Foxconn Beyond China: Capital-labour Relations as Co-determinans of Internationalization

Foxconn, a Taiwanese-owned firm, is the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. Foxconn is best known for being the main assembler of Apple’s iPhone and iPad and for the harsh working conditions at its mainland Chinese factories. These have fallen under close activist and scholarly scrutiny, which brought to light the firm’s militarised disciplinary regime, unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, worker suicides, excessive and unpaid overtime, forced student labour and crammed factory dormitories (Chan and Pun, 2010; Pun and Chan, 2012; Chan, Pun and Selden, 2013). This despotic management model prompted scholars to identify Foxconn as the epitome of ‘bloody Taylorism’ (Lipietz, 1987). Foxconn’s manufacturing centre is in mainland China, where it employs around 1 million people in 32 factories. In addition it has more than 200 subsidiaries around the world. However, despite Foxconn’s expansion into South East Asia, Latin America, Australia and Europe, there is very little scholarly research on the firm’s work regimes outside China. Foxconn’s territorial diversification strategy begs certain questions about the firm’s internationalization, namely the process by which it expands and subsequently organizes its operations from mainland China to its overseas branch plants. This chapter explores Foxconn’s internationalization and transfer of work and employment practices from mainland China to Europe, namely the Czech Republic and Turkey, where it opened subsidiaries in 2000 and 2009 respectively. Although Foxconn is Taiwanese-owned, since its manufacturing headquarters and the bulk of its factories are in China, scholars suggest that its work regime is best understood in relation to labour management in mainland China (Pun, Chan and Selden, forthcoming).