My name is Dejian Zeng. I'm a second year MPA student in NYU Wagner.
So how did I get in?
It's very easy actually.
I just show up in front of the factories, they ask for my IDs.
Ask me to show my hands and then ask me to recite the English alphabet.
But that's basically the interview process and then I was in.
On the assembly line, we have about 200 people and
we produce 3,600 phones per day.
So my station is called station 26, fasten speaker to housing.
I put one screw over the speaker and
fasten it on the back case of iPhone, and that's the only work that I do.
So for me I probably put 1,800 screws per day.
The facility is actually very good I would say,
it's not the traditional sweatshop that we would think about.
It's pretty clean, it's pretty bright and they have a/c and all this stuff.
But, the hour is pretty long.
We work two hours and then we have a 10 minute break.
Lunch break is 15 minutes and then dinner break is 30 minutes.
So totally we work 10.5 hours, but stay in the factory for 12 hours.
Per week we work about 60 hours and then we work 6 days a week.
We take a break on Sunday.
What shocks me is that overtime is involuntary.
They are actually kind of forced to do overtime.
I personally have applied for my manager, saying that I don't want to do overtime,
because I just feel too tired.
And then they didn't allow me to do that.
The system in Pegatron is not working.
When workers feel their right have been violated, they can file a complaint.
But that complaint is handled by the factories themself,
it never go through Apple.
So if they don't think that this complaint should be submitted,
they would block it and that's what happened to me.
The manager have a very bad attitude for
the workers, like yelling is a routine in the factory.
I remember there's one, I don't know why the manager yelled at him,
probably he's not finished the piece just quick enough.
The manager has been yelling at him for a couple days and
then there's one day the manager just explodes.
He yells, stop the whole assembly line, and
then everybody on the whole assembly line, 200 people get together,
have a meeting and what they do is just that the manager yell at the worker.
When you're working on the factory, you are very focused.
So you have no time to think other things or feel tired.
Because the assembly line is going very quick.
You feel very bored, no metals, no phones is allowed.
So we couldn't listen to music.
During the break time, I couldn't use my phone.
After you get out of work, actually you don't have a lot of time to do other
things, because you're very tired, you wanna go to bed.
In the dorm we have about eight people share one room, and
then in one floor we only have one bathroom, and restroom.
Before I get into factories, I take a lot of things for granted, but
after you come back you realize that this kind of product is actually
there are thousands and millions of people behind it.
A lot of my friends in the factories work for long hours.
They try very hard, they're very diligent people and
they make this product, this great product for us.
We have a lot of stereotypes for workers.
I think they are from rural area, they are uneducated, but
it turns out a lot of them are very interesting people.
And some of them very knowledgeable, like they know about American history,
they can talk about foreign relations.
When you get to know them, you realize that they're just ordinary people.
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President Trump said that he's going to bring back the factories to the US.
It's not possible to hire as much people that you're going to hire in China.
I got about three 3,100 yuan.
That's about $450 per month and the base salary is even lower.
The base salary is about $400.
If you move the factory here, how much are you going to pay for American workers?
The cost of labors in China is actually low.
I think it's lower than the robots, even.
When I was working on the assembly line, the only thing that I think
every day is that what are those things that I want to see improved?
Because after I come back to New York, I can do advocacies for
my worker friends there.
Some of the condition is actually better than I thought.
But there are a lot of rooms to be improved.
The factories care a lot about opposed opinion, so they care a lot about
child labor, whether their work time is limited 60 hours a week.
And then whether they have provide enough training, security trainings,
I want to see a lot of changes in the factories.
If it was not Apple, they won't be there.
So I don't think it's very realistic to advocate for people to boycott the product
and stop buying it, because no matter how, people still buying it.
We need to be aware that behind this products,
there are millions of workers producing it.
And then it would be great if we can talk more about it and
probably make some changes on the factories so that they will have the good
conditions while they're producing this great service and great product for us.
And we are enjoying these amazing electronic devices.
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