Answer ONE of the following two questions in about four sentences.

How does worker resistance relate to labor control regimes? Choose one country and describe the labor control regime and the type of resistance in which workers were engaged. 

How does the labor control regime employed by Foxconn inspire both worker suicides and worker resistance? 

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Labor control regimes and worker resistance in
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Mark Anner

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Labor control regimes and worker resistance in global supply chains

Mark Anner*

School of Labor and Employment Relations, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA, USA

(Received 2 March 2015; accepted 6 April 2015)

Thisarticle seeks to examine two inter-related dynamics, the relationship between
the international dispersion of apparel production and labor control regimes, and
the relationship between labor control regimes and patterns of worker resistance.
The article argues that where apparel production has concentrated in the last
decade has as much to do with labor control regimes as with wages and other
economic factors. It suggests that there are three main labor control regimes in the
sector: state control, market despotism, and employer repression. The article then
argues that these systems of labor control are conducive to three patterns of
worker resistance: wildcat strikes, international accords, and cross-border
campaigns. The article explores these arguments by examining examples of
apparel global supply chains in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Honduras.

Keywords: apparel; strikes; resistance; Honduras; Vietnam; Bangladesh

Introduction

Proponents of a race-to-the-bottom argument would suggest that production goes where

wages are lowest, but that argument cannot explain why China continues to dominate

apparel production while its wages are four times higher than in Bangladesh. At the same

time, those who suggest that production goes where logistics are the most efficient and

economies of scale are the greatest (as in China) cannot explain why Vietnam is one of the

fastest growing major apparel exporters in the world, or why Honduras is the largest Latin

American exporter.

Buyers in apparel global value chains want not only to keep costs low, but also to

reduce the likelihood of supply chain disruption caused by worker organization and

mobilization. Indeed, what this article will show is that the 10 top apparel exporters in the

world today reflect three models of labor control. These include state labor control

regimes, market labor control regimes, and employer labor control regimes.

In the case of state labor control regimes, labor is controlled by a system of legal and

extra-legal mechanisms designed to prevent or curtail independent worker organization

and collective action. Extreme examples of such regimes include China and Vietnam,

which I label as authoritarian state labor control regimes. In market labor control regimes,

unfavorable labor market conditions discipline labor; strong worker organizing is curtailed

because workers are afraid that active participation in a union may result in job loss and

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

*Email: msa10@psu.edu

Labor History, 2015

Vol. 56, No. 3, 292–307, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1042771

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mailto:msa10@psu.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1042771

prolonged unemployment or underemployment. Low-income countries with very weak

labor markets, such as Bangladesh and Indonesia, exemplify despotic versions of market

labor control regimes. Finally, employer labor control regimes in their most extreme form

include highly repressive employer actions against workers, including the use of violence

or the threat of the use of violence. Examples of such repressive employer labor control

regimes can be seen in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia.
1

These three general forms of control are not mutually exclusive or static; all

countries have had elements of each system and all countries go through changes over

the course of their histories. Bangladesh is a market labor control regime, but workers in

Bangladesh also have been killed while organizing collective action. And in Vietnam,

control is mainly exercised through an authoritarian state, but the fear of unemployment

also looms large and serves to increase worker discipline. In sum, these are typologies

of labor control regimes that illustrate dominant, not exclusive or static, models of

control. They should be seen as a heuristic tool used to elucidate the relationships

between ideal-typical labor control regimes, which are present to various degrees in

all cases.
2

This article makes a second claim, that the three models of labor control outlined above

in their more extreme manifestations have engendered three patterns of worker resistance:

wildcat strikes, international accords, and cross-border organizing. That is, how workers

protest is partially shaped by how they are controlled. Workers with extremely weak labor

market power will have limited effectiveness in attempting to organize and protest at firm

level since they can be easily replaced, just as workers facing repressive employers and a

complicit state will be disinclined to believe that they can resolve their demands locally.

Workers in an authoritarian regime who may face imprisonment for developing ties

with outside interests will be reluctant to pursue cross-border campaigns or international

accords to address their grievances. Rather, wildcat strikes are often prevalent in such

regimes, because workers need to circumvent official unions, and labor internationalism it

not an option. That is, since only one official union center is allowed to operate and since

that state-sanctioned center does not effectively represent workers’ interests, workers are

forced to take matters into their own hands by organizing unauthorized strikes.
3
Yet, as we

shall see, they need to do so very carefully, notably by protecting the identities of their

leaders.

International accords build on global framework agreements (GFAs),
4
but they go a

step further in that they hold the lead firms in global value chains partly responsible for the

cost of decent working conditions through binding agreements. The most recognized

example of such an accord can be seen in Bangladesh, which, not coincidently, is one of

the more extreme examples of a market labor control regime. Such an accord was pursued

in Bangladesh because labor market conditions were so unfavorable to labor that it was

necessary to address local market conditions by going outside the national state and using

international pressure.

Finally, cross-border organizing campaigns have emerged in repressive employer

labor control regimes, because the threat of bodily harm by employers gives local activists

a means by which to frame their concerns through international campaigns that generate

maximum impact.
5
Honduras exemplifies a case of a repressive employer labor control

regime, because it is the most violent country in the world and employers have used

violence or the threat of violence to control labor. Not coincidentally, Honduras has one of

the most vibrant traditions of effective cross-border

organizing campaigns.

Labor History 293

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See Table 1 for a summary of labor control regime types, patterns of resistance, and

country-case illustrations.

Labor control and worker resistance in global supply chains

Traditional theories of labor control – often referred to as labor process theory – begin on

the factory floor. This is where Harry Braverman observed myriad forms of control, most

often linked to de-skilling.
6
Michael Burawoy observed how employers build consent

among workers by, for example, encouraging them to produce more by competing with

one another. In so doing, employers “manufactured consent” by having workers buy into

the system.
7
In the decades that followed, a rich stream of scholarship examined hidden

and informal mechanisms of hegemonic control, consent, and resistance within capital–

labor relationships.
8

This article builds on this tradition by linking domestic patterns of control with the

international dynamics of supply chains. In the context of global competitiveness pressure,

it explores patterns of labor control at the workplace, labor market, and state levels. The

formation of national states, for example, has been notoriously tied to patterns of labor

control, with the state’s use of its security forces to control labor unrest. Communist states

offer an extreme example of labor incorporation and control. In their study of trade unions

in communist countries, Alex Pravda and Blair Ruble observe how such systems adhered

to the Leninist model of dual functioning unions through which unions are subordinate to

the state and must work to defend the socialist system by encouraging labor productivity –

the productivity function. At the same time, unions should protect workers against any

potentially harsh treatment by management – the labor protection function.
9
Over time, in

many socialist countries the productivity function was emphasized over the protection

function, and control over unions shifted from the state to the party.
10

Market labor control regimes are in many ways the opposite of state labor control

regimes in that they often occur in weak states, especially in terms of labor regulation and

enforcement capability. Workers have less bargaining power during economic downturns

as high unemployment forces them to accept poor working conditions and makes them

cautious about organizing labor unions for fear that they might easily be replaced.

Webster, Lambert, and Bezuidenhout find that growing labor market flexibility has led to

“market despotism,” which is a return of an “old” form of control through coercive market

power “where the whip of the market was used to discipline workers.”
11

Any labor market dynamic that increases workers’ sense of vulnerability – be that an

increase in part-time work, short-term contracts, or outsourced labor – will also increase

labor control. Workers in such contexts are inclined to put up with bad conditions and low

wages rather than risk unemployment and poverty out of fear that, should they speak up,

they may lose their jobs as a result. Indicators of a labor market control regime are low

wages and a high proportion of the workforce that is unemployed or underemployed.

Table 1. Labor control regimes, resistance patterns, and country examples.

Regime Pattern of resistance Case studies

Authoritarian state labor control Wildcat strikes Vietnam
Despotic market labor control International accords Bangladesh
Repressive employer labor control Cross-border organizing Honduras

M. Anner294

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Given its low start-up costs and high competitive pressures, the garment industry is

notorious for low wages, outsourcing, and precarious employment practices. Some

countries, however, face far more difficult circumstances than others. Using data on

prevailing and living wages recently compiled by the Worker Rights Consortium, Table 2

shows that Bangladesh has the lowest wage rate in the industry, and that the prevailing

wage covers only 14% of a family’s basic living needs.
12

The final system of labor control is employer workplace repression. As noted above,

most theories of labor control begin with employers and the workplace. This is because it

is precisely at the point of production that capital is most concerned with ensuring worker

discipline in order to realize its gains. As David Harvey observes, hegemonic control never

thoroughly displaced despotic forms of employer control in the global economy. Harvey

argues that much capital is still accumulated by dispossession, that is, through what he

refers to as predation, fraud, and violence.
13
Indeed, in regions of Latin America and Asia,

we are seeing a rise in violence against unionists and worker activists. Colombian

employers have notoriously turned to paramilitary forces to rid themselves of worker

organizers for decades
14
; and, in El Salvador and Honduras, the two most dangerous

countries in the world, almost every major attempt by workers to form unions since the

early 2000s has entailed the threat of violence against activists.
15

Worker resistance

Systems of labor control are often conducive to worker resistance. Beverly Silver, for

example, argues that, as capital attempts to control labor by moving from one region to

another (the spatial fix), capitalists continually create new working classes that then

challenge capital through waves of protests.
16

Ching Kwan Lee suggests that patterns of

worker resistance are often shaped by the state. In China, she notes, worker resistance fits a

pattern of cellular, or decentralized, activism as a result of decentralized state

bureaucracies and how workers use the law.
17
In my own research, in addition to economic

and state structures, I have found that patterns of resistance are also influenced by labor

union worldviews and workers’ lived experiences.
18

In this article, I explore how the three models of extreme labor control outlined above

are conducive to the three patterns of domestic and transnational worker resistance

outlined above: strikes, international accords, and cross-border campaigns. Strikes have

been a fundamental mechanism through which workers have sought to address their

concerns since the beginning of employment relations. Indeed, whereas scholars such

as James Scott have popularized everyday forms of resistance such as pilfering and

Table 2. Contribution of wages to a family’s basic needs
a
.

Prevailing wage Wage/Basic needs

Bangladesh $51.67 14%
China $214.49 36%
Honduras $250.01 47%
Indonesia $142.32 22%
Mexico $376.27 67%
Vietnam $112.09 29%

a
WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers.

Labor History 295

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absenteeism,
19

Elizabeth Perry rightly contends, “The strike is only one weapon in the

arsenal of workers, but it is an especially efficacious and important one.”
20

The reason

wildcat strikes are the most common form of worker resistance in state labor control

regimes is twofold. First, official unions – because of their ties to the state and the party

and their resulting interest in maintaining “harmonious” employment relations – do not

respond to the needs of workers, especially workers in foreign-owned private enterprises

where unions are especially weak and working conditions notoriously harsh. Second, the

state prevents workers from having strong, direct ties with international advocacy groups.

Thus, on the one hand, the state blocks access to formal national institutional mechanisms

that might address workers’ concerns, and, on the other hand, the state blocks workers’

ability to pursue a Keck and Sikkink “boomerang.”
21

That is, it prevents them from

bringing pressure to bear on the state from the outside via transnational alliances. This

leaves workers one option: to take matters into their own hands via localized collective

actions.

International accords build on GFAs. In an effort to hold lead firms in global supply

chains accountable for employment relations practices and conditions in suppliers,

international trade unions have established GFAs with multinational companies

(MNCs).
22

These agreements reach beyond the enterprise and national state levels to

achieve labor agreements at the transnational level, and, unlike corporate social

responsibility programs, these agreements are negotiated between labor and MNCs. Yet,

the clauses in these agreements can be vague, are not legally binding, and do not address

pricing issues.

A substantive transformation took place when labor unions negotiated the Bangladesh

Building and Fire Safety Accord with MNCs in 2013. Through this accord, which I have

labeled with Jennifer Bair and Jeremy Blasi as a Buyer Responsibility Agreement, lead

firms (the buyers in global supply chains) are held jointly liable for conditions in their

supply chain and partly responsible for the costs of producing their products under decent

working conditions.
23

The accord focuses on safe buildings in Bangladesh, but its

framework could easily be expanded to cover other issues and more countries.

It is not coincidental that such an accord has been designed to address issues in

Bangladesh, with its despotic market labor control regime. No doubt, the dramatic

building collapse at Rana Plaza motivated the accord, but this event itself did not dictate

the outcome, a major international agreement in which northern MNCs (mostly European)

agreed to increase the price they pay for the production of their product in order to ensure

safe buildings. The reason that worker activists and their allies pursued a transnational

accord of this nature is because domestic market conditions have made labor so weak that

a more traditional domestic approach would only have reflected this weakness and thus

done little to address the problems faced by workers. Hence, transnational leverage in the

form of a binding agreement was a logical choice for worker activists in this context.

The third pattern of worker resistance, cross-border organizing campaigns, builds on a

long and complex history of labor internationalism that goes back 200 years. As Lewis

Lorwin documents, centuries of labor internationalism were shaped by mass worker

migration, competitive world markets, wars, and socialist ideals on the emancipation of

labor.
24
And, as Roland Erne finds, although labor movements have been primarily tied to

their nation state through neocorporatist social pacts and nationalist worldviews, the

pressures created by the most recent era of economic globalization have also pushed them

to build ties across borders.
25

M. Anner296

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The more complex questions are when will labor pursue internationalism and, if it does

occur, what form will it take? Building on the transnational advocacy and global supply

chain literatures, I have argued that labor is more likely to pursue transnational solidarity

when blocked from resolving its demands through domestic structures and when labor

movements are influenced by class-based ideologies.
26

What I also suggest here is that

extreme forms of employer labor control regimes that involve violence or the threat of

violence provide labor movements with a mechanism to frame their issue that is

particularly conducive to effective cross-border campaigns.

Labor control regimes and apparel global supply chain restructuring

Current patterns of labor control regimes in the apparel sector are largely a consequence of

the recent hyper-competitiveness dynamics fomented by restructuring and changing trade

rules. In 2001, the World Trade Organization (WTO) admitted China as a member.

China’s position was enhanced when WTO member states negotiated the Agreement on

Textiles and Clothing that, on 1 January 2005, phased out the system of quota-based trade

in apparel. By 2003, China passed Mexico as the largest exporter to the USA and became

the largest apparel exporter to the world. Asian competitiveness increased further with the

USA–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement of 2001. Like China, Vietnam offered labor

control through state-controlled unions, but with much lower wages.

An additional factor shaping competitiveness dynamics in the apparel sector is brand

and especially retailer concentration relative to suppliers. Since start-up costs in apparel

are relatively low, apparel production has been greatly dispersed to a very large number of

factories in developing countries. By 2006, there were a total of 3500 export processing

zones, each with many independent factories within them, employing 66 million workers

in 130 countries.
27

At the same time that production dispersed, retailers greatly

concentrated their power through advances in logistics and technology.
28
The result was a

dramatic increase in value chain monopsony (power consolidation of lead firms relative to

downstream suppliers), exemplified by the enormous number of small apparel producers

who are forced to compete with one another for contracts with a limited number of

retailers and manufacturers. In such a context, the retailers and other buyers largely dictate

the price they will pay per garment.
29

These macro-level political and structural changes have had two dominant effects on

workplace dynamics. First, the ability of lead (upstream) firms to set the price paid to

smaller production contractors has generated persistently low wages. Second, the push for

lead firms to demand just-in-time inventory has generated a work-intensity crisis in

workplaces. The real dollar price per square meter of apparel entering the US market

declined by 46.20% between 1989 and 2011.
30

This suggests that apparel suppliers are

indeed producing under increasingly tight economic margins as competitiveness at the

supplier level intensifies.

One of the most direct impacts of the shift to shorter lead times, more styles, and more

volatile orders is in the area of working hours. Forced, excessive, and inadequately

compensated overtime is an endemic problem in the global apparel industry. Because each

new worker hired incurs training costs and fixed benefit costs for employers, many firms

prefer to maintain a smaller workforce and demand that these employees work excessive

hours during periods of peak demand. In effect, just-in-time inventory practices have

meant that upstream lead firms are increasingly able to shift the risks associated with

Labor History 297

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volatile product demand onto their suppliers, and the suppliers in turn shift the burden onto

their workers.

The result of this heightened competiveness and the resulting pricing and sourcing

dynamics is that all major apparel exporting countries now fit into at least one of the three

models of extreme labor control regimes outlined above. A graph of apparel exports to the

USA over the last 20 years displays the largest apparel exporters to the USA. The first two

countries on the list are China and Vietnam, which have authoritarian state labor control

regimes. Indeed, approximately half of all apparel imported into the USA comes from

these two countries. The third and fourth largest apparel exporters to the USA are

Bangladesh and Indonesia, despotic market labor control regimes. The fifth largest

exporter of apparel to the USA is Honduras, which has a repressive employer labor control

regime. Honduras is also the largest apparel exporter to the USA from Latin America,

having surpassed in recent years previous apparel powerhouses in the region, notably

Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, Mexico is noticeable for the dramatic

decline in its apparel exports to the USA. See Figure 1.
31

Certainly, part of these shifting trade dynamics can be explained by costs. Mexico

has one of the highest prevailing wage rates in the apparel sector, and it has not been able

to compete with other countries; notably in 2011, as we can derive from Table 2, the

wage rate in Bangladesh was 14% of that in Mexico. However, a simple race-to-the-

bottom wage argument clearly does not tell the entire story, because the largest share of

apparel is produced in China and wages are much higher in China than in Bangladesh.

Nor does the wage story explain how Honduras came to dominate exports in Latin

America, since its wages are higher than other regional apparel-exporting countries such

as Nicaragua.

Sourcing decisions are no doubt the result of several factors, including production

scale, logistical capabilities, infrastructure, and so forth; but these traditional sourcing

arguments do not tell the entire story either. This is because, in addition to keeping costs

down, investors want to limit the potential for disruption to their value chain operations

that strong, active unions may cause. In addition to production costs and infrastructural

advantages, all major apparel-exporting countries offer investors some form of labor

control.

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

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1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

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Vietnam Bangladesh
Indonesia Honduras
Mexico China (right axis)

Figure 1. Main apparel exporters to the USA (millions sq. meters). Source: OTEXA.

M. Anner298

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In the section that follows, I explore each of the three cases of labor control and worker

resistance through three case studies: authoritarian state labor control and wildcat strikes

in Vietnam, despotic market labor control and international accords in Bangladesh, and

repressive employer labor control and cross-border organizing campaigns in Honduras.

Authoritarian state labor control and wildcat strikes: Vietnam

By 2011, the apparel sector in Vietnam employed two million workers, making it the

largest source of formal sector employment in the country.
32

Apparel production in

Vietnam has remained mostly in the low-end, Cut-Make-Trim segment.
33

Wages have

failed to keep pace with the inflation rate and, as shown in Table 2, cover only 29% of

workers’ basic living needs. Other problems in the sector include chronic overtime,

abusive managers, and poor food quality in workplace cafeterias.
34

Workers’ ability to respond to these concerns, however, is limited by the state labor

control regime. The Communist Party’s control over trade unions is firmly established in

law and practice. The labor law states, “Trade unions are . . . an integral part of the

political system of the Vietnamese society under the leadership of the Communist Party of

Vietnam.” Article 4.6 of the revised labor law states that the purpose of the labor law is, “to

develop harmonious, stable and advanced labour relations.” The law also allows for only

one national labor center, the Vietnamese General Confederation of Labor, to which the

Communist Party appoints national leaders. Strikes are legal in Vietnam. However, they

must be organized or approved by the official unions. And trade unions, following the

dictates of the Communist Party and its desire for social control and labor peace, do not

organize strikes. The regime tolerates isolated enterprise-level strikes that focus on

economic demands and grievances, but there is no tolerance for coordinated strikes, strikes

that involve any form of violence, or strikes with political demands. The leaders of such

actions could be arrested and face lengthy prison terms.
35

In this context of state labor control via party-controlled labor unions, Vietnam has

experienced one of its greatest wildcat strike waves in its contemporary history. From

fewer than 100 strikes per year in the 1990s, in 2006 there were 387 strikes, and in 2011

the country experienced 978 strikes. Strikes focus on common worker issues, such as

wages and benefits. Workers will also strike over bad cafeteria food and an abusive

supervisor. Notably, strikes tend to be short – on average three days long – and

remarkably successful. In 95% of the 97 strikes that I studied, workers achieved at least

one of their demands.
36

Since workers are afraid to identify themselves as strike leaders,

employers are often forced to discuss strike demands with large groups of workers, often

determining how to respond to strike demands by the level of applause given by the

workers when issues are mentioned.
37

This form of worker action can be understood in terms not only of the harsh conditions

and low wages, but also of the nature of the labor control regime. They are worker-led

strikes because official unions do not organize strikes. They are isolated to one factory

because isolated strikes are tolerated by the state whereas coordinated strike activity is not.

And they are perceived as largely leaderless strikes because an outspoken leader would be

perceived as a troublemaker and could face imprisonment.

The short lead times given to suppliers by buyers are also a source of worker power

that is leveraged by wildcat strikers. As Howard Kimeldorf argues, time-sensitive tasks

give workers a source of disruptive power.
38

In the apparel sector, the need for urgent

Labor History 299

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orders to meet retailer needs in a lean retailing system of constantly changing fashions and

seasons means a short strike can put a lot of pressure on employers to get workers back on

the production lines quickly. Indeed, my field research in Vietnam suggests that brands

and retailers may even communicate with contractors experiencing a strike to demand that

they resolve it quickly in order to get the order out on time. This is another reason why

wildcat strikes in Vietnam have such a high success rate.

The question that remains is what wildcat strikes leave in their wake. Although they

are remarkably successful, they are also short actions that lead to quick fixes. The result is

that the problems repeat themselves, and workers have to make the effort to strike again

and again to meet basic demands. More sustained solutions would necessarily involve

transforming the system of state labor control. Here, the impact of the current strike wave

is more limited, but it is not insignificant. Indeed, a strike wave in the early 1990s

contributed to a National Assembly decision to legalize strikes in 1994.
39
The strike wave

of 2005–2006 led to a significant increase in national minimum wages.
40

Most recently,

striking workers helped to motivate the National Assembly to adopt the Dialogue in the

Workplace chapter in the revised Labor Code, which went into effect on 1 May 2013.
41

The revised law requires the election of worker representatives and worker–management

meetings once every three months to discuss production, implementation of collective

bargaining agreements, working conditions, and other issues requested by worker

representatives.
42

Despotic market labor control and international accords: Bangladesh

Bangladesh provides an extreme example of a market labor control regime. With a

population of 155 million and a labor force of over 76 million, some 32% of workers are

underemployed, 31.5% of the population lives in poverty, and the annual per capita Gross

National Income stands at $840.
43

With an average monthly wage rate of $52 in 2011,

Bangladesh has long had the reputation for paying the lowest wages among major

producers in the industry. And, as shown in Table 2, these wages cover only 14% of basic

living needs.
44

Outsourcing, part-time work, temporary employment, and informality all

contribute to workers’ sense of extreme vulnerability characteristic of a despotic market

labor control regime.

Labor market vulnerability has also contributed to a very fragmented labor movement.

This has greatly curtailed labor’s ability to organize and demand greater social protection

as part of a countermovement as might have been anticipated by Karl Polanyi.
45

Countermovements, however, often presuppose a certain degree of structural power to be

effective. Apparel workers lacking labor market power also lack the power to demand

more effective state protection. The result in Bangladesh has been a weak and corrupt

labor inspectorate and poor social protection. Workers cannot expect a solution to their

most pressing concerns from the state.

The hyper competitiveness of the global apparel industry contributes to a system that

seeks to save on costs not only through low wages, but also through low building rents.

This is because, after wages, rents are one of the major costs of doing business in the

apparel industry. The push to keep rents to their lowest possible level has resulted in

extremely unsafe buildings. This was brutally illustrated on 24 April 2013, when

Bangladeshi apparel workers were victims of the worst industrial disaster in the history of

the industry. An eight-story building with five garment factories, Rana Plaza, collapsed

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and killed over 1100 workers; and the Rana Plaza disaster was not the only one of its kind.

Since 2005, there have been 11 major factory disasters in the industry, which took the lives

of 1728 workers.

The tragedies were especially horrific because in many cases employers had been

informed that their buildings were unsafe but, in order to meet the tight lead times imposed

on them by buyers, they refused to stop production. For example, the day before its

collapse, Rana Plaza was inspected and deemed unsafe by a government official. The

bottom floor of the building was occupied by a bank, which immediately instructed all its

workers to leave. The upper floors were occupied by garment factories. In those cases, the

factories were attempting to meet the production deadlines imposed by the brands and

retailers. They were afraid that not only would they not be paid should they miss their

deadlines, but also that the powerful lead firms might subsequently be disinclined to renew

their orders. This illustrates how dynamics upstream in value chains impact working

conditions. That is, the despotic market control regime is the result not only of domestic

labor market conditions, but also of the exigencies of global value chain pricing and

sourcing practices.

What is also important about the Rana Plaza incident is the labor response that followed.

Workers protested to demand better state protections, and the international labor movement

and labor NGOs immediately began pressuring lead firms to accept greater responsibility

for the safety conditions under which their clothing was produced. The idea for a building

and fire safety accord had already been pursued by international labor NGOs. When Rana

Plaza happened, European firms quickly responded to labor pressure and public outrage and

signed up to what became the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

The accord is a significant improvement on a generation of GFAs. Like GFAs, the

accord was negotiated with labor unions, and thus it is a step up from traditional corporate

codes of conduct, which are either unilateral or the result of partnerships with NGOs but

not labor. Where the accord differs from other initiatives is that it is legally binding and

includes a pricing clause. The brands and retailers that signed the accord are committed to

paying contract prices that would allow contractors to produce in safe buildings.

Some observers consider the accord as a top-down solution. Yet, it is important to note

that Bangladesh has experienced a considerable wave of labor protests, and in this regard it

has something in common with Vietnam’s strike wave. However, the vast majority of

factories are not unionized, and, in the few unionized factories that do exist, the unions are

relatively weak and fragmented. Hence, the wave of protest was weaker relative to

Vietnam because market despotism contributes to weaker domestic bargaining power.

As a result, Bangladeshi workers went beyond the national state, partnered with

international labor unions and NGOs, and sought to address some of their demands with an

outside-in solution.

What is also notable is the role of symbolic power and framing. When Bangladeshi

worker activists pursued labor transnationalism in Bangladesh, images of the human

horror created by the building collapse were used to shame brands and retailers in the

Global North. In sum, international labor and NGO pressure, and worker mobilization,

resulted in changes for workers in the country despite their extremely disadvantageous

market power. Buyers are now committed through a legally binding accord to pay the price

for safe buildings, and the country’s minimum wage was increased by 77% in January

2014. Labor laws were also reformed, although some of the reforms were inadequate and

enforcement remains an issue.

Labor History 301

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Repressive employer labor control and cross-border solidarity: Honduras

Honduras, which is registered as the most violent country in the world on the basis of its

annual rate of homicides per capita, represents the use of violence and the climate of

violence for controlling labor. Although Honduras did not experience the extreme death

squad repression of neighboring countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala during the

1980s, state security forces and paramilitary groups did repress labor.
46
Yet, Honduras has

had one of the relatively strongest labor movements in Central America, which can be

traced back to the great banana workers’ strike of the 1950s.
47

Partly as a result of this

legacy, in the 1990s, Honduran unions were organizing far more apparel export plants than

any other country in the region.
48

Unlike Vietnam, there has been a vibrant tradition of

independent unionism in Honduras. And, unlike Bangladesh, the union movement has

been relatively less fragmented. This has provided the foundation for sustained domestic

organizing campaigns.

No doubt, despotic labor market conditions have hurt organizing attempts. Yet, wages

are higher and labor markets somewhat better in Honduras relative to Bangladesh. What

have been more significant in controlling labor are efforts by employers, who have pursued

a range of union avoidance techniques, including the aggressive promotion of company

unions.
49

Anti-union violence also escalated significantly after the 2009 coup d’état that

removed a pro-labor reformer, Manuel Zelaya, from power. It was in the years following

the coup that Honduras became the most violent country in the world.
50

In major

campaigns to organize workers in the apparel sector, union leaders faced death threats. For

example, Norma Mejia, a garment worker who attempted to organize a Russell Athletic

factory, found a note on her sewing machine during the organizing campaign with a stick

figure with its head cut off.
51
When she still refused to stop her organizing efforts, she and

all other union members were fired and the factory was closed.

The threat of violence and other repressive actions are similar to conditions faced by

worker activists in Central America in the 1980s, but the difference is that the violence

during that period was tied to the state, whose leaders saw workers’ organizing as a

political threat to their regimes. In this regard, the 1980s reflected a period of state labor

control. In the 2000s, labor control shifted to the employers, who now fire workers and

then blacklist them, and also at times threaten them. The state creates a permissive

environment through its inaction, as a result of either a lack of capacity or a lack of

willingness to punish the perpetrators of the violence.

The question remains as to what sort of response labor can pursue in such a context.

What we find is that Honduran workers have developed a practice of combining sustained

local organizing with transnational pressure on brands, a pattern of resistance to which I

refer as cross-border organizing campaigns. Like Vietnam, strike actions may be common,

but strikes are used when necessary to complement an organizing drive. They are not the

main mechanism to achieve workers’ goals. And like Bangladesh, there is international

pressure on buyers that often results in signed agreements. Unlike the accord however, the

goal is not to directly influence the price paid for production in order to improve working

conditions, but rather to ensure respect for the right to organize and bargain collectively,

which in turn should improve wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Perhaps the best illustration of such a campaign was the abovementioned campaign

to unionize Russell factories in Honduras. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times

(18 November 2009) proclaimed this campaign to be one of the more important victories in

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the history of the anti-sweatshop movement. In this case, while maintaining their workplace

organizing drive in Honduras, local unionists reached out to US labor and student activists.

The worker–student alliance made sense because Russell was one of the largest producers

of American collegiate apparel. This gave the students a source of economic leverage that

they could exploit by demanding universities cut their contracts with Russell until such

time as Russell respected internationally recognized workers’ rights.

One particularly effective campaign strategy was to bring Honduran union leaders

from the Russell factory to the USA to speak on university campuses. The campaign

achieved two objectives. First, it personalized and legitimized the workers’ demands.

Many campuses cut or suspended their contracts with Russell days after such speaking

events on their campuses. Second, it ensured that the Honduran unionists were integrally

involved in the campaign. Thus, although the campaign did involve external pressure

on the factories, this was not a top-down solution devoid of significant local worker

participation.

Approximately 100 major US universities terminated their licensing agreement with

Russell on the basis of evidence of anti-union activities in Honduras. And in November

2009, after years of union organizing efforts and an intense one-year transnational

campaign, Russell announced it would re-open the factory and re-hire 1200 workers.

Russell also agreed to recognize the union, begin collective bargaining, and adhere to a

neutrality clause for all of its other seven factories in Honduras.
52

The question that remains for Honduras is the sustainability of this pattern of

resistance. Organizing cross-border campaigns for every apparel factory to obtain a union

is impractical because of the cost and coordination constraints of such efforts. The most

logical response would be to campaign toward better labor laws and stricter enforcement

that would facilitate domestic organizing. This was part of labor’s efforts when it lobbied

around free trade agreements with the USA, such as CAFTA-DR. Yet, the greater

challenge is to work toward modifying the economic dynamics around which the market

liberalization model is based, and that would entail engaging in direct bargaining with lead

firms in supply chains.

Conclusions

This article explored how changing dynamics in the global apparel industry has

engendered three models of labor control: authoritarian state labor control, despotic

market labor control, and repressive employer labor control. It also explored how

variations in labor control regimes shaped variations in forms of worker resistance. In our

cases, the system of state labor control was conducive to worker mobilization from below

in the form of wildcat strikes. The system of market labor control contributed to

international buyer accords that force brands and retailers to pay the price for safe

buildings. Finally, the repressive employer labor control regime resulted in cross-border

organizing campaigns that combined international and domestic labor organizing.

The results were substantial. Not only did Vietnamese garment workers achieve

increased wages, better benefits, and other workplace improvements in 95% of their

strikes, but they also forced the government to reform its labor laws to allow for more

worker participation in workplace governance. In Bangladesh, workers and their

transnational allies forced brands for the first time to accept a legally binding accord that

holds them accountable for safe factories. And, in Honduras, workers and their allies

Labor History 303

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forced the country’s largest private sector employer to re-open a factory, re-hire fired

workers, recognize the union, bargain for substantially increased wages, and agree to a

companywide neutrality clause that is allowing workers to expand unionization and

collective bargaining to other Russell-owned facilities in the country.

There are, no doubt, limits to these patterns of resistance. The wages of Bangladeshi

workers remain below subsistence level. Strikes in Vietnam ebb and flow depending on

market conditions and the state’s shifting tolerance for contained protests and its desire to

provide stability to investors. In Honduras, although some unions are growing, so too is the

climate of violence that restrains all but the boldest of workers from protesting. Indeed, the

challenge facing labor is not only to achieve limited protection or economic gains within

the current model of market liberalization, but also to work toward a modification of the

model itself.

Much more research remains to be done, notably on other sectors and other regions of

the world. In many ways, the apparel sector provides for sharper examples because the

industry is extremely competitive and notorious for paying low wages and providing poor

working conditions. This helps to explain the more extreme forms of labor control that

can be found in this sector, but such labor control can be found in other sectors facing

similar conditions, notably agriculture and extractive industries. The brutal conditions

faced by the Marikana miners in South Africa, fomented by a despotic labor market, no

doubt contributed to the contentious strike, which in turned resulted in violent state

repression.

In larger economies, such as the USA, we find more mixed models of labor control

regimes and worker resistance. In higher end sectors such as autos, we can still find

elements of hegemonic control and traditional union organizing, especially in northern,

more unionized, regions of the country; but we also see labor market despotism in low-end

sectors such as the fast food industry with patterns of worker resistance based on disruptive

street protests. For workers based in the largely non-union south of the USA, we see unions

building cross-border solidarity with unions not only in countries such as Germany to help

organize workers, but also in Brazil. US security industry workers have also used the rules

provided by international accords, notably GFAs, to subordinate capital to worker and

union oversight.
53

This article illustrates that patterns of global production are not based solely on costs,

but also on labor control. Labor control regimes will vary depending on local contexts, but

all major apparel exporters subject their workers to one form of control or another.

However, just as labor control regimes vary, so too do patterns of worker resistance.

Workers are finding the appropriate mechanisms to circumvent their particular form of

control; and, in many cases, they are achieving many of their most immediate demands.

More sustained solutions would require re-structuring the economic model that has

engendered these labor control regimes.

Funding

I would like to thank the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University for the funding that
made field research in Central America and Asia possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes

on contributor

Mark Anner is an Associate Professor of labor and employment relations at The Pennsylvania State
University, and he is the Director for the Center for Global Workers’ Rights. His publications include
Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (Cornell
University Press, 2011).

Notes

1. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent.
2. The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for this point.
3. Of course, wildcat strikes require a certain degree of tolerance on the part of the regime, as

we shall see. Highly repressive authoritarian regimes would arrest anyone attempting a
strike.

4. Hammer, “International Framework Agreements.”
5. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
6. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital.
7. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent.
8. Thompson and Smith, “Debating Labour Process Theory.”
9. Pravda and Ruble, “Communist Trade Unions.”
10. Ibid.
11. Webster et al., Grounding Globalization, 52.
12. WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers.
13. Harvey, The New Imperialism.
14. Gill, “Right there with you.”
15. Anner, Unholy Alliances; AFL-CIO, Trade, Violence and Migration. http://www.aflcio.org/

Blog/Global-Action/Trade-Violence-and-Migration-The-Broken-Promises-to-Honduran-
Workers.

16. Silver, Forces of Labor.
17. Lee, Against the Law.
18. Anner, Solidarity Transformed.
19. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.
20. Perry, Shanghai on Strike, 7.
21. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
22. Hammer, “International Framework Agreements.”
23. Anner et al., “Toward Joint Liability.”
24. Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism.
25. Erne, Europeans Unions; Anner, Solidarity Transformed.
26. Anner, Solidarity Transformed.
27. Milberg and Amengual, Economic Development and Working Conditions. Apparel makes up a

large share, but not all, of export processing zone (EPZ) production. Consumer electronics and
other light manufacturing can be also found in EPZs.

28. Abernathy et al., A Stitch in Time.
29. Locke, The Promise and Limits.
30. Anner et al., “Toward Joint Liability.”
31. I have relied on export data to the USA because the US government provides exports in square

meters, which is a more reliable measure of the scale of exports than price since some countries
(such as Italy) export relatively less but at a high price; this distorts their true weight in the
global apparel industry. However, the patterns depicted here are largely matched on a global
scale. According to World Trade Organization data, which measure apparel exports in terms of
value not volume, 38% of global apparel exports come from China (43% if we include Hong
Kong). Bangladesh is the second largest apparel exporter, followed by Turkey and Vietnam.
In general, exports from Latin America are lower to Europe relative to the USA, with Mexico,
Honduras, and El Salvador as the top exporters from the region. http://www.wto.org/english/
res_e/statis_e/its2013_e/its13_merch_trade_product_e.htm

32. Better Work Vietnam, Better Work Vietnam.

Labor History 305

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http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/Trade-Violence-and-Migration-The-Broken-Promises-to-Honduran-Workers

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/Trade-Violence-and-Migration-The-Broken-Promises-to-Honduran-Workers

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Global-Action/Trade-Violence-and-Migration-The-Broken-Promises-to-Honduran-Workers

http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2013_e/its13_merch_trade_product_e.htm

http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2013_e/its13_merch_trade_product_e.htm

33. Gereffi and Frederick, The Global Apparel Value Chain.
34. Anner, “Wildcat Strikes and Social Dialogue.”
35. Human Rights Watch, Not Yet a Workers’ Paradise.
36. Anner, “Wildcat Strikes and Social Dialogue.”
37. Author’s interviews, Ho Chi Minh City, March and April 2014.
38. Kimeldorf, “Worker Replacement Costs and Unionization.”
39. Kerkvliet, “An Approach for Analysing State–Society Relations in Vietnam.”
40. Tran, “The Third Sleeve.”
41. Author’s interviews, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, March and April 2014.
42. Labor Code of Vietnam, Chapter V, Articles 63–65; Decree 60/2013/ND-CP.
43. World Development Indicators, World Bank. http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-

development-indicators
44. WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers.
45. Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
46. Acker, Honduras.
47. MacCameron, Bananas, Labor, and Politics.
48. Anner, Solidarity Transformed.
49. Ibid.
50. http://www.unodc.org/
51. “Warren Buffett Confronted by Factory Worker.” www.youtube.com/watch?v¼JxOYt5vpox8
52. Author’s interviews with labor organizers, San Pedro Sula, July 2009. See also: Hobbs, “Russell

Factory in Honduras”; Russell Athletic, http://www.workersrights.org/linkeddocs/
RussellPublicAnnouncement

53. McCallum, Global Unions, Local Power.

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• Abstract

Introduction
Labor control and worker resistance in global supply chains
Worker resistance
Labor control regimes and apparel global supply chain restructuring
Authoritarian state labor control and wildcat strikes: Vietnam
Despotic market labor control and international accords: Bangladesh
Repressive employer labor control and cross-border solidarity: Honduras
Conclusions
Funding
Disclosure statement
Notes
References

Modern China
38(4) 383 –410

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412447164Pun and ChanModern China
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1Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
2Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey, UK

Corresponding Author:
Pun Ngai, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon,
Hong Kong
Email: punngai@gmail.com

Global Capital, the State,
and Chinese Workers:
The Foxconn Experience

Pun Ngai1 and Jenny Chan2

Abstract

In 2010, a startling 18 young migrant workers attempted suicide at Foxconn
Technology Group production facilities in China. This article looks into the
development of the Foxconn Corporation to understand the advent of capi-
tal expansion and its impact on frontline workers’ lives in China. It also pro-
vides an account of how the state facilitates Foxconn’s production expansion
as a form of monopoly capital. Foxconn stands out as a new phenomenon of
capital expansion because of the incomparable speed and scale of its capital
accumulation in all regions of China. This article explores how the workers at
Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been subjected
to work pressure and desperation that might lead to suicides on the one
hand but also open up daily and collective resistance on the other hand.

Keywords

global capital, Chinese state, student workers, rural migrant workers, Foxconn
Technology Group

When Time magazine nominated workers in China as the runners-up for the
2009 Person of the Year, the editor commented that Chinese workers have
brightened the future of humanity by “leading the world to economic

Articles

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384 Modern China 38(4)

recovery” (Time, Dec. 16, 2009). However, the new generation of Chinese
migrant workers—those born in the reform era in the post-1978 cohort—
seems to perceive themselves as losing their futures. In 2010, a startling eigh-
teen young migrant workers attempted suicide at the production facilities of
Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集团); fourteen
died, while four survived with injuries (SACOM, 2010, 2011). All were
between 17 and 25 years old—in the prime of youth. Chinese media has
dubbed the tragedy the “suicide express” (死亡列车) (Zhongguo jingji wang,
April 9, 2010). This article assesses the changing pattern of global capital
accumulation now playing out in China in order to understand the conse-
quences for workers of the distinctive character of corporate domination with
the support of the state.

This article represents the collective efforts of Foxconn Research Group,
an independent team consisting of teachers and students from mainland
China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan joined together to understand the Foxconn
experience and its impact on young migrant workers’ lives.1 In the first phase,
between June and December 2010, we collected 1,736 valid questionnaires
through snowball sampling methods and conducted worker interviews off-
site in major Foxconn factory areas in nine cities: Shenzhen, Wuhan,
Kunshan, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, Langfang, and Taiyuan. In
the second phase, we documented the labor conditions at two new Foxconn
factories in Chengdu and Chongqing municipalities in March 2011 and revis-
ited the Shenzhen industrial community from mid-October to November
2011 (see the appendix for the surveyed Foxconn factories in eleven cities in
South, East, North, Central, and West China).

Existing literature has argued that China’s rise is a state-driven globaliza-
tion process in which the state has facilitated export-led growth relying pri-
marily on joint-venture and wholly owned foreign capital (Huang, 2003;
Guthrie, 2009; Gallagher, 2005). China’s heavy reliance on foreign direct
investment during the past decades, far more extreme than in other East Asian
countries during their industrial take-off, has brought about not only high-
speed economic growth but has also widened labor and social inequality and
led to environmental deterioration (Solinger, 2009; Chan, 2011; Dahlman,
2011). The peculiar proletarianization process of Chinese internal migrant
workers helps lower not only production costs but also social reproduction
costs in host cities (Pun and Lu, 2010). Like other foreign-invested compa-
nies in China, Foxconn has largely benefited from the state-driven globaliza-
tion process and the unique process of proletarianization since it has enjoyed
preferential policies offered by local governments and cheap production and

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Pun and Chan 385

labor costs when it moved its production base from Taiwan to mainland
China in the late 1980s.

Against this common structural background, our research shows that the
corporate growth of Foxconn in China demonstrates a new phenomenon of
capital expansion in terms of the size of workforces, the scale of factory com-
pounds, and the number of factories dotted over the map of the country.
Having a total workforce of over one million in China, Foxconn has grown
into a mega world workshop, with the smallest single factory compounds
employing some 20,000 to the larger ones with an extraordinary number of
over 400,000. Foxconn has become a monopoly capital firm and it now dom-
inates the global market by producing half of the world’s electronic products.
The astonishing speed of capital expansion across geographic space was
achieved through an alliance with the Chinese state, especially at the local
level. In particular, local governments compete to get Foxconn to set up new
factory compounds in their territories so as to boost GDP growth under their
jurisdiction, to the extent that they ignore the enforcement of labor laws and
hence the protection of workers. Foxconn’s growth has been facilitated by the
Chinese state through the provision of extensive land, infrastructural support,
and a supply of labor, resulting in a distinctive management model and a
global factory regime, leading to worker grievances and feelings of
desperation.

The Foxconn model or experience refines the argument that most of the
foreign-invested companies in China are small- and medium-sized enterprises
(Huang, 2003). It also challenges the belief that by deepening the economic
reform and by furthering the influx of foreign capital into China, the basis for
the institutionalization of legal protections for workers would be strengthened
(Guthrie, 2009; Gallagher, 2005; Lee, 2007). The Foxconn experience points
in the opposite direction. As migrant workers, Foxconn workers enjoy little
labor protection in the society at large and suffer from a heightened work pres-
sure and desperation in the workplace that lead to suicides on the one hand but
also daily and collective resistance on the other hand.

Foxconn: The Electronics Workshop of the World
Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, more commonly known by its trade
name Foxconn, was founded in Taipei in 1974. The name Foxconn alludes
to the corporation’s ability to produce electronic connectors at nimble fox-
like speed. Foxconn is currently the world’s largest contract manufacturer of
electronics, providing “6C” products—computers (laptops, desktops, tablet

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386 Modern China 38(4)

personal computers such as iPads), communications equipment (iPhones),
consumer products (digital music players, cameras, game consoles, TVs), car
parts (automotive electronics), content (e-book readers such as Kindle), and
health care products (Foxconn Technology Group, 2010: 8). The corporate
annual revenue reached an all-time high at 2.9972 trillion Taiwan New
Dollars (approximately US$101.4 billion) for the year 2010, with a year-on-
year increase of 53 percent (Foxconn Technology Group, 2011: 4).

Foxconn has evolved into a global industrial leader in three stages. The
first stage was to advance into mainland China under the coastal development
strategy in the early reform period. The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone
(SEZ), at the northern border of Hong Kong, was opened to Western and
Asian capital investments in 1980. Local officials provided overseas inves-
tors with a wide array of preferential policies including tax exemptions,
cheap land, and streamlined procedures for export. In 1988, Foxconn set up
its first offshore factory in Shenzhen, with a small workforce of 150 internal
migrant workers from the countryside in Guangdong province, of whom
some 100 were women (Foxconn Technology Group, 2009: 10; Xu and Xu,
2010: 202). The first floor of the all-in-one factory compound was a canteen,
the second to fifth floors the production lines, and the sixth floor the dormi-
tory for the Chinese assembly workers (whereas the Taiwanese expatriates
lived in rental apartments in town). In the early stage of production, middle-
and high-level management was controlled by Taiwanese.

During the 1990s, Foxconn, in its second stage of expansion, greatly ben-
efited from the inexpensive supply of internal migrant labor as it demanded
more human resources. It employed the methods of the specialization of
labor and the diversification of production lines in various factory compounds
in different regions. It also employed an increasing number of skilled Chinese
staff and workers for low- to mid-level management. Foxconn, by the turn of
the twenty-first century, had consolidated its production in clusters in two
regions: the Pearl River Delta in the south and the Yangzi River Delta in the
east, where local governments such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Kunshan
provided businesses with preferential tax policies, land and industrial infra-
structure, and a substantial supply of labor.

The third and latest stage of Foxconn’s rise is the building of monopoly
capital by mergers and the relocation of production facilities across all regions
in China. Since the early 2000s, Foxconn has tapped into the lower cost labor
and infrastructural resources in the northern, central, and western regions. As
early as 2002, CEO Terry Gou was crowned “the king of outsourcing” by
Bloomberg Businessweek (July 8, 2002)—when Foxconn was still behind
long-standing industry leaders Solectron and Flextronics. In the same year,

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Pun and Chan 387

the company became China’s leading exporter. As of December 2008,
Foxconn’s global sale revenues reached US$61.8 billion (Foxconn
Technology Group, 2009: 11), even higher than some of its high-profile cor-
porate customers such as Dell and Nokia. As consumer demand for electronic
goods rose following the recovery from the 2008–2009 global financial cri-
sis, Foxconn jumped to 60th—from its previous 112th—in the 2011 Global
500 listing of the biggest corporations (CNN Money, July 25, 2011).

Foxconn integrates production into a chain extending from raw material
extraction to final assembly to reduce market uncertainties and to enhance
cost- and time-effectiveness. Through mergers and acquisitions as well as
strategic partnerships, Foxconn has been able to shorten its downstream sup-
ply chain by manufacturing some parts in-house. Spokesman Arthur Huang
explained the company’s cost-saving methods: “We either outsource the
components manufacturing to other suppliers, or we can research and manu-
facture our own components. We even have contracts with mines which are
located near our factories” (quoted in New York Times, July 6, 2010).

Foxconn, subject to the iron law of capitalist production that positions
the individual capitalist in competition with the others in the market, has
intensified its race for new business. In making desktop and tablet comput-
ers and laptops, it has fought for orders against specialized Taiwanese
manufacturers such as Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Wistron.
It has also shipped smartphones in short delivery times, “grabbing con-
tracts” (抢单) from Chinese makers ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunication
Equipment Corporation) and Huawei Technologies. In order to secure pro-
duction orders from leading brands such as Samsung Electronics, Hewlett-
Packard (HP), Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, and Nokia, Foxconn has
widened its product portfolio and upgraded its technology in a bid for
future business. By mid-to-late 2011, Foxconn was projected to capture
more than half of the world market share in electronics manufacturing and
service (iSuppli, July 27, 2010).

“In 20 years,” a business executive suggested, “there will be only two
companies—everything will be made by Foxconn and sold by Wal-Mart”
(Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 9, 2010)—an exaggeration, but it does
underline the impressive growth of Foxconn in the Chinese and global econ-
omy. Indeed, China is a key geopolitical site for Foxconn, providing it with
more than a million manufacturing workers, that is, a sheer number far more
than its total workforce in all other countries where it has invested.2 Foxconn’s
China operation also extends from production to retail sales.3

Our interview data show that the influx of rush orders has pushed Foxconn
production workers to their physical and psychological limits, leading to

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388 Modern China 38(4)

workers’ suicides as well as individual and collective resistance in the work-
place. In the next section, we analyze Foxconn’s domination in relation to the
Chinese state’s strategy of wealth accumulation and more balanced coastal
and inland development. These shifts in state policies have shaped the work-
ing lives of the new generation of rural migrant workers.

The Chinese State and Local Accumulation
Foxconn’s achievement as a big-name electronics contract manufacturer is
an important factor contributing to China’s emergence as the workshop of
the world and the second largest economy in the world. Building on the
foundation of heavy-industry growth during the state socialist era from the
1950s to late 1970s, Chinese reformers moved to initiate market reforms
and emphasize light industry and services. From the 1990s to the present,
local governments have given Asian-invested and domestic firms economic
support, which varies from region to region, allowing them to become suppliers
to Western technology multinationals through exports (Segal, 2003; Leng,
2005; Appelbaum, 2009; Hung, 2009).

The Chinese national economy has thus undergone a fundamental transfor-
mation from being based on heavy industry, with guaranteed lifetime employ-
ment and generous welfare provided to urban workers, to one that mainly relies
on foreign and private investments and massive use of migrant laborers in light
industries, where wages and labor protection are severely suppressed. The post-
socialist state has further controlled workers’ self-organization and, conse-
quently, wages to facilitate low-cost exports (Perry and Selden, 2010; Chan and
Wang, 2005). Throughout the decades of rapid light industrialization, the manu-
facturing wages of the so-called Asian tigers rose from approximately 8 percent
of U.S. wages in 1975 to over 30 percent in the 1990s through 2005; by contrast,
China’s manufacturing wages over the years from 1980 to 2005 remained fairly
low, at approximately 2–3 percent of U.S. wages (Hung, 2008: 162). Despite
important measures to increase legal minimum wages from the mid-2000s, the
Chinese state has sustained social divisions and class inequalities among the
working people by the household registration (hukou) system, hence making
possible China’s capital accumulation through private-sector industrial growth
in which an abundant supply of rural labor is assured (Selden and Wu, 2011;
Pun, Chan, and Chan, 2010; Chan, 2010).

As market reform deepens, industries in the coastal areas have been shifting
inland, driven by rising production costs and inflation, a shortage of labor in
coastal China, and the country’s strategy to open its interior (Goodman, 2004;
McNally, 2004). The State Council has approved plans for the Cheng-Yu
Economic Zone (成渝经济区, i.e., Chengdu and Chongqing), a regional project

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Pun and Chan 389

to link up the economic development between the two cities of Chengdu and
Chongqing, in order to further boost the economy of West China (Xinhua, Mar. 4,
2011). With the encouragement of the central government, local government
leaders promote the export-oriented growth model by creating a business-
friendly environment on the one hand, and reverse the historical trend of labor
out-migration by improving local employment on the other hand. At the same time,
young workers and married migrants have increasingly taken the job opportunities
opened up in their native place instead of moving to distant provinces. Government
statistics of 2009 showed that East China is still the primary destination for rural
migrant workers nationwide. However, Central and West China have narrowed
the gap: more than 90 million migrants worked in the eastern region, around 24
million in the central region, and nearly 30 million in the western region
(National Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Our study, however, shows that while
Foxconn Chongqing and Foxconn Chengdu were able to recruit laborers from
their respective territories, most of the “local workers” were rural migrants from
the countryside who had to commute for at least a few hours to their workplaces
and were not able to go home on their day off on the weekend.

In short, Foxconn, like other leading investors, is moving energetically to
take advantage of lower wages and local government incentives to build new
production facilities in central and western regions. There are over 30
Foxconn factories across mainland China (in some cities Foxconn operates
more than one production facility; Figure 1).

Local inland governments engage in business partnerships with Foxconn by
providing it with access to land, roads and railways, bank loans, and labor under
their jurisdiction. In June 2009, Sichuan provincial and Chengdu city officials,
to promote the “go west” strategy and the post-2008 earthquake reconstruction
program, led a delegation to Foxconn’s headquarters in Taiwan to sign a memo-
randum of cooperation. Chinese officials promised to facilitate the relocation of
more industries to the west, making possible the formation of an efficient supply
chain network like those previously created in Guangdong and in the greater
Shanghai area. A vice director of the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone recalled that “there
was a great deal of negotiation involved over the last five years before we got his
[Foxconn CEO Terry Gou’s] investment. It was not easy for Chengdu to stand
out in those cities vying for investment” (quoted in China.org.cn, Oct. 28, 2010).
The Sichuan government leaders prioritized the construction of a Foxconn pro-
duction complex and dormitories as the “Number One Project” (一号工程).
The US$2 billion Foxconn investment project is the biggest to date in the prov-
ince (Xinhua, Oct. 22, 2010). As of the summer of 2010, a total of 14 villages in
Deyuan had been demolished to create the 15-square-kilometer industrial space
designated for a comprehensive Foxconn Living Zone (i.e., approximately five
times larger than the Foxconn’s flagship Longhua factory in Shenzhen). During

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390 Modern China 38(4)

Figure 1. Foxconn production facilities in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
Source. Foxconn Technology Group (www.foxconn.com.cn, 2011).
Note. Foxconn production sites are located in four main geographic clusters:
1. The Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province in the south: Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan,
Zhongshan, and Huizhou
2. The Yangzi River Delta and big cities on the eastern coast: Shanghai, Jiangsu province (Kun-
shan, Nanjing, Huai’an, Changshu), Zhejiang province (Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jiashan), and Fujian
province (Xiamen)
3. The Bohai Gulf area and big cities of northern China: Hebei province (Beijing, Tianjin,
Langfang, Qinhuangdao), Shanxi province (Taiyuan, Jincheng), Shandong province (Yantai), and
Liaoning province (Yingkou, Shenyang)
4. The big cities in central and western China: Henan province (Zhengzhou), Hubei province
(Wuhan), Hunan province (Hengyang), Chongqing, Sichuan province (Chengdu), and Guangxi
province (Nanning).

our field observation in March 2011, we learned that the township and village
governments have offered free labor recruitment services for Foxconn Chengdu.
A Sichuan worker colorfully commented,

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Pun and Chan 391

Foxconn is hiring, the whole city has gone crazy too (整个城市都疯啦).
Local officials grab people and ask if they’d be willing to go work at
Foxconn. The government has made it an official task. Officials at each
level have a recruitment quota. Isn’t this recruitment crazy?

At the government buildings of the towns of Hongguang and Pitong, for
example, the human resources officers directly assisted walk-in job appli-
cants to arrange interviews at Foxconn. These services, made available since
Foxconn Chengdu commenced its production in the third quarter of 2010,
have greatly lowered corporate recruitment costs.

Moreover, the Sichuan leaders have waived Foxconn a “significant” amount of
rent and tax for the expanding investment projects. The renovated “northern plant”
in the Chengdu Export Processing Zone and the completely new or still-under-
construction “southern plant” in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development
Zone are provided to Foxconn at “far below the market rate.” It is not surprising
that Foxconn CEO Terry Gou praised the government for its cooperation:

[I’m] very much impressed by the efficiency of local government
departments that led to the start of the project. . . . Foxconn will add
investment to make the [Chengdu] factory one of Foxconn’s key pro-
duction bases in the world. (quoted in Chengdu Weekly, Jan. 2, 2011)

Perhaps a more significant finding of our fieldwork is the “dispatch” (派遣)
of students from vocational schools to work in surveyed Foxconn factories
through the mediation of education officers of respective local governments
in Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Kunshan, Langfang, and
Taiyuan. Student interviewees reported to us that Education Departments and
government officers in charge have “requested” their schools to arrange
internships at Foxconn factories. Under China’s Education Law, students
who carry out internships organized by their schools maintain a student iden-
tity at all times. Student interns do not receive the protection of the Labor
Law since their relationship with the work organization is not defined as
employment. Since the students are not subject to the Labor Law regulations,
conflicts that arise between the students and the work organization cannot be
handled as labor disputes. As the students are not defined as laborers in the
legal sense, they do not enjoy trade union membership either.

Hence we found that student workers at Foxconn with internships orga-
nized collectively by their schools have become an enormous worker com-
munity in Foxconn factories across the country. The majority of student
interns we encountered came from their second or third year of study, and a
few had just finished their first-year exams in June. Most were 16 to 18 years

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392 Modern China 38(4)

of age. Despite the maximum eight-hour work day stipulated by Education
Ministry regulations, the intern workers at Foxconn frequently did excessive
overtime work during the day or night shift. Many students complained that

I feel that what I’ve learned in my major is of no use; I’ve used nothing
here (学无所用).

Regardless of your major, you’re asked to do things they want; there’s
no relation to what you study in school.

We don’t learn any technical skills at Foxconn; every day is just a
repetition of one or two simple motions, like a robot.

Foxconn’s “student internships” are actually a way of implementing “stu-
dent labor” (学生工) to help raise output and increase profits by paying sub-
minimum wages during the busy season. Foxconn exploits legal loopholes that
do not require it to sign a formal labor contract for the use of student workers.
The cost of labor is further reduced since student interns, unlike migrant work-
ers, are not entitled to government-run social insurance schemes (since they are
not protected under the labor laws and regulations). In all these ways, Foxconn’s
labor regime—characterized by tight control of workers and super-exploitation
of students—contributes to its rapid capital accumulation.

In short, the dominance of Foxconn, we argue, is achieved through the
dismantling of the socialist economy by the reform and open-door policy in
general and a deepening engagement between local government and capital,
in accumulation specifically, over recent years. Local governments compete
fiercely to host Foxconn production bases to enhance economic growth,
offering lucrative resources to the technology giant. A network of electronics
manufacturing coordinated by Foxconn is thus expanding quickly across
mainland China. Inside the “Foxconn campus,” management organizes labor
processes through a highly centralized and hierarchical production system, in
which the workforce is subjected to a panoptic discipline, resulting in work-
ers’ suicides and resistance (Table 1).

Migrant Workers in the Foxconn “Campus”
A Foxconn “campus”—as the company managers like to call it—is a dis-
tinctive dormitory factory regime, which organizes the sphere of produc-
tion and the sphere of reproduction. Foxconn’s biggest manufacturing
campus—Shenzhen Longhua—currently has more than 430,000 workers.

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Pun and Chan 393

Table 1. Suicides at Foxconn in China, January 2010–December 2011

Gender Age Native Place
Foxconn
Facility

Date of
Suicide Remarks

1. Rong Bo M 19 Hebei Langfang 8 Jan 2010 Jumped from the
eighth floor

2. Ma Xiangqiana M 19 Henan Guanlan 23 Jan 2010 Fell from building
3. Li (surname) M 20s Henan Longhua 11 Mar 2010 Jumped from the

fifth floor
4. Tian Yub F 17 Hubei Longhua 17 Mar 2010 Jumped from the

fourth floor
5. Li Weib M 23 Hebei Langfang 23 Mar 2010 Jumped from the

fifth floor
6. Liu Zhijun M 23 Hunan Longhua 29 Mar 2010 Jumped from the

fourteenth floor
7. Rao Shuqinb F 18 Jiangxi Guanlan 6 April 2010 Jumped from the

seventh floor
8. Ning (surname) F 18 Yunnan Guanlan 7 April 2010 Jumped from building
9. Lu Xin M 24 Hunan Longhua 6 May 2010 Jumped from the

sixth floor
10. Zhu Chenming F 24 Henan Longhua 11 May 2010 Jumped from the

ninth floor
11. Liang Chao M 21 Anhui Longhua 14 May 2010 Jumped from the

seventh floor
12. Nan Gang M 21 Hubei Longhua 21 May 2010 Jumped from the

fourth floor
13. Li Hai M 19 Hunan Guanlan 25 May 2010 Jumped from the

fourth floor
14. He (surname) M 23 Gansu Longhua 26 May 2010 Jumped from the

seventh floor
15. Chen (surname)b M 25 Hunan Longhua 27 May 2010 Slit his wrists after

failing to jump
16. Liu (surname) M 18 Hebei Nanhai 20 July 2010 Jumped from building
17. Liu Ming F 23 Jiangsu Kunshan 4 Aug 2010 Jumped from the

third floor
18. He (surname) M 22 Hunan Guanlan 5 Nov 2010 Jumped from building
19. Wang Ling F 25 Hebei Longhua 7 Jan 2011 Jumped from the

tenth floor
20. Hou (surname) M 20 Sichuan Chengdu 26 May 2011 Jumped from the

fifth floor
21. Cai (surname) M 21 — Longhua 18 July 2011 Jumped from the

sixth floor
22. Li Baoqiang M 18 Henan Guanlan 15 Oct 2011 Jumped from building
23. Li Rongying F 21 Shanxi Taiyuan 23 Nov 2011 Jumped from building

24. Xie Yanshe M 21 Henan Longhua 26 Nov 2011 Hanged to death

Source. Research data and various news reports.
a. Media reported Ma Xiangqian’s death as the “first” of the thirteen “chain suicide jumpers”
from January 23 to May 27, 2010, at two Foxconn facilities in Longhua and Guanlan towns,
Shenzhen city.
b. Survived with injuries.

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394 Modern China 38(4)

This 2.3-square-kilometer campus includes factories, warehouses, twelve-
story dormitories, a psychological counseling clinic, an employee care
center, banks, two hospitals, a library, a post office, a fire brigade with two
fire engines, an exclusive television network, an educational institute,
bookstores, soccer fields, basketball courts, a track and field, swimming
pools, cyber theaters, supermarkets, a collection of cafeterias and restau-
rants, and even a wedding dress shop. This main campus is divided into
ten zones, equipped with first-class production facilities and the “best”
living environment since it is the model factory for customers, central-
and local-level governments, and visitors from media organizations and
other inspection units. In the same city of Shenzhen, another production
campus, called Guanlan, composed of over 120,000 workers, has none of
the “additional” facilities of Longhua, consisting exclusively of multistory
factories and high-rise dormitories that are quite common among foreign-
owned companies.

In other major Foxconn factory areas, the scale of production and the size
of the workforce are also very large, over 100,000 workers. Within the walls
of Foxconn, most of the employees are young migrants who work and live on
the campuses. In the survey, the average age of Foxconn respondents was
21.1 years; the youngest 15 years. To supplement our structured question-
naires, we have documented workers’ narratives and field observations to
present the working and everyday lives of the young Foxconn employees.
Our primary concern is the dominating mode of corporate governance and its
impact on workers’ well-being.

In the Foxconn Group, the production lines on the factory floor are cen-
trally administered by their respective departments or sections, which are
directly responsible to their business units, business divisions, and ultimately
business groups (see Figure 2). At present, there are fifteen Foxconn business
groups in all, differentiated by product specialization and/or corporate
customers.

Foxconn competes on “speed, quality, engineering service, efficiency, and
added value” to maximize profits (Foxconn Technology Group, 2009: 8). Its
13-level management hierarchy with clear lines of command is organized in
a pyramid; in the chain of layers in the workshop alone, frontline workers
face multiple layers of management from assistant line leaders, line leaders,
team leaders, and supervisors (see Figure 3). There is a broad three-tiered
incentive scheme at Foxconn: at the upper stratum are decision-making lead-
ers, rewarded by the company with share dividends and job tenure for their
loyalty, commitment, and seniority; at the middle level are managing and
supervisory staff, rewarded by housing and monetary benefits; and, at the

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Pun and Chan 395

lower rung are ordinary workers, whose wages and welfare are minimal
(Samsung Economic Research Institute, China, 2008: 12).

The labor process in Foxconn is organized by a hierarchical management
principle: “Disassemble the entire industrial process to identify the crucial
points, simplify, and then reassemble the parts as a whole” (Xu and Xu, 2010:
152). Division of labor is so detailed that workers see themselves as merely “a
cog in the machine.” Senior managers formulate strategic plans and rules and
standards and the lower level staffers have to execute them with the lowest costs
to achieve the greatest efficiency. Foxconn production operators in general do
not require “skill” or thought; only strict implementation of instructions from
management and mechanical repetition of each simple movement are required.

Corporate Culture
“Leadership is being decisive. Leadership is a righteous dictatorship.
Leadership is a battle between experimenting and practicality” (所谓领导,
就是决策, 就是独裁为公, 就是一场实验和实践的战争), says Terry Gou,
the CEO and founder of Foxconn (Zhang Dianwen, 2008: 23). Gou’s

1 • Foxconn Group

2 • Business Group*

3 • Business Division

4 • Business Unit

5 • Department / Section

6 • Production Line

* Currently, there are 15 Business Groups in Foxconn.

Figure 2. Foxconn production organization
Source. Foxconn Technology Group (2011).

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396 Modern China 38(4)

Quotations evoke collective memories of the older generation of people who
came of age during the collective era and recited Chairman Mao’s Quotations
in political campaigns and in schools. In the Taiwanese-invested firm, when
Foxconn staff test for promotion, some of the test questions are to write
Gou’s Quotations from memory. Several famous examples are:

Execution is the integration of speed, accuracy, and precision (所谓执
行力, 就是速度, 准度, 精度的全面贯彻).

Growth, thy name is suffering (成长, 你的名字就叫痛苦).

Outside the lab, there is no high-tech, only execution of discipline
(走出实验室就没有高科技, 只有执行的纪律). (Zhang Dianwen,
2008: 29, 44, 3)

No admittance except on business—every Foxconn factory building and
dormitory has security checkpoints with guards standing by 24 hours a day.

CEO

Vice
president
General

managers
Associate general

managers
Directors

Managers

Associate managers

Project managers

Supervisors

Team leaders

Line leaders

Assistant line leaders

Production operators & student interns

Figure 3. Foxconn management hierarchy
Source. Foxconn Technology Group (2011).

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Pun and Chan 397

In order to enter the shop floor, workers must pass through layers of elec-
tronic gates and inspection systems. Our interviewees repeatedly expressed
the feeling that the entry access system made them feel as if working at
Foxconn is to totally lose one’s freedom:

We’re not allowed to bring cell phones or any metallic objects into the
workshop. They’re confiscated. If there’s a metal button on your clothes
or necklace, it must be removed, otherwise you won’t be allowed in, or
they [security officers] will simply cut the metal button off.

While getting ready to start work on the production line, management will ask
the workers: “How are you?” (你好吗). Workers must respond by shouting in
unison, “Good! Very good! Very, very good!” (好, 非常好, 非常好). This
militaristic drilling is said to train workers as disciplined laborers. Production
quotas and quality standards are passed through channels down to the front-
line workers at the lowest level of the pyramid.

Workers recalled how they were punished when they talked on the line,
failed to keep up with the high speed of work, and made mistakes in work
procedures. Several women workers attaching speakers to MP3-format digital
audio players said,

After work, all of us—more than a hundred persons—are made to stay
behind. This happens whenever a worker is punished. A girl is forced
to stand at attention and read aloud a statement of self-criticism. She
must be loud enough to be heard. Our line leader would ask if the
worker at the far end of the workshop could hear clearly the mistake
she made. Oftentimes girls feel they are losing face. It’s very embar-
rassing. Her tears drop. Her voice becomes very small. . . . Then the
line leader shouts: “If one worker loses only one minute [by failing to
keep up with the work pace], then, how much more time will be wasted
by a hundred people?”

Line leaders, who are also under pressure, treat workers harshly in order
to reach productivity targets. The bottom line for management is daily out-
put, not workers’ feelings. Workers, in return, made fun of their line leaders
in their daily life by mocking Foxconn’s “humane management” (人性化管
理) as “human subordination” (人驯化管理). A male worker sharply
commented,

If someone makes a mistake at Foxconn, the person below them must
take responsibility. If something bad happens, I get screwed, one level

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398 Modern China 38(4)

screws another. . . . Higher-level people vent their anger at those below
them, but who can workers vent to? That’s why frontline workers
jumped from those buildings.

Factory-floor managers and supervisors often give lectures to produc-
tion workers at the beginning and the end of the work day. After working
a long shift of a standard 12 hours (of which four hours are illegally
imposed, forced overtime),4 workers still have to stand, for often 15 min-
utes to half an hour, and listen to speeches, although the content of such
meetings remains the same: the management evaluates the production tar-
get of the previous shift, reminds workers of the tasks they need to pay
special attention to, and reiterates work rules and regulations. Workers
know too well that branded electronic products are expensive and there is
no margin for mistakes. Several workers at a mobile phone assembly work-
shop commented,

We get yelled at all the time. It’s very tough around here. We’re trapped
in a “concentration camp” (集中营) of labor discipline—Foxconn
manages us through the principle of “obedience, obedience, and abso-
lute obedience!” (服从, 服从, 绝对服从). Must we sacrifice our dig-
nity as people for production efficiency?

Despite management’s attempt to take panoptic control over the workers
on the production line, we found that the workers resisted in a variety of
ways, including daily and collective resistance: stealing products, slow-
downs, stoppages, small-scale strikes, and sometimes even sabotage, which
put back production badly. During our research, Foxconn workers informed
us from time to time that if they could not put up with their management on
the line, they would take concerted action and work as slowly as possible in
order to embarrass their line leaders. Once the workers won by having their
line leader changed because this line leader was too harsh; in another
instance, everybody stopped working on the line when the production order
was in a rush, gaining managerial concessions. In short, there are inevitable
tensions and resistance built into the repressive regimen of Foxconn, despite
its hype of harmony and “mutual love and care” (相亲相爱).

Wages and Work Hours
“Heart to heart, Foxconn and I grow together” (心连心, 富士康与我共成长)
reads a bright red banner hanging at the new factory in Foxconn Chengdu. It

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Highlight
Despite management’s attempt to take panoptic control over the workers
on the production line, we found that the workers resisted in a variety of
ways, including daily and collective resistance: stealing products, slowdowns,
stoppages, small-scale strikes, and sometimes even sabotage, which
put back production badly.

ker89
Highlight
Factory-floor managers and supervisors often give lectures to production
workers at the beginning and the end of the work day. After working
a long shift of a standard 12 hours (of which four hours are illegally
imposed, forced overtime),4 workers still have to stand, for often 15 minutes
to half an hour, and listen to speeches, although the content of such
meetings remains the same: the management evaluates the production target
of the previous shift, reminds workers of the tasks they need to pay
special attention to, and reiterates work rules and regulations

Pun and Chan 399

suggests that the workers and the company identify with each other as if they
shared one big heart. The corporate propaganda team has created a dream of
riches through labor and has tried to persuade workers that success and
growth are only possible through working diligently. Yet, many workers
debunk these kinds of rosy dreams as distant and unrealistic.

As of March 2011, the basic monthly wage (with 40-hour normal work
weeks) of assembly-line workers was 950 yuan (or US$147) in Foxconn
Chengdu and 1,200 yuan (or US$186) in Foxconn Shenzhen, with all the other
nine surveyed Foxconn factories falling in this range, with variation by geo-
graphic location. All the workers and student interns interviewed had “agreed”
to work overtime to earn more money, totaling 1,600 yuan to 2,000 yuan a
month. The wage rates of average workers at Foxconn, we believe, generally fit
the national pattern: in 2009 the average wages of the 145 million migrant
workers (including overtime) were estimated at 1,417 yuan a month (National
Statistical Bureau, 2010). So the complaints of Foxconn workers center not on
illegal underpayment of wages but on the perceived huge gap between them-
selves and their higher-level managers as well as salaried people in the cities.5

Foxconn likes to point out that workers have signed written “agreements” for
overtime. This agreement is meaningless since workers enjoy no effective pro-
tection from being fired for refusing overtime. While the mandatory overtime
work in China stipulated by the Labor Law is 36 hours per month, most of the
Foxconn workers usually have 80 hours of overtime work each month. In our
interviews, workers described “exhaustion to the point of tears.” In our summer
2010 questionnaire survey, more than 80 percent of the 1,736 respondents had
“four days of rest or less in a month” during the peak seasons. Our findings are
highly consistent with that of the 5,044-person survey conducted by the
Shenzhen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau in the same period:
72.5 percent of the Shenzhen Foxconn workforce put up with excessively long
working hours to earn extra income (Diyi caijing ribao, June 17, 2010).

“The People of Foxconn” or 富康人, literally meaning “wealthy” and
“healthy” people, rings with a dark irony to many “Foxconn People” we
talked to. The Foxconn workers often took this phrase as a joke when they
received their monthly wage. Regarding his present meager wages, one
25-year-old worker—an eminently marriageable age—expressed anxiety
about his future life, and especially after having a family:

I’m no longer able to muddle through my job in Shenzhen. Every
month I make only over a thousand yuan, and if I don’t marry I could
get by a few years, but if I marry, I’ll have to raise kids, it’s really not
enough for that. . . . Our days are truly hectic, and even if you’re strong

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400 Modern China 38(4)

it’s difficult. Most people in my dorm are unmarried, and I feel that
married people generally won’t come here, the wages are so low.

Production Intensity and Work Pressure
Workers said that after the basic wage was increased to 1,200 yuan in June
2010, a clear increase in production was scheduled and production inten-
sity increased. A group of young workers at the Shenzhen Guanlan factory
responsible for processing cell phone casings said, “Production output
was set at 5,120 pieces per day in the past, but it has been raised by 20
percent to 6,400 pieces per day in recent months. We’re completely
exhausted.”

The biggest Longhua factory could produce as many as 137,000 iPhones
in a 24-hour day, or more than 90 a minute, as of September 2010 (Bloomberg
Businessweek, Dec. 9, 2010). Management used stop-watches and computer-
ized industrial engineering devices to test the capacity of the workers and if
workers being tested were able to meet the quota, the target would be
increased day by day until the capacity of the workers reached the maxi-
mum. Another group of workers at the Kunshan factory commented, “We
can’t stop work for a minute. We’re even faster than machines.” A young
woman worker added, “Wearing gloves would eat into efficiency, we have
a huge workload every day and wearing gloves would influence effi-
ciency. During really busy times, I don’t even have time to go to the
bathroom or eat.”

Foxconn claimed that production workers who stand during work are
given a ten-minute break every two hours but our interviewees said that
“there is no recess at all,” especially when the shipment is tight. In some
departments where workers nominally can take a break, they are not allowed
to rest if they fail to meet the hourly production target. Working overtime
through the night in the electroplating, stamp-pressing, metal-processing,
paint-spraying, polishing, and surface-finishing units is the toughest, accord-
ing to workers interviewed.

Buyers of Foxconn products—the world’s marquee corporations, includ-
ing Apple, HP, Intel, Nokia, and so forth—want their computers and iPhones
fast to meet global demand. The corporations pressure Foxconn so that they
can compete against each other on price, quality, and delivery. To fulfill the
requirement of speedy production and shipment deadlines, Foxconn trans-
fers the work pressure to the frontline workers. For example, Apple has
been trying to get its white models of iPhone 4 out to the market without
delay, while keeping up with the availability of iPhone 4 black models. This

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Pun and Chan 401

drive for productivity and quality leads to constant pressure on Foxconn
workers. The electronics parts and components are assembled quickly as
they move up the 24-hour non-stop conveyor belts. Posters on the Foxconn
workshop walls and between staircases read:

Value efficiency every minute, every second (重视效率分分秒秒)

Achieve goals, otherwise the sun will no longer rise (目标达成, 除
非太阳不再升起)

The devil is in the details (魔鬼都藏在细节里)

On an assembly line in the Shenzhen Longhua plant, a worker described
her work to precise seconds: “I take a motherboard from the line, scan the
logo, put it in an antistatic-electricity bag, stick on a label, and place it on the
line. Each of these tasks takes two seconds. Every ten seconds I finish five
tasks.”

Workers reported competing with each other to get a production bonus. In
the workshops where our researchers conducted participant observation, a
company job-evaluation system of Grades A, B, C, D, and Distinction was
applied to encourage workers to do overtime work and not to take leave,
otherwise the bonus would be reduced. Under these circumstances, the pres-
sure becomes unbearable.

Each frontline worker specializes in one specific task and performs
monotonous, repetitive motions at high speed. The rotating day and night
shift system and extreme work intensity take away any feeling of freshness,
accomplishment, or initiative toward work. In the production process, work-
ers occupy the lowest position, even below the lifeless machinery. “Workers
come second to and are worn out by the machines,” was one worker’s
insightful summary of the worker–machine relationship. Others shared a
sense of low self-worth: “I’m just a speck of dust in the workshop.” This is
the “renewed” sense of self that arises after countless lectures from section
leaders and production line leaders.

Workers’ awareness of their position was painful: “Fate is not in your
own hands but in your superior’s.” On Foxconn factory floors, conversa-
tion on the production line between assembly workers is forbidden. “You’ll
receive a warning letter for breaking the rule,” a female worker from
Foxconn’s Shenzhen Guanlan plant said. Managers enforced a policy of
demerit points to drive workers to work harder. A 22-year-old worker
explained, “The policy is used to penalize workers for petty offences. You

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Highlight
On Foxconn factory floors, conversation
on the production line between assembly workers is forbidden

402 Modern China 38(4)

can lose points for having long nails, being late, yawning, eating, or sitting
on the floor. There’s a whole load of things. Just one point means losing
my monthly bonus.”

A long working day of enforced silence, apart from the noise of the
machines, is the norm. On certain assembly lines, however, workers said
that control over the work pace was much more relaxed because their senior
managers would not be present at the workplace and hence their line leaders
could be a little bit more lenient. At midnight, the workers said, “sometimes
we could talk and laugh if we didn’t affect the production; sometimes we
might fall asleep and fall down on the ground. If we woke up immediately
and continued working, nobody would scold us.” Workers who could not
endure the work pressure and isolation quit within a few months. In the sur-
vey conducted outside of Foxconn’s Hangzhou factory, a woman worker
who had just quit said, “It’s such a cold environment on the shop floor. It
makes me feel depressed. If I continue to work at Foxconn, I may commit
suicide too.”

Loneliness and Fragmented Lives
Foxconn provides workers with “conveniences” (提供方便) such as col-
lective dormitories, canteens, services, and entertainment facilities in
order to incorporate the entire living space under the factory’s manage-
ment, serving the just-in-time global production strategy. To a large
extent, workers’ living space is merely an extension of the workshop.
Food and drink, sleep, washing, and other aspects of workers’ daily lives
are scheduled just like the production lines, with the goal not to satisfy
workers’ needs as people but rather to reproduce workers’ physical
strength at the lowest cost and shortest time in order to satisfy the facto-
ry’s production requirements. But at Foxconn, there is no true rest even
after getting off from work. Workers with different jobs and even night-
shift and day-shift workers are mixed into the same dormitory. As a result,
workers frequently disrupt each others’ rest because of different working
hours. In addition, random dormitory assignments often break up existing
networks of social relations, hindering communication and interaction
between workers. In this lonely space, workers have forfeited their per-
sonal and social lives.

All the Foxconn production sites feature a combination of factories and
dormitories—its Shenzhen facilities have the astonishing number of 33
company dormitories with another 120 rented dormitories in the nearby

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Highlight
Workers with different jobs and even nightshift
and day-shift workers are mixed into the same dormitory.

ker89
Highlight
Food and drink, sleep, washing, and other aspects of workers’ daily lives
are scheduled just like the production lines, with the goal not to satisfy
workers’ needs as people but rather to reproduce workers’ physical
strength at the lowest cost and shortest time in order to satisfy the factory’s
production requirements

ker89
Highlight
On certain assembly lines, however, workers said
that control over the work pace was much more relaxed because their senior
managers would not be present at the workplace and hence their line leaders
could be a little bit more lenient. At midnight, the workers said, “sometimes
we could talk and laugh if we didn’t affect the production; sometimes we
might fall asleep and fall down on the ground. If we woke up immediately
and continued working, nobody would scold us

Pun and Chan 403

community. The Foxconn Group is now trying to shift production workers
from its higher cost, overcrowded Shenzhen site to other facilities. The
dormitory labor regime remains unchanged. Most migrant workers live in
the dormitories, but they do not have a normal life in their “home”—they
are living with strangers, not allowed to cook, and not permitted to receive
friends or families overnight. Whether the worker is single or married, he
or she is assigned a bunk space for one person. The private space is virtu-
ally reduced to one’s own bed behind a self-made curtain.

From the perspective of labor control, these factory-provided dormito-
ries mean that production and labor reproduction activities take place in a
self-contained, all-encompassing geographical locality. This facilitates
flexible production through imposing overtime work, as the distinction
between “home” and “work” is blurred. The lengthening of a work-day to
24 hours to meet the global production schedule means that the appropria-
tion of labor surplus is absolute. Such a socio-spatial arrangement strength-
ens managerial domination, wherein control over labor is extended from
the factory shop floor to the sphere of everyday life. The dormitory labor
system is a cost-efficient solution for companies like Foxconn to ensure
that workers spend their off-hours just preparing for another round of pro-
duction. Thus, workers face a double pressure within and outside the fac-
tory, to the extent that workers are stripped of social living spaces.

Company policy clearly isolates workers, making it difficult to organize
collective action. Localistic and friendship networks are weakened or cut off.
A worker acutely observed,

Our batch of new hires totaled 120 persons. Most of us came from
schools in Hubei; mine has 20 people. The company divided us into
five different groups for training. After training, I was assigned to an
assembly line. My new friends, whom I met during the training, were
all placed in different positions. . . . I consider this arrangement as a
way of preempting workers from “making trouble” (闹事). This is why
Foxconn workers are free to jump from buildings but not to “make
trouble.”

As a result, interpersonal relations between workers are very weak, despite
the fact that most are in their late teens or early 20s. Now we begin to under-
stand why some workers have taken their lives.

Tian Yu is a 17-year-old survivor. On March 17, 2010, this carefree girl
who once loved laughing and flowers jumped off the fourth floor of the

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ker89
Highlight
From the perspective of labor control, these factory-provided dormitories
mean that production and labor reproduction activities take place in a
self-contained, all-encompassing geographical locality.

ker89
Highlight
Such a socio-spatial arrangement strengthens
managerial domination, wherein control over labor is extended from
the factory shop floor to the sphere of everyday life

404 Modern China 38(4)

Shenzhen Longhua factory worker dormitory. Compared with over a dozen
other young lives that were ended, she was lucky—she lived. Yet in some
ways she is less fortunate, because her young body remains paralyzed after
many surgeries, and she will spend the rest of her life in a hospital bed or
wheelchair.

Inside the “forbidden Foxconn city,” all production workers, like Tian
Yu before her tragedy, go to work, return exhausted from overtime work, go
to sleep, have no free time to themselves, and no “extra” time for each
other. A typical work day begins at 8 am and finishes at 8 pm. On the
product-parts inspection line, Tian Yu was often reprimanded by her line
leaders for poor quality, rejected parts, and “not working fast enough.” Her
seven roommates in the dormitory were all from other business groups;
there was no one to share the hardships at work. In her only 30-odd work
days, she could not overcome the deep state of helplessness, and decided to
end her life. She calmly recalled in the ward:

I entered Foxconn on February 8, 2010, and asked to go straight to
work the next morning. In the enormous factory, I lost my way.
Finally I arrived at the line—late at my first day of work. . . . At the
time when I should have received my first month’s wages, I didn’t
get my wage-card. I asked my line leader what went wrong. She
simply told me to ask at the Guanlan plant [an hour away by bus].
There, I asked one after another and still couldn’t find a clue. I was
like a ball being kicked around (像球一样给踢来踢去). No one
tried to help.

Anger and frustration built up. Instead of going to work early the next
morning, Tian took desperate action.

Foxconn entered Shenzhen in 1988, but the Longhua plant set up a
trade union only at the end of 2006, under the double pressure of media
publicity exposure of their Apple-branded iPod manufacturing conditions
and the mobilization of the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions. The
Foxconn union chairwoman is a special assistant to the CEO. Apparently,
Foxconn workers, like most Chinese workers, lack the means to appeal
for help. Among the 1,736 worker survey respondents, nearly 90 percent
said they did not participate in a trade union, 40 percent believed that the
factory had no union, and the majority do not understand the function of
a trade union.

In the wake of the multiple suicides, Foxconn dormitories throughout the
country were all wire-grilled. The company installed 3,000,000-square-meters of

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Pun and Chan 405

safety nets, which were hung around outdoor stairways of dormitory buildings to
prevent employees from jumping. Workers now live “in a cage” (囚在笼中).

Conclusion
We may say that Foxconn is a new development of monopoly capital
which is generating a gigantic global factory regime that dominates the
lives of the new generation of Chinese migrant workers and creates new
forms of hardship and suffering to an extent not confronted by the previ-
ous generation of migrant workers. The market dominance of the million-
worker-strong Foxconn corporation is facilitated by a deepening process
of China’s economic transformation at the national level as well as a
deepening alliance between business and local governments. Factory relo-
cation costs are reduced as officials in interior provinces compete for
investment to the extent that they disregard fundamental principles of
labor and educational law enforcement. Despite central government lead-
ers’ call for industrial restructuring, the mainstream approach of rights-
suppressed, low-cost exports remains intact. From the lived experiences
of migrant workers and student interns, it is clear that they face severe
difficulties in seeking to safeguard their rights and have their grievances
redressed. Contradictions between capital and labor have cumulated at the
point of production, resulting in widespread labor grievances as well as
struggles.

Foxconn as a form of monopoly capital generates a global “race to the
bottom” production strategy and repressive mode of management that
weighs heavily on the rural migrant workers who form its work force,
depriving them of their hopes, their dreams, and their future. Within the
walled cities of Foxconn, workers are struggling to improve their lives in
the face of a factory discipline requiring that they meet ever higher pro-
ductivity demands. When the Chinese government does not enforce labor
law, employers like Foxconn feel free to ignore state restrictions on over-
time in order to flexibly meet global just-in-time manufacturing and logis-
tic imperatives. On the factory floor, work stress associated with the
“scientific” production mode and inhumane management is intense.
Alienation of labor and the lack of social support are common experiences.
Young migrant workers in their late teens to mid-20s, who have been
placed in the “first-class” Foxconn factory-cum-dormitory environment,
have experienced severe loneliness, anxiety, and alienation. Suicide is
merely the extreme manifestation of the migrant work experience for hun-
dreds of millions.

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Highlight
From the lived experiences
of migrant workers and student interns, it is clear that they face severe
difficulties in seeking to safeguard their rights and have their grievances
redressed.

ker89
Highlight
repressive mode of management that
weighs heavily on the rural migrant workers

406 Modern China 38(4)

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful for the support of the independent Foxconn Research Group,
especially Lu Huilin, Shen Yuan, Guo Yuhua, and the postgraduate students of Peking
University, Tsinghua University, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. We are
also thankful to Mark Selden, Chris Smith, Jos Gamble, Yunchung Chen, Debby
Chan, Yiyi Cheng, Jack Qiu, and Gregory Fay.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Appendix
Surveyed Foxconn Factories in 11 Chinese Cities, June 2010
–November 2011

Names Main Products No. of Workforce

Foxconn Shenzhen
(Longhua and Guanlan
towns)

iPhones, iPads, iPods, printers,
game consoles, e-book
readers, TVs, MP3 players,
cameras

500,000+

Foxconn Kunshan (Jiangsu) Electronic connectors

80,000+

Foxconn Nanjing (Jiangsu) Software, electronic

components

20,000+

Foxconn Shanghai
(Songjiang district)

Personal computers, network
devices

20,000+

Foxconn Tianjin Servers, memory chips,
routers

20,000+

Foxconn Taiyuan (Shanxi) Raw material processing,
electronic components

80,000+

Foxconn Langfang (Hebei) Mobile phones 1

50,000+

Foxconn Hangzhou

(Zhejiang)
Wireless communications

equipment
80,000+

Foxconn Wuhan (Hubei) Personal computers, cameras,
game consoles

50,000+

Foxconn Chongqing Laptops and TouchPads
(exclusively for HP)

20,000+

Foxconn Chengdu
(Sichuan)

iPads (exclusively for Apple) 150,000+

Source. Adapted from various Foxconn publications and authors’ field notes.

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Pun and Chan 407

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article:

Funding support was received from two research grants from the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, titled “The Making of Trans-Border Community in the Pearl
River Delta: A Trans-Border Urban Governance Analysis” and “The Making of Working
Class Community: Space, Gender and Labor,” and a Reid Research Scholarship from the
University of London.

Notes

1. The first author carried out four field trips in the cities of Shenzhen, Kunshan,
Taiyuan, Chongqing, and Chengdu in the summer of 2010, October 2010,
December 2010, and March 2011; the second author conducted a one-month
investigation in Chongqing and Chengdu in March 2011 and revisited the
industrial community in Shenzhen from mid-October to November 2011. Both
researchers have been members of the joint-university Foxconn Research Group
since its establishment in June 2010.

2. Foxconn Technology Group owns manufacturing facilities and research and
development centers in Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New
Zealand, the Middle East, Southeast and South Asia, Russia, Europe, and the
Americas.

3. Foxconn manages chain stores (e.g., Wan Ma Ben Teng, Media Mart [Wan
de cheng], and CyberMart [Saibo shuma guangchang]) in big cities, tapping
into the growing domestic consumer market. China’s domestic market grew
by close to 10 percent in 2011, much faster than either the United States or
Europe.

4. According to China’s Labor Law (effective January 1, 1995) and Labor Con-
tract Law (effective January 1, 2008), to ensure occupational health and safety,
overtime hours may not exceed one to three hours in a day and 36 hours in a
month.

5. Mark Selden and Wu Jieh-min (2011: table 6) analyze the ratios between aver-
age urban employee wages and local minimum wages in Shanghai, Suzhou, and
Shenzhen, respectively (1992–2008). The ratios will be even higher if the differ-
ences in welfare benefits are taken into account.

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Biographies

Pun Ngai is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her current research interests include labor,
gender, socialist theory, and history.

Jenny Chan is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Royal
Holloway, University of London. Her current research interests include labor pro-
cesses, social movements, and globalization.

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