Apple hires the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley to help create their innovative products.
The most popular of which, is the iPhone. Most of us are familiar with the team who
conceived the idea, but what about the teams of people actually assembling the devices?
They’re one of the largest workforces in the world, helping Apple produce half a
million iPhones every day. There’ve been many stories about these factory workers in China,
but we rarely catch a glimpse of what daily life there is really like. So in this video,
I’m going to explain what it’s like to be inside Apple’s iPhone factory. This is Greg with Apple
Explained, and I want to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Today’s topic came in
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Alright now if you’re watching this video on an iPhone, there’s a fifty percent chance
that it was built by this team of people in Zhengzhou, China. Since the factory here,
owned and operated by Foxconn, is responsible for producing half of the world’s iPhones.
That’s about 350 every minute. And achieving this quota is no small feat. There are about 350,000
workers that keep the factory up and running. Most of whom are from small villages in the surrounding
area of the Hunan province. While others are from more remote locations in search of a stable job
to help support themselves and their families. Recruitment for the factory is a round-the-clock
endeavor, with the local government helping to find and train new workers, providing a steady
stream of laborers that you can see being dropped off at the factory every day by taxi or bus.
While positions at the iPhone factory is in fairly high demand, it’s an extremely monotonous job that
most employees grow tired of after their first year. Most of the jobs here are on the assembly
line. Where every iPhone requires about 400 different steps of assembly before being shipped
out. That means each worker is responsible for one simple task, like inserting a screw,
or cleaning the screen, that they’d repeat again and again, over a thousand times a day.
And workdays inside the factory can become long if overtime is being offered. The job’s standard
hours are from 8am to 5pm, six days a week, with an hour break for lunch. Workers typically wake up
at 7am and grab breakfast from a street vendor on their way to the factory. Then, for lunch,
they visit the Foxconn cafeteria. Finally, for dinner, they meet up with friends at a
local restaurant. Each meal can cost between one to three dollars, adding up to about $60
each month. More often than not, overtime is available, and most workers take advantage of
it. Since it results in a much higher salary at the end of the month. That extends their
shifts three to five hours, with many employees leaving the factory at 10pm.
Afterward, workers tend to relax by playing video games or hanging out at a bar until 11 or 12pm,
then go to sleep. Just to wake up at 7am and do it all again the next day.
On Sundays, their day off, people tend to visit their families who live nearby in the region.
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Alright now how much are iPhone factory workers actually being payed?
Well, the base salary for new hires on dayshift is about 1,900 yuan, or $300 US dollars, every month.
But with 20 hours overtime every week, the could earn about $650. When it comes to nightshift,
a worker could earn about $750 with overtime. Considering a livable wage in the region
was estimated to be $650 in 2017, many iPhone factory employees are barely making ends meet.
That’s why so many are eager to work overtime, and compared to other factories in China,
the iPhone factory has many more overtime hours available. Boosting its appeal among potential
workers. Although the factory conditions and pay aren’t noticeably better. With one
employee saying, "The conditions are all the same. It's just making a living.” In fact,
it wasn’t the workplace that led to rioting among employees. It was actually living conditions.
Most people at the iPhone factory live in dorms located right next-door. It costs $25
a month to share a room with eight other people. And the overcrowding has caused sanitation issues,
with many dorms smelling of garbage and sweat. Workers could move into a one bedroom apartment
for $65 a month, but most decide against it. Since their goal is to save as much money as possible
to send back to their families who live in the remote villages where they grew up.
But perhaps even more interesting than what goes on inside the factory, is what goes on outside.
Because over 300,000 people live and work in the same area, it attracted business-owners to feed,
cloth, and entertain the population. The streets and neighborhoods surrounding the factory
is bustling with restaurants, bars, karaoke lounges, street vendors, and internet cafes.
This has led to the area being nicknamed “iPhone City.” And due to the factory running 24/7
with day and night shift workers, the businesses are also open almost all hours of the day. But
don’t mistake the busy atmosphere as a sign of prosperity. iPhone City lives and dies alongside
the ups and downs of the iPhone factory. When production tapers off in the summer,
the lower employment causes a ripple effect across the town. Since there aren’t as many customers,
profits decline among businesses, and most owners fall behind on rent.
iPhone City has proven to be very profitable for Foxconn and Apple, who happily accept hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of tax breaks from the local government, along with several other free
bonuses. For example, the $1 billion dollars in housing for Foxconn’s workers, was paid for
entirely by the local government. The perpetual recruitment program designed to supply the iPhone
factory with a steady stream of laborers, is also funded by the government. And if the factory meets
its production quota for the year, Foxconn is awarded over 25 million dollars from the
government. These corporate handouts are a huge reason why companies like Apple are drawn into
assembling their products in China, and also why it’s so difficult to move production elsewhere.
But at the end of the day, it’s the workers inside and around the iPhone factory who
aren’t so happy. A local business owner put it best,
she said, “No one is happy. It's our livelihood. This is just life.”
Alright guys thanks for watching till the end, don’t forget to subscribe to
help decide which topics I cover, and I’ll see you in the next video.