Chapter 12 3. The Back of the Foundry Empire

In Shenzhen, there are two typical companies, one is Foxconn and the other is Huawei.Foxconn had 400,000 employees in Shenzhen before relocation, 85% of whom were technicians born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are typical labor-intensive enterprises; Huawei, which is separated from Foxconn by a wall, almost all its employees come from top universities in China. , is a technology-intensive enterprise in the "post-world factory era".The living status of employees in these two companies can almost represent the living status of employees in similar companies in Shenzhen. From these two controversial and topical companies, it also reflects the development trajectory of Shenzhen companies and workers and the future development of Shenzhen. direction.

From the beginning of 2010 to May, in just a few months, Foxconn experienced a "twelve consecutive jumps".There is a lot of talk about how this "sweatshop" exploits and squeezes workers. However, it is strange that since this "devil factory" is so "horrible", why do tens of thousands of people squeeze their heads out to get in? After the Spring Festival in 2010, the "labor shortage" swept across the Pearl River Delta. According to media reports, there was a shortage of 2 million workers in Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta region, and Shenzhen alone had a shortage of 800,000.However, the Shenzhen processing plant presents a "two worlds of ice and fire". On the one hand, small and medium-sized processing enterprises are desolate, and on the other hand, the general worker recruitment office of Foxconn Group's Longhua base is extremely hot.Foxconn divided its recruitment site into three areas. Thousands of job seekers waited in an open space in the number of nearly a hundred people in each queue. About ten minutes apart, the staff randomly selected 200 of them to another open space for screening.It is said that some job seekers even come to the recruitment site in the middle of the night to wait in line in order to interview as soon as possible.

For job seekers in the contract processing industry, the company's popularity and comprehensive welfare system are key considerations, as one Foxconn applicant said: "Foxconn has done a good job in the welfare system. It can be said that after entering the factory Basic necessities, food, housing and transportation are basically free, such as providing free work clothes, free cleaning of work clothes, Foxconn has a university, and provides free courses from technical secondary school to doctorate for employees.” Compared with the old batch of migrant workers, the new generation of migrant workers has changed their definition of "job": when choosing a job, we pay more attention to the improvement of ability. It's hard to see hope.Therefore, SMEs are no longer the first choice.

Therefore, even after the Foxconn suicide incident, it will not affect the applicant's choice. On May 17, 2010, Foxconn started recruiting again, and there were about 2,000 people waiting in line at its recruitment site at the south gate. However, at present, Shenzhen is still dominated by small and medium-sized processing enterprises, and there are relatively few large-scale foundries. Correspondingly, a situation of "few gruel and many monks" has formed for applicants, with fewer choices and stronger competition.Therefore, some workers who cannot enter the large processing enterprises in Shenzhen prefer to stay at home after the festival, rather than travel thousands of miles to the south, earning the same money as at home.

In fact, the applicants said that Foxconn's salary and benefits are good, but this is only relative, because Foxconn's basic salary is still very low. The basic salary of Foxconn employees has changed six times: 380 yuan, 400 yuan, 600 yuan, 700 yuan, 900 yuan, and 1,200 yuan.” However, “In Shenzhen, a salary of 900 yuan is equivalent to buying daily necessities of 200 yuan a month and 3 yuan a day. The level of a bowl of instant noodles." Liu Kaiming, director of the Shenzhen Institute of Contemporary Social Observation, said.Therefore, in order to obtain higher income, Foxconn employees have to work overtime, as one Foxconn employee said: "A factory with more overtime is a good factory. Because without overtime, there is no money at all."

In 2009, the Shenzhen Contemporary Society Observation Institute conducted a survey on Foxconn’s wages and overtime hours. Through the survey, Liu Kaiming showed the high-intensity overtime life of Foxconn employees: “The results show that in 2009, Foxconn worked 117 hours of overtime per month. Even as high as 140 hours, and the salary is between 1,500-2,000 yuan." In order to get higher salaries, employees have to work overtime. However, the overtime hours of each employee are different, and colleagues on the same assembly line may also get very different pay. Nanfang Daily mentioned such an example when reporting on the Foxconn incident:

The 10th of every month is not so much a salary payment day as a "competition".People who get high overtime wages can easily put a smile on their faces.Those who are not too high, inquire about the high salary of their colleagues in private, and after sighing, they raise the "target" again.Many people fall into a strange circle because of this, even if they are too tired to move, once they hear about working overtime, their eyes still light up.As for the reason, it is not simply the need for money, but psychological satisfaction is greater than material needs.Zhu Fuquan, a Taiwanese production supervisor, said: "Here, workers have to work overtime, and if they want to work overtime, write to them to ask for overtime work." For the factory, employees can't wait to work overtime.Because every time the machine is turned off and on, the loss is huge, so I would rather pay overtime pay than stop the entire line.Therefore, the factory will fill the time gap between the day shift and the evening shift by asking workers to work overtime “voluntarily” most of the time.

Southern Weekend reporter Liu Zhiyi, who had been lurking in Foxconn for 28 days, also mentioned this crux. He said: "Every employee will sign a 'voluntary overtime termination agreement', and then your overtime hours will no longer be subject to legal regulations. The upper limit of 36 hours per month. But this is not a 'bad thing', on the contrary, in the eyes of many wage earners, a factory with a lot of overtime is a 'good factory', because 'without overtime, you can't make money at all'. Yes For migrant workers who are eager to make money, working overtime is more like a "breathing pain": if they don't pay, the days without money will make them "suffocate"; Getting old. Most of the time they firmly choose the latter, and even the right to choose is not easy to obtain. Only when the boss 'trusts', has a good relationship, or is in a key position, can they often work overtime."

Under the lure of working overtime to get higher wages, under the comparison with workers with higher income, under the herd mentality that I can’t fall behind even if I work overtime with others, OEMs have to put themselves into the high-speed, monotonous and boring work of the assembly line. run.As Liu Zhiyi said: "At four o'clock in the morning, after going to the toilet, I put my ear on the wall of the workshop corridor, and heard the rumble of machines coming from all sides, with a steady frequency, which is the heartbeat of this factory. Workers work every day Working, walking, and eating under the control of this natural frequency, I now understand why I walk so fast on the factory road and eat so fast in the cafeteria without anyone urging me, although I don’t Comfortable. Like every component, you enter the assembly line, obey the rhythm, belong to the heartbeat at four o'clock in the morning, and cannot escape."

Different from other companies, Foxconn, a low-tech OEM company, has a long promotion channel for personnel, almost based on seniority. An article in "IT Times Weekly" "Foxconn: Who caused the confrontation between cross-strait employees?" "The article mentions Foxconn's position establishment, "There are two types of formal employees, employee level and technical teacher level: from employee 1, employee 2, employee 3, teacher 1, teacher 2 to teacher 14, employees with a college degree Entering Foxconn is generally division 1, and undergraduates are division 2. If you do well, you can be promoted to a class-level cadre in 3 years. This refers to the technical line division staff. If you are an employee on the production line (that is, the staff level), If you are lucky, it will take 6 years to reach a management level such as section chief. But for 99.9% of the production line employees, that is a dream.”

Hierarchy can also be seen everywhere in this enterprise. Walking in the Foxconn factory area, one can see through the identity and work of the other party at a glance: the clothes of the employees, as well as a small movement, can "sell" one's own class.For example, boys wearing black T-shirt overalls are ordinary workers on the basic assembly line. The "engineer".You can tell whether he is a Taiwanese manager or a mainland manager just by looking at which channel he goes upstairs: the former is called a "Taigan" and enjoys a special channel, which does not require identity verification, There is no need to swipe the card, and there is no one to check; the mainland cadres called "Lu Gan" can only go to and from get off work along the other three channels. Even if his position has entered the high-level management, he can only enter and exit through the ordinary channel .This is a rule that has never been written into an official document, but is carefully followed and maintained by everyone. Therefore, for many Foxconn employees, it is also difficult for them to pay attention to promotions. As far as they think, "the various ranking systems here are actually too complicated, and we often can't tell them apart." Too many Hierarchy makes employees feel that they "can't climb up", and the promotion is very accidental: first, a position will only be promoted from the next level when there is a vacancy, and ordinary managers "climb" to a certain position with great difficulty. For a position, unless there is a major change, they will generally try their best to maintain their position; if they want to be promoted, they need to be proposed and applied by their direct supervisor, and they must be approved step by step by multiple supervisors above the supervisor. Few supervisors take on such "thankless" errands.Most importantly, as an employee in Mainland China, “No matter how hard you work and how good your grades are, you can generally only be ranked among low-level or middle-level managers, and you cannot be promoted to high-level executives.” Multiple interviewees It is a well-known secret that "Lu Gan" (mainland cadres) will not be reused, especially not assigned to some core positions. Chen Weiliang (pseudonym), an old employee who worked on the Foxconn assembly line for eight years, recalled his passing time like this: One day in 2002, Chen Weiliang came to Foxconn for an internship from a technical secondary school in the central region, and was assigned to Shenzhen Longhua Park.He got 600 yuan during the trial period in the first month, and it became 1,100 yuan in the second month.This made Chen Weiliang a little excited, so he stayed without hesitation and became an assembly line worker who created huge wealth for Foxconn. His first job was "quality control", which was a quality inspection job. After two days After the training, they will officially take up the job.At Foxconn, conveyor belts and working platforms are constantly rotating almost everywhere. He completed the test of a circuit board in 20 seconds and filled 7 electrostatic bags in one minute. By his side, many people spent 10 hours a day repeating several monotonous actions non-stop.Each worker is a link in the process.In their hands, high-tech products such as computers, mobile phones, and MP3 players were born, but many people have never even seen the finished products.Chen Weiliang said: "For example, some general workers have worked for three years, and all their work is scanning, bagging and labeling." Every day, those few actions, sweat dripping on the running machine, evaporated without a trace . Because every year around March, Foxconn will adjust the salary once.Therefore, in the first three years of coming to Foxconn, Chen Weiliang was always transferred to a new department a few months before each salary adjustment. "At the beginning, I was always very happy. I felt that I could learn more after being transferred," Chen Weiliang said.But in the end he found that the result of changing the guard was that the salary had not increased for three years.Only then did he realize that he was being treated as a "stab".This situation lasted for three years.It was not until 2005 that he changed from "non-civilization" to "civilization". Said two levels: member level, teacher level).This long promotion process made him quite frustrated, because he felt that "I worked harder and harder than others, but the promotion came slower than anyone else." Compared with some people who were promoted quickly, usually within a year Civilization has never been dedicated to civil servants.After that, Chen Weiliang decided to put his personal gains and losses aside for the time being, and he almost followed the slogans and adages that can be seen everywhere in Foxconn's factory buildings as his code of conduct. After "Taiwanization", Chen Weiliang slowly developed.He started to lead newcomers. In 2008 and 2009, Chen Weiliang was promoted two levels in a row.He has developed from "Member 1", "Member 2", and "Member 3" to "Division 1". What is the difference? ——"The housing allowance for business trips at the division level is 500 yuan, and that at the staff level is 150 yuan. This is the difference between grades." Although he was promoted, Chen Weiliang still felt unprecedentedly frustrated.It took him eight years to achieve division 1, and there are still 14 levels above, and the higher the level, the more difficult it is.He said that there is only Guo Taiming in the "15th division", and the "14th division" basically serves as the general manager of the business group, and they are basically all "Taiwan cadres".This is simply a fantasy for him. In 2010, Foxconn had a "12 consecutive jumps", and Chen Weiliang's workers were also persuading him to "change jobs". However, jumping out from here is like facing a mountain. Who knows what is behind the mountain?Moreover, Foxconn's "salary increase" promise, the one-month cumbersome resignation procedure, and the "rumor" of factory relocation all made it difficult for him to measure. Seeing the employees queuing up every day regardless of the scorching sun or the storm, and full of dreams to join Foxconn, he remembered a sentence that a worker said to him: "Many people leave this place, but the machines are still running normally, and no one will remember you. the value of".In the end, he made up his mind that even if there is still a mountain behind the mountain, he still has to leave. Foxconn is just a microcosm of the foundry enterprises in Shenzhen.Thousands of workers make this machine run at high speed, but the dreams and "sense of identity" of the workers are torn to pieces in the "Foxconns" and in "Shenzhen".If we say that this factory and this city are full of money comparisons between employees and competition for job promotion among employees, the essence is still the competition between workers and their own destiny. The army of new towns mainly composed of "post-80s" and "post-90s" is no longer out of "reasons for survival". They regard entering the city as an opportunity to change their lifestyle, and regard personal growth and development as more important than "jobs". Important, this is obviously different from their parents. In terms of spiritual characteristics, the first generation of migrant workers endured hardships and endured hardships and endured hardships in order to support their families; while the second generation of migrant workers pursued equality and advocated individuality in order to seek opportunities for development.In terms of industrial distribution, the first generation of migrant workers is mainly concentrated in industries with high labor intensity such as construction and textiles; the second generation of migrant workers is distributed in technical industries such as manufacturing and electronics.In terms of employment structure, the outstanding feature of the first generation of migrant workers is that they are both workers and farmers. They can work in cities and farm land when they return to their hometowns; while the second generation of migrant workers pin all their hopes in cities. However, when they joined the tide of urbanization and industrialization with their dreams in mind, the contrast between ideals and reality caused many contradictions and confusions in their hearts. ——They found that apart from working next to the machine every day, the city actually did not leave any more places for them. "We keep working overtime and overtime." From the idyllic life in the countryside to the semi-militarized enterprise, as the original interpersonal relationship is severed, loneliness, helplessness and anxiety become the norm of their existence. ——They found that low wages can only maintain a simple material life. Compared with urban people, their spiritual life is very poor. "Come to the factory like a rising tide, and leave like an ebbing tide. Except for the products that sold out quickly, this enterprise, together with this city, has not left much trace of them." Sociologist Shen Yuan said to the new generation of migrant workers describe. ——They discovered that in order to escape from the "farm gate" and jump into the "city gate", they paid almost everything, but there were still insurmountable thresholds in front of them. "Household registration, education, social security, medical care, housing... seem to be one step away from us, but I don't know what forces are controlling them. No matter how hard we try, it is difficult to achieve." Migrant workers said. ——They found that when they encountered problems such as contracts, salary deductions, and disabilities, it was difficult to defend their rights fairly.The "urban dream" of the new generation of migrant workers has become somewhat blurred.They are unwilling to return to the countryside, and they cannot enjoy the same treatment as urban residents.This new generation of migrant workers who lack a sense of belonging has become a "sandwich layer" alienated from the city and the countryside. This is the cry from ordinary employees at the bottom of Shenzhen. Can the so-called "white-collar workers" live with dignity and freedom? Employees at Foxconn are committing suicide here, and employees at Foxconn’s “neighbor” Huawei are also dying suddenly. Although Huawei’s industrial structure is already on the upper level of Foxconn, there is still a “curse of death” that cannot be escaped.