Dying for an iPhone

Chan, Selden and Pun, academic sociologists studying Chinese labour, wrote this from more than a decade of research including interviews with Foxconn workers, factory visits and access to internal documents.

The empirical core concerns the labour regime at Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that assembles a large share of the world's consumer electronics including Apple products, employing over a million people in China. The authors document the recruitment of young rural migrants, the student intern programmes under which vocational school students were required to work on production lines as a condition of graduation, the dormitory system that places workers on the factory campus and extends managerial control beyond working hours, the production quotas and the pace of line work, the overtime that exceeds legal limits, and the disciplinary practices.

The suicides of 2010, in which at least fourteen workers died at Foxconn facilities, are the book's occasion. The company's response included installing nets on buildings and requiring workers to sign undertakings, which the authors treat as characteristic.

The structural argument concerns where the pressure originates. Apple and other brand companies set prices, specifications and delivery schedules, and the contract manufacturer's margins are thin, which means the pressure to meet demanding schedules at low cost transmits directly to the production line. The authors argue that audits and supplier codes of conduct do not change this because they do not change the commercial terms that produce it.

They also cover the Chinese state's role, the household registration system that limits migrants' rights in the cities where they work, and the official union's function.

The book argues a position and is written from a labour perspective. Foxconn and Apple dispute characterisations. The documentation of the intern programme and of the dormitory labour regime is detailed and is drawn from primary research.