Hundreds of workers in revolt at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China. And if in a country where expressing dissent in public is very risky, scenes like those that ended up on the web occur, with the related destruction of windows or surveillance cameras, it means that the malaise had reached unsustainable levels. The Chinese platform Kuaishou was flooded with videos of the demonstrations before being shut down.
The Zhengzhou plant is already known in the news. We have recently talked about it on various occasions: it is one of the largest that Foxconn owns in China (it employs about 200,000 people, more or less as many as the inhabitants of Brescia) and it is the “major iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility”Apple said earlier this month, explaining that the Covid restrictions were slowing down production and therefore that there would be few iPhones around.
Workers at Foxconn’s iPhone plant in Zhengzhou are protesting over pandemic control policies, according to one person who spoke to our reporter. They claim many workers have tested Covid positive lately.
“The pandemic control here is bad,” the worker said. pic.twitter.com/9pOeHFYiMS
— Bibek Bhandari (@bibekbhandari) November 23, 2022
There factory is one and a half times the size of Central Park, and signs of malaise on the part of those who work there had emerged immediately after the unusual exit of Apple. Now the malaise has turned into anger, a few hours ago the revolt started to put down which the forces of order in riot gear intervened, using – they say – the strong ways. It seems that the non-payment of some bonuses acted as a fusebut there is more behind it. The Chinese seem to be at the limit of endurance with the zero Covid strategy decided in Beijing, with which every outbreak is repressed with heavy lockdowns on factories, cities, everything.
Except that production cannot be stopped, so in Zhengzhou as elsewhere the employees are forced to isolate oneself in the factory, where one works, eats and sleepsand to undergo daily screening to avert a Covid outbreak that would have devastating consequences, in an armored citadel of 200,000 souls.
This is the theorythe practice the basis of discontent and frustration would be different: many rules, rigid and ineffective to contain the virus, e poor quality food. Positive employees would sleep isolated from the others only to meet on the assembly line, and the meals would almost always be the same, potatoes and cabbage.
He said most meals were composed of potato and cabbage. Deliveries were banned. Trash piled up in the hallway. They heard Covid patients and non-patients were mixed together on the assembly lines. pic.twitter.com/nvTYwy8onE
— Viola Zhou (@violazhouyi) November 23, 2022
Many, thousands it is said, would have fled, those who remained are now full and protest animatedly. “Foxconn doesn’t treat us like human beings”, an employee would say. “It is evident that closed-loop production at Foxconn only helps prevent the spread of Covid in the city, but among factory workers for whom conditions have worsened”Aiden Chau, of a Hong Kong law firm, told Reuters.