Women workers at factories assembling iPhones in Sriperumbudur, an area on the outskirts of Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, are forced to live in hostels with substandard living conditions under surveillance and restrictions subjecting them to isolation, as per an investigation by Indian publication scroll.in.
The manufacturing of the iPhone, a globally coveted and expensive mobile phone produced by the tech giant Apple, is contributing to the country’s economy, but worker conditions, while not as severe as those in China— the largest exporter of iPhones, if ignored, could grow to be more exploitative. The company running this particular factory is Taiwan’s Foxconn, the biggest iPhone maker for Apple.Inc, and the biggest contributor to India’s supply chain of iPhones. Foxconn, or Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., is also the world’s largest contract manufacturer for electronics. Foxconn has a years-long history of breaking labor laws and ill-treatment via sexual harassment, bullying, hiring teenagers, rolling back on safety mechanisms, cutting down on off-days, grotesquely long working hours, hiring laborers temporarily, and underpayment of low-wage workers in China.
Since Apple.Inc began limiting its reliance on China due to COVID-19-linked restrictions and a trade war with the US, India has expressed ambition and demonstrated potential to be a major player in iPhone manufacturing. In the fiscal year 2023, the iPhone became one of India’s top five exports. Narendra Modi’s government and manufacturers aim to transform agricultural regions into industrial hubs, even if, as it appears, this transformation could come at a human cost.
An overwhelming majority of workers in the iPhone factory in Sriperumbudur are women who migrated internally to financially support their families. Reasons cited for hiring more women to put together iPhones include their “nimble fingers” but also that they are less likely to negotiate higher wages per scroll.in. The housing provided and managed by Foxconn restricted women workers’ movement even outside factories and limited their interaction with outsiders. Young women were not allowed to leave hostel premises after working hours from Friday to Saturday and could only leave their lodges on Sunday if administration permitted it after confirmation from their families. It is understood that “safety” is one of the reasons why these hostels and the lives of young women workers are so controlled by factory authorities. Free provision of housing and meals is a pull for women laborers from low-income households in smaller towns and villages, but the reality of these employment benefits can be a struggle for the workers. Inside the hostels, the rooms are small and overly populated, the food lacks basic nutrition and quality, which is reported to be extremely low, and other basic necessities are not met for the workers, who even report the lavatories to be unhygienic.
Out of 15,000, 80 percent of the staff in these iPhone assembly plants are female, mostly young women aged 18–23. The restrictions imposed in these hostels were to “exert control” over employees even outside the workplace, labor activists told the Scroll. These lodgings have also been likened to the workers’ dormitories in China for women, per researchers.
The Centre for Indian Trade Unions’s Deputy Secretary, S. Kannan, told Scroll.in, “It is basically like jailing people. The workers never get a chance to meet anyone and remain isolated.” He added that access to the Foxconn employees was not easy as the dormitories where the women laborers live were “closely secured," and they were not allowed to speak to the media or outsiders without approval from management.
In Sriperumbudur, during the eight-hour shifts, workers in front of the manufacturing line meticulously put screws onto the iPhones and connected various pieces of the gadget together. They are expected to work on 500 phones per day to meet the company’s target. The women workers report suffering from back and neck conditions as a result of leaning over their phones for hours at a time without sufficient breaks. Only the 45-minute lunch break is reported to be the slot when most women leave their work tables. Other reported medical conditions women workers faced were delay in period, hair fall, and passing out due to weakness induced by their grueling routine. These health concerns were also documented among Chinese factory-working women during the initial years of the technology boom in the country.
Health issues for women workers in these glossy factories have also been reported previously. In December 2021, thousands of young women workers blocked the Chennai-Bengaluru expressway over a food poisoning incident that left about 250 women workers sick, with 159 taken to the hospital. The women were residing in a dormitory called the IMA hostel, which housed 2000 workers and was managed by contractors. The workers demanded Foxconn take their well-being seriously and improve living conditions along with the diet. There were also complaints of underpayment and workplace toxicity owing to abuse by management. They also complained about the unsanitary living conditions they had been subjected to by Foxconn. Following the demonstrations, the factory remained closed for a few weeks until the administration pledged to repair the dorms and assure the hygiene of the food. Trade unionists in Tamil Nadu have called the conditions under which internal migrant women work in iPhone plants “bonded labor" and raised the fact that the workers are not allowed to unionize as per the documentation of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC). Protesting young women were also arbitrarily detained along with union activists, per the BHRRC. Since then, while the situation has reportedly improved due to “course correction” by Foxconn, the workers continue to live in inadequate and unsatisfactory conditions. Elsewhere in Karnataka, labor laws were relaxed and work shifts extended to 12 hours from eight to facilitate iPhone manufacturing in the state in 2023 after lobbying by Apple and Foxconn, much to the dismay of labor activists and trade unionists. A similar attempt was made in Tamil Nadu, but stronger opposition and protest reversed the state government’s decision to liberalize the law and extend shift hours within days, as reported by the Rest of the World.
Despite the practice of surveillance of women workers and terrible housing, some have termed this less than stellar treatment of women workers as the growing pains of a booming manufacturing sector in India. However, this growth is coming at the cost of gender rights and dignity.