Rural Migrants in Urban China by Fulong Wu Fangzhu Zhang Chris Webster

Author:Fulong Wu, Fangzhu Zhang, Chris Webster [Fulong Wu, Fangzhu Zhang, Chris Webster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies
ISBN: 9781135095345
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Basic socioeconomic conditions of Foxconn’s employees in Shenzhen

The parent company of Foxconn is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., established in 1974. Since 1988, the founder and CEO Terry Gou Tai-Ming has been investing in establishing manufacturing plants in mainland China. The group’s global operations have extended to over a dozen countries, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, Turkey, Russia, the USA, Brazil, Mexico, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Australia, with 1,300,000 employees around the world, over 1,000,000 of whom are in China.4

Established in 1988, Foxconn’s manufacturing base in Shenzhen Longhua district (formerly called Longhua town, renamed since Shenzhen’s administrative restructuring of districts in 2004) has seen rapid expansion. In 2001, Hon Hai became Taiwan’s largest corporation, and Foxconn is at present the world’s largest subcontract manufacturing company. In 2003, Foxconn became China’s largest exporter, and its revenue reached US$61.8 billion in 2008, US$55.6 billion of which came from export, accounting for 3.9 per cent of China’s entire export. Foxconn ranked 110th in the Fortune 500 in 2010. During the period from 2005 to 2008, the scale of the Longhua campus multiplied, with the number of employees rising from 50,000 to over 300,000. It was not until 2011 that the scale of the production base reduced for the first time, owing to the strategy of relocation to the hinterland (especially Henan and Sichuan) after the suicide incidents (Chan and Pun 2010).

Over 85 per cent of Foxconn workers are pugong, i.e. basic workers or base-level production line operators. Foxconn pugong’s average age is 21.9 in the survey. The average age of non-pugong (non-basic workers, including production line managers, technicians, middle to top level supervisors, etc.) is 27.8, that is, around 5.8 years older than pugong. The first-time employment age for workers who are employed as pugong is 17.7, whereas for non-pugong it is comparatively older, at around 20.8. The average years of schooling for Foxconn’s pugong is 11, which means they received approximately two more years of education after graduating from junior high school. The average years of schooling for non-pugong is 13.7, which is 2.7 years more than the average for pugong. The time spent in further education could account for the older first-time employment age of non-pugong.

In terms of salaries, the average monthly income for non-pugong at Foxconn is 4,862 Yuan and 2,051 Yuan for pugong. Average monthly expenses for non-pugong are 2,321 Yuan, and 1,049 Yuan for pugong – around 45 per cent of that of non-pugong. Monthly expenses take up around 48 per cent of non-pugong’s monthly income and around 51 per cent of pugong’s. Non-pugong send 13.5 per cent of their income home on average, with 27.9 per cent for pugong (Table 9.2). In actual figures, Foxconn’s non-pugong would send 657 Yuan home each month, and pugong would send 571 Yuan each month.

For the duration of employment, the average seniority for pugong is about 25.6 months, whereas for non-pugong, it is about 64 months. Evidently, the job mobility of pugong is higher than for non-pugong.

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