What is it like inside Foxconn: the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant in China

It is a normal Saturday in Zhengzhou, the capital of central China’s Henan province. The sky over the Foxconn factory complex is obscured with a choking smog. Under the hazy sunset, hordes of workers have started to walk out of the production facility. The crowd thins out quickly.

But working conditions inside the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant are not normal, as weaker demand for the mobile phones assembled inside the vast 1.4 million square metre (15 million square feet) facility has led to lower salaries and reduced benefits from Apple’s largest supplier.

The shuttle bus service to the workers’ gloomy dormitory compound has been cancelled, forcing some to walk for up to 40 minutes to get to their rooms.

The cancellation of the shuttle service is routine during the Lunar New Year holiday, but normally it resumes when production picked up again. But not this year, as the service was cancelled earlier this month, long before.

Small but important perks have also been scaled back. A free laundry service was cut at the beginning of the year for the first time, with employees now having to pay 7 yuan (US$1) to wash a load of laundry, while dry cleaning an overcoat costs 18 yuan (US$2.7) of their 2,000 yuan (US$299) to 3,000 yuan monthly income.

The Zhengzhou facility, one of Foxconn’s 45 factories scattered throughout China, began operations in 2010 and is equipped with its own group of customs officials at the factory gates to speed up the process of transporting finished iPhones to the nearby airport for export.