Global Fastener News

MEDIA SPOTLIGHT – After the fastener industry manufactures and distributes screws the next job is installing them. Mashable.com reported on a U.S. college student who spent 60-hour work weeks in China screwing in tiny fasteners into iPhone casings for about $450 a month.

As part of a 200-person assembly line that produced 3,600 iPhones a day, New York University graduate student Dejian Zeng estimated he fastened 1,800 screws each day. Zeng spent 12 hours a day at the factory, with a 10-minute morning break, 15 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes for dinner. He worked six days a week.

Zeng took the job in an undercover capacity as part of an investigation with NYU and the organization China Labor Watch to see labor conditions in a Chinese manufacturing plant.

His job was with Pegatron, a Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing company, at a plant near Shanghai. Pegatron is one of Apple’s main manufacturing partners.

Getting the job was easy.

“I just show up in front of the factories, and I saw a lot of people already carrying their luggage and waiting in line so I just step in line and wait,” he told Mashable. “And then, when it’s my turn, they ask for my IDs, ask me to show my hands, and they ask me to recite English alphabet. But that’s basically the interview process, and then I was in.”

His job was at Station 26: Fasten Speaker to Housing.

“So what I do is that I put one screw over the speaker and fasten it on the back case of iPhone, and that’s the only work that I do. It’s just one screw for about 12 hours in the factory,” Zeng explained.

Pegatron did not respond to questions from Mashable.

The plant employs about 200 who assembled 3,600 phones a day.

Zeng sat on backless chairs, which he said left him in pain. He slept in a dorm with eight people per room, 200 people per floor and only one bathroom per floor.

Zeng did find the plant to be “pretty clean, it’s pretty bright, and they have AC and all this stuff.”

Overtime is not voluntary, he told Mashable. Managers could shut down the assembly line just to scream at one allegedly underperforming employee.

Any employee complaints went directly to the factory, allowing Pegatron to keep reports from Apple. Zeng said workers at Foxconn, another Taiwanese manufacturer, were able to report problems directly to Apple.

It was not the first time a reporter has gone inside press-shy iPhone assembly plants. Foxconn has been watched since multiple worker suicides in 2009 and 2010 and a 2011 fatal fire at an iPad plant.

In 2012, a reporter managed to photograph the interior of Foxconn’s Tai Yuan factory by posing as a worker. In 2012, Marketplace’s China correspondent was officially allowed inside a Foxconn plant. 

Editor’s Note: Articles in MEDIA SPOTLIGHT are excerpts from publications that show the industry what the public is reading about fasteners or fastener companies.