Foxconn

One of the production floors in Foxconn factory at Shenzhen

Foxconn has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities—more than in any other country.[34]

The largest Foxconn factory is located in Longhua Town, Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers (varying counts include 230,000,[33] 300,000,[35] and 450,000[36]) are employed at the Longhua Science & Technology Park, a walled campus[10] sometimes referred to as "Foxconn City".[37] The park produces the bulk of Apple's iPhone line.[38]

Covering about 3 km² (1.2 sq mi),[39] the park includes 15 factories,[37] worker dormitories, 4 swimming pools,[40] a fire brigade,[10] its own television network (Foxconn TV),[10] and a city centre with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, book store and hospital.[10] While some workers live in surrounding towns and villages, others live and work inside the complex;[41] a quarter of the employees live in the dormitories, and many of them work up to 12 hours a day for 6 days each week.[33]

Another Foxconn factory "city" is located at Zhengzhou Technology Park in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where a reported 120,000 workers are employed as of 2012.[42]

Foxconn's future expansion include sites at Wuhan in Hubei province, Haizhow, Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Tianjin, Beijing, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, China.[34] A Foxconn branch that primarily manufactures Apple products is Hongfujin.

On 25 May 2016, the BBC reported that Foxconn replaced 60,000 employees because it had automated "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with their operations". The organization later confirmed those claims.[43]

All company facilities in South America are located in Brazil,[44] and these include mobile phone factories in Manaus and Indaiatuba as well as production bases in Jundiaí, Sorocaba, and Santa Rita do Sapucaí.[45] The company is considering more investments in Brazil.[46]

A Foxconn factory in the Czech Republic

Foxconn has factories in Hungary,[47] Slovakia,[46] the Czech Republic,[48] and Turkey.[49] It is the second-largest exporter in the Czech Republic.[48] The Turkey facility[50] is located 100 km west of Istanbul within European Free Trade Zone in the Corlu district.[51] It was established in 2010.[51] It covers 14,300 sq. meters.

As of mid-2015, Foxconn was in talks to manufacture Apple's iPhone in India.[52] In 2015, Foxconn announced that it would be setting up twelve factories in India and would create around one million jobs.[53] It also discussed its intent to work with the Adani group for expansion in the country. In August 2015, Foxconn invested in Snapdeal. They also signed an MOU with the state government of Maharashtra to set up an electronics manufacturing plant in Maharashtra with an investment of $5 billion within a 5-year period.[54] In September 2016 Foxconn started manufacturing products with Gionee.[55] In April 2019 Foxconn reported that they are ready to mass-produce newer iPhones in India.[56] Its Chairman Terry Gou said that the manufacturing will take place in the southern city of Chennai.[56]

Foxconn and Sharp Corporation jointly operate two manufacturing plants specialising in large-screen televisions in Sakai, Osaka. In August 2012, it was reported that Sharp, while doing corporate restructuring and downsizing, was considering selling the plants to Foxconn. The company was believed to be receptive to the plan. The acquisition was completed with a $3.8 billion deal in August 2016.[57]

Foxconn Technology Malaysia factory at Kulai, Malaysia

As of 2011, Foxconn had at least seven factories in the Johor state,[58] at Kulai, where it is developing an industrial park that includes four factories that comprise fully automated assembly lines as well as fully automated packaging lines.[59]

Foxconn has a facility in San Jerónimo, Chihuahua that assembles computers,[60] and two facilities in Juárez – a former Motorola production base that manufactures mobile phones,[61] and a set-top box factory acquired from Cisco Systems.[62] LCD televisions are also made in the country in Tijuana at a plant acquired from Sony.[63]

The company invested $377 million in June 2014 to pick up a 4.9 percent shareholding in a South Korean IT services provider, SK C&C.[50]

Foxconn announced on 26 July 2017 that it would build a $10 billion TV manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin and would initially employ 3,000 workers (set to increase to 13,000).[64][65] As part of the agreement, Foxconn was set to receive subsidies ranging from $3 billion to $4.8 billion (paid in increments if Foxconn met certain targets), which would be by far the largest subsidy ever given to a foreign firm in U.S. history.[66][67][68][69] Some estimate that Foxconn is expected to contribute $51.5 billion to Wisconsin's GDP over the next 15 years, which is $3.4 billion annually.[70] However, numerous economists have also expressed skepticism that the benefits would exceed the costs of the deal.[71][72][73][74][75] Others have noted that Foxconn has made similar claims about job creation in the past which did not come to fruition.[66][68][76]

Foxconn was also exempted by Governor Scott Walker from filing an environmental impact statement, drawing criticism from environmentalists.[77] The plant was estimated to contribute significantly to air pollution in the region.[78] Environmentalists criticized the decision to allow Foxconn to draw 26,000 cubic metres (7×10^⁶ US gal) of water per day from Lake Michigan.[68] Given water concerns, Foxconn is spending $30 million on zero liquid discharge technology.[79] Foxconn is also required to replace wetlands at a higher ratio than other companies; Foxconn must restore 2 acres of wetland for every 1 acre disturbed instead of the ratio of 1.2 to 1 for other companies.[79]

As of 4 October 2017, Foxconn agreed to locate their plant in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin,[80] and broke ground for the plant June 28, 2018. President Trump was in attendance to promote American manufacturing.[81][82]

In January 2019, Foxconn said it was reconsidering its initial plans to manufacture LCD screens at the Wisconsin plant, citing high labor costs in the United States.[83]

Allegations of poor working conditions have been made on several occasions. News reports highlight the long working hours,[37][39] discrimination against Chinese workers by their Taiwanese co-workers,[105] and lack of working relationships at the company.[106] Although Foxconn was found to be compliant in the majority of areas when Apple Inc. audited the maker of its iPods and iPhones in 2007,[10] the audit did substantiate several of the allegations.[107] In May 2010, Shanghaiist reported that security guards had been caught beating factory workers.[108]

In reaction to a spate of negative press, particularly that involving worker suicides in which 14 people died[109] from January to May 2010, Steve Jobs defended Apple's relationship with the company in June 2010, citing that its Chinese partner is "pretty nice" and is "not a sweatshop".[110] During this time, however, a report jointly produced by 20 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China described Foxconn factories as labor camps[111] with widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime.

Concerns increased in early 2012 due to an article published in The New York Times in October 2011.[112] It reported evidences that substantiated some of the criticisms. The 2012 audit commissioned by Apple Inc. and performed by the Fair Labor Association found that workers routinely subjected to inhumane bouts of overtime up to 34 hours without a hike in pay and suggested that debilitating workplace accidents and suicides may be common.[113][114] A Hong Kong non-profit organisation, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, has written numerous negative reports on Foxconn's treatment of its employees, for example in 2010 and 2011.[115] These typically find far worse conditions than the 2012 Fair Labour Association audit did, but they rely on a far smaller number of employee informants, circa 100 to 170.[116] The Fair Labour Association audit in 2012 used interviews with 35,000 Foxconn employees.[113]

In January 2012, about 150 Foxconn employees threatened to commit mass-suicide in protest of their working conditions.[117] One worker said the protest resulted from 600 workers being moved into a new "unbearable" factory location.[118] In September 2012, a fight at worker dormitories in Taiyuan, Shanxi, where a guard allegedly was beating a worker, escalated into a riot involving 2,000 people and was quelled by security.[119]

In October 2012, the company admitted that 14-year-old children had worked for a short time at a facility in Yantai, Shandong Province as part of an internship programme,[120] in violation of the 16 year age limit for legal workers.[120] Foxconn said that the workers had been brought in to help deal with a labour shortage, and Xinhua quoted an official saying that 56 underage interns would be returned to their schools. Reuters quoted Foxconn saying that 2.7 percent of its workforce in China were long or short-term interns. In response to the scrutiny, Foxconn said it would cut overtime from the current 20 hours per week to less than nine hours a week.[120]

Also in October 2012, there was a crisis concerning an injured worker, when 26-year-old Zhang Tingzhen[121] suffered an electric shock and fell in a factory accident[122] a year earlier. His doctors did immediate surgery to remove part of his brain,[123] "[after which] he lost his memory and can neither speak, walk".[124] When his father attempted to get compensation in 2012,[123] Reuters reported that Foxconn told the family that if they did not transport and submit him for a disability assessment in Huizhou 70 km away, they would cut off funding for his treatment.[121] His doctors protested the move for fear of a brain haemorrhage en route,[124] and the company stated that it was acting within labour laws.[122][125] His family later sued Foxconn in 2012, arguing in court that Tingzhen had been summoned to the wrong city.[121] In 2014, a court ruled that he did have to be assessed in Huizhou to receive compensation, with Foxconn offering a settlement for the father to recant his criticisms, which was refused.[123]

In February 2015, Beijing News reported that an official with the All China Federation of Trade Union (ACFTU), Guo Jun, said that Foxconn allegedly forced employees to work overtime, resulting in occasional death by karōshi or suicide. Jun also said that the illegal overtime resulted from a lack of investigation and light punishments. Foxconn in return issued a statement questioning Guo's allegations, arguing workers wanted to work overtime to earn more money.[126]

In November 2017, the Financial Times reported that it had found several students working 11 hour days at the iPhone X plant in Henan province, in violation of the 40-hour-per week mandate for children. In response, Foxconn announced that it has stopped the interns' illegal overtime work at the factory, where 3,000 students had been hired that September.[127]

Since 2016 Foxconn has been replacing its workforce with robots, with robots having replaced 50% of Foxconn's labor force by 2016 with plans to completely automate factories.[128]

In 2019, there was report stating that some of Foxconn's managers had used rejected parts to build iPhones.[129]

Suicides among Foxconn workers have attracted the media's attention.[130] Among the first cases to attract attention in the press was the death of Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old man who committed suicide in July 2009 after reporting the loss of an iPhone 4[131] prototype in his possession.[132] According to The Telegraph, Sun Danyong had been beaten by security guards.[118]

There was also a series of suicides which were linked to low pay in 2010.[130] In reaction to a spate of worker suicides in which 14 people died in 2010,[109] Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at the base of buildings in some facilities[133] and promised to offer substantially higher wages at its Shenzhen production bases.[134] In 2011, Foxconn also hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller to help deal with the negative publicity from the suicides. That year, the nets seemed to help lower the death rate, although at least four employees died by throwing themselves off buildings.[118]

In January 2012, there was a protest by workers about conditions in Wuhan, with 150 workers threatening to commit mass suicide if factory conditions were not improved.[118] In 2012 and into 2013, three young Foxconn employees were reported to have died by jumping off buildings.[118] In January 2018, another suicide was reported by a factory worker, after 31-year old Li Ming jumped to his death off a building in Zhengzhou, where the iPhone X was being manufactured.[118]