day.