China may be far away but Foxconn is on our doorstep

Dear all,

we published on Open Democracy a small snapshot on our research on 'migrant' 
workers in Czech Republic working for the major electronics multinational 
company Foxconn. AS you might remember, Foxconn came under media attention
due to the working conditions in its Chinese factories and workers' 
suicides.

Here is the text.

Please feel free to pass it to anyone who might be interested.

Thanks a lot

Rutvica
-----------------------------------


China may be far away but Foxconn is on our doorstep

http://www.opendemocracy.net/rutvica-andrijasevic-devi-sacchetto/china-may-be-far-away-but-foxconn-is-on-our-doorstep

by Rutvica Andrijasevic and Devi Sacchetto


The best dormitory in town bears the evocative name of Hotel Harmony and 
houses several hundred migrant workers recruited almost exclusively by 
Xawax, one of the country’s 1,300 or so recruitment agencies. The Express 
People agency, on the other hand, puts its workers up in a third-rate bed 
and breakfast, the Veselka, a stone’s throw from the railway station. In 
both dormitories there are four beds in each room, but while the people 
staying in the Hotel Harmony have a kitchenette and an en-suite bathroom per 
room, the others have to make do with a run-down kitchen, two foul-smelling 
bathrooms and a dozen showers for almost 80 people. In the Veselka the 
toilets are often blocked and there are no locks on the doors. Somebody has 
written a couple of things on the walls here: the first is an ironic 
exchange – Fuck Foxconn – “I’m looking for a job with Foxconn”, while the 
second is less inventive – Fuck Express People. Both groups work 12-hour 
shifts in the Foxconn factory. We’re not in China but in Pardubice, 100 
kilometres from Prague, where the company bought a factory at the beginning 
of the 21st century. The city of Kutna Hora, a few dozen kilometres further 
away, has been home to another factory for about five years and if you carry 
on as far south as Nitra, across the recent border with Slovakia, you will
find Foxconn’s third and final base in the European Union. Foxconn 
manufactures computers, laptops, servers and printer cartridges in Pardubice 
and Kutna Hora for Hewlett-Packard, while Sony’s orders for flat-screen TVs 
keep the production lines busy in the Nitra factory.

There is, of course, no comparison in numerical terms with the Chinese 
factories: fewer than 10,000 people are either directly or indirectly 
employed here. Nevertheless, the practices employed in the two Czech 
factories owned by the Taiwanese multinational, the largest electronic 
manufacturing firm in the world, reveal new frontiers in labour organisation 
and management for the European employment system. The Czech Republic is a
kind of special export zone within which multinationals can experiment with 
various ways of managing the workforce with average European salaries. 
Manufacturing industry is supported by a proper state machine implemented by 
various Eastern European countries in order to attract foreign investment.

In the two factories the workforce, two thirds male, operates within 
departments strictly subdivided according to the product and, when 
necessary, the brand. This system of separation responds to various needs:
until a few years ago the Kutna Hora factory made products for Apple, but 
when the workers started getting together to demand better working 
conditions, the division was closed. “They laid off 29 people every ten 
months; if number reaches 30 the dismissals have to be authorised by the 
trade union and the local authorities. “Those who agreed to leave the union 
carried on working,” explains Gabriel, one of the 300 or so people that were 
sacked.

In the Czech factories, alongside the local workers and the smaller group of 
their Slovakian counterparts, who usually perform supervisory and management 
roles in the factories, we find migrants from various countries: Bulgaria,
Mongolia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Vietnam. The historic links between the 
former real socialist countries form a foundation for these migratory flows, 
which are often managed by recruitment agencies with international branches. 
For the European migrants, including the Ukrainians, mobility is usually 
cheap, as it is for the Mongolians, who emigrate within networks of friends 
and relatives.

English and Chinese managers are in charge of this multinational workforce, 
which is usually employed to perform repetitive tasks lasting 40-60 seconds. 
It is generic work where the workforce can easily be replaced. “They only 
want people aged between 20 and 35 because the work is very fast,” explains 
Madalena, a young Romanian who had already worked in Slovakia and Spain 
before coming here. Madalena comes from Tulcea in the Danube Delta, where 
she used to work for an Italian textile firm. “I’m better off with Foxconn
than back in Romania. I earn 400-500 euros per month and I sleep in this 
room, which is paid for by the agency, with my husband.” Madalena, like many 
others, is part of the large pool of workers with experience of working in
Europe. For the moment these various experiences don’t seem to be making 
workers see themselves as all belonging to the same social class; instead a 
belief is growing that you need to seize opportunities for working in 
different countries. Petre, a 30-year-old Romanian, alternates between jobs 
abroad and in his native country. “I’ve worked in Hungary as a bricklayer,
in Slovakia in the TPCA factory (a joint venture between Toyota, Peugeot and 
Citroen), I’ve done agricultural work in Italy and now I’ve come here. When 
I arrived in Imola in September 2011, the hourly wage was 6 euros. By March 
2012 it had gone down to 3.50 euros, so I decided to go back to Romania. 
Then I heard that an agency was looking for people to work for Foxconn, so I 
came here.”

The nationalities of the immigrants working for Foxconn reflect the general 
situation in the Czech Republic, where in 2011 they made up 5.4% of the 
employed population, around 310,000 people. The biggest groups are 
Slovakians (114,000), Ukrainians (70,000), Vietnamese (34,000), Poles 
(21,000), Bulgarians (8,000) and Romanians (7,000). There were over 13,000
Mongolians in 2008 but this figure has dropped to 3,300 and the numbers of
Ukrainians and Vietnamese have also fallen as a result of the new migration 
policy aimed at citizens of non-EU countries and of Bulgaria and Romania 
joining the EU. It is no coincidence that these two countries have 
experienced a net increase in migration to the Czech Republic since they 
obtained EU membership. In the areas around both Pardubice and Kutna Hora 
the number of residence permits increased steadily between 2001 and 2008 and 
has subsequently decreased at a similar rate. In 2001 there were 621 non-EU 
immigrants in the two cities, rising to 9,457 in 2008 but falling to just 
1,937 in 2011. Workers from within the EU can now circulate without any 
specific restrictions, but those from outside the EU need to renew their 
residence permits every six months at a cost of 100 euros. In addition, a 
regulation which came into force in January 2012 prevents companies from 
hiring non-EU workers through recruitment agencies. In order to circumvent
this regulation, Foxconn subcontracts certain departments directly to the 
agencies, which find themselves with new responsibilities as employers, 
especially when some timid labour inspector turns up at the factory.

By relying on recruitment agencies, Foxconn is guaranteed considerable 
flexibility depending on orders. During peak periods, in the run-up to 
Christmas when shops in the West are full of customers looking for the 
latest technological gadget, around 4,500 people are usually working in 
Pardubice and 2,500 in Kutna Hora. In both cases, 40% of these are temporary 
workers, mostly migrants, some of whom will soon be going back home or 
having to look for another job. The workers who have a contract with an 
agency cannot, apart from in exceptional cases, be hired by Foxconn 
straightaway, but they need to wait at least six months before starting 
work. Some agencies do defraud their workers, but these are an exception to 
the rule.

And so there is a multinational workforce in the factories which, for the 
moment, doesn’t seem to have bonded in any significant way and often remains 
divided along “ethnic” lines. On the other hand, the company’s focus on the 
idea of a community seems crucial, both for facilitating the cooperation of 
a workforce that often cannot speak the local language and, especially, for 
monitoring and managing behaviour in the workplace through a chain of 
intermediaries: production line leaders, department heads, interpreters and 
agency employees. Direct and indirect workers coexist, therefore, without 
interacting much as a result both of linguistic problems and, especially, of 
mutual false perceptions by each group about the other. Both temporary and
direct workers complain that the members of the other group are allowed to
work overtime and therefore earn more.

Working hours vary according to the daily needs of the company. Direct 
workers usually work eight-hour shifts for around 40 hours per week, but 
temporary workers always work 12-hour shifts, even though they rarely work
five days per week. “I work on average 165 hours per month. I usually work
three days a week, sometimes four, for 12 hours a day. That’s not many hours 
per week, I’d like to work more,” says a Bulgarian worker. One of the key 
aspects of the Foxconn system is its unquestionable power in managing a 
workforce in a constant state of flux, as a Polish worker explains. “I work 
at Foxconn through an agency, but the problem is that I don’t always work.
Last month I only worked 51 hours and I made 3,000 korunas (120 euros). I 
went to the factory every morning to see if there was work, but they said 
that there was nothing for me. There were a few hundred of us, but the boss 
only called about ten people so the rest of us just went back to our 
dormitory.”

As well as this distinction in terms of working hours there’s also a 
distinction in terms of wages: Foxconn employees are paid about 3.50 euros
per hour and earn 600-700 euros per month, but the temporary workers have to 
make do with 2.50 euros per hour and a monthly pay packet of 400-500 euros. 
It’s true that Foxconn pays out 6 or so euros per hour to the recruitment 
agencies, but as well as paying the workers the agencies have to cover their 
transport and accommodation. The recruitment agencies are in fact an 
essential element in managing both the productive and the reproductive 
aspects of the system. Some migrants with a good understanding of the Czech 
language work for the agencies to monitor employee performance within the 
factories, while others focus on the dynamics of everyday life, right down
to the dormitories. “At least once a month somebody comes to check that no
extra people are sleeping here. They have keys to the rooms and they go in
when we’re not there,” Alina tells us. These dormitories, which are often 
distinguished from one another by the workers’ nationality, house temporary 
migrant workers at the expense of the agency, which deducts around 150 euros 
from their wage packets. The few workers who choose to look for independent 
accommodation can use the 150 euros, but rents in town are usually three 
times higher.

The long shifts and frenzied production activity that the factory sometimes 
experiences lead to a high turnover of workers. A trade union representative 
explains, “The main problem for the union is the turnover of both migrant 
and Czech workers because the work is very repetitive and quick. The annual 
turnover is around 20%, with at least 30 people being hired every month.” In 
actual fact the turnover is difficult to calculate: the number of workers is 
closely linked to the company’s manufacturing needs and so temporary workers 
can be sent home when the amount of work drops. “In mid-August they sent 300 
Romanians home because there was no more work,” Marius tells us. The role of 
the union remains marginal, not only because of the low levels of 
membership – 250-300 in Pardubice and fewer than 100 in Kutna Hora – but 
particularly because it is only concerned with core employees. “We don’t 
have access to the migrant workers, not least because they don’t speak 
Czech... we don’t deal with residence permits because one of Foxconn’s 
workers is in charge of these bureaucratic procedures.” And yet the union’s 
office, on the ground floor of one of Foxconn’s buildings, is next door to
the major recruitment agency, Xawax. It’s no coincidence perhaps that the 
temporary workers’ complaints are dealt with almost exclusively by the NGOs 
s set up to support the migrants. This exclusion of temporary migrant 
workers makes the future role of the unions uncertain since, as a recently
sacked ex-employee explains to us, “In the end there were only temporary 
workers on the production line.” This could be symptomatic of a growing 
trend that we need to watch out for in other European countries too.

Authors:
Rutvica Andrijasevic works at the School of Management, University of 
Leicester. She is the author of Migration, Agency and Citizenship in Sex 
Trafficking (Palgrave, 2010) and an editorial member of the Feminist Review 
Collective.
Devi Sacchetto works at the Department of Sociology, University of Padua and 
is the author of Fabbriche Galleggianti. Solitudine e sfruttamento dei nuovi 
marinai (Jaca Book 2009).


Dr Rutvica Andrijasevic
CLMS, School of Management
University of Leicester
KEB, University Road
Leicester, LE1 7RH

E: R.Andrijasevic@le.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)116 5935
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/clms/people/randrijasevic