2010年5月24日 星期一

富士康悲剧

2010 年05月25日 05:59 AM

富士康悲剧
SUICIDES PUT FOXCONN MODEL UNDER SCRUTINY




When Terry Gou opened a factory in Longhua, a town north of Shenzhen in southern China in 1988, he was ahead of most other electronics companies.

1988年,郭台铭(Terry Gou)开始在深圳市北部的龙华镇开办工厂,他走在了大多数其它电子公司的前头。

Longhua was an expanse of hills and paddy fields when the founder and chairman of Hon Hai, a Taiwanese computer parts producer, set up shop there. The low wages and land prices allowed Mr Gou to make computers and handsets for the world's technology brands more cheaply and efficiently than his competitors.

这位台湾电脑零部件制造商鸿海(Hon Hai)创始人兼总裁当初到龙华办厂时,这里还是一片广阔的丘陵与稻田。当地较低的工资水平与土地价格,使郭台铭能够以比竞争对手更低的成本、更为高效地 为全球科技品牌制造电脑与手机。

Like many other low-cost manufacturers in China, Hon Hai or Foxconn, the trade name the group goes by, took charge not just of its workers' labour but their entire lives. Migrant workers are housed and fed on campus.

与其它许多在华低成本制造商一样,鸿海或富士康(Foxconn,该集团的商标名)不 仅负责员工的工作,还负责他们的整个生活。农民工们被安排在园区内吃住。

The plant – believed to be the largest in the world with 300,000 workers – helped Mr Gou transform Foxconn into the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer by a wide margin.

凭借龙华园区的帮助,郭台铭将富士康变成了遥遥领先于竞争对手的全球最大合同电子制造 商。据信,这个拥有30万名工人的园区,规模居全球第一。

Today Foxconn – which normally maintains secrecy about the workings of its factories – makes the majority of iPhones and iPods for Apple as well as TVs, phones and digital cameras for a host of other big names including Dell, Sony and Nokia.

如今,苹果(Apple)的大部分iPhone和iPod均由富士康制造,此外,它还 为包括戴尔(Dell)、索尼(Sony)和诺基亚(Nokia)在内的众多其它知名品牌生产电视、手机和数码相机。富士康通常对其工厂的运行情况保密。

“Ours is a factory most unlike a factory,” Liu Kun, spokesman at Foxconn's China headquarters, tells the Financial Times. “It is a plant and a town at the same time, but the basic unit here is the dorm, not the family.”

在富士康中国总部,集团发言人刘坤告诉英国《金融时报》:“我们的工厂非常不像是一个 工厂。它既是一座工厂,同时也是一座城镇,但这里的基本单位是宿舍,而不是家庭。”

But following a spate of suicides among workers, outsiders argue this operations model is no longer fit to deal with the pressures of modern Chinese society which seep in through the factory gates.

但在一连串员工自杀事件发生后,外界人士开始辩称,这种运行模式,已不再适合应对已渗 入工厂内部的现代中国社会的压力。

And the doubts about the factory town model raise much broader questions about the way China's manufacturing sector works.

而且,对工业园区模式的怀疑,已经引发了对中国制造业运行方式更广泛的疑虑。

“[The deaths] force us to question the future of the ‘factory of the world' and the new generation of migrant workers,” according to nine Chinese social sciences professors in an open letter to Foxconn last week.

9位中国社会科学教授在上周致富士康的公开信中表示:“(自杀事件)迫使我们开始质疑 ‘世界工厂'及新一代农民工的未来。”

The country outside Foxconn's factory gates has undergone stunning change over the past two decades.

过去20年来,富士康工厂门外的乡村已发生了令人震惊的变化。

Viewed from the roof of the plant's newest dormitory, a 15-storey tower, Longhua is a sprawling urban area with factories, apartments and office blocks squeezing in between multiple highways.

从富士康厂区最新一栋15层塔楼宿舍楼顶望去,龙华已经成为一个杂乱的城区,在几条主 要道路之间,密布着工厂、公寓与办公大楼。

There has been at least as big a change among the workforce.

而劳动大军的变化可能更大。

“The monotonous work I do here is not in line with my idea of life, it doesn't make any sense,” says Lü Pengguo, a 22-year-old logistics worker at Longhua from the inland province of Henan. “My dad says I should keep the job. But as soon as I find something better, I'll leave.”

吕鹏国(音译)今年22岁,来自河南,目前在龙华做物流工作。他表示:“我在这儿做的 工作十分单调,与我的生活理想不符,没有任何意义。我爸爸说我应该保住这份工作。但一旦我找到更好的工作,就会离开。”

The new generation of workers is very different to the one that helped Mr Gou build his manufacturing machine. Twenty years ago workers would consider a factory job the chance of a lifetime and for many the food and accommodation offered at the plant would have been no worse than they would expect at home.

新一代的工人,与那些帮助郭台铭建造起这台制造业机器的民工大不相同。二十年前,工人 把一份工厂工作视为千载难逢的机遇,而且对于许多人来说,工厂提供的食宿可能远远强于他们在家里的预期。

Now, 90 per cent of Foxconn's workforce are between 18 and 24 years old. Born after China started its economic reforms, most have much higher expectations.

如今,富士康90%的员工都在18岁到24岁之间。他们在中国启动经济改革之后出生, 大多数人都拥有高得多的预期。

“The migrant workers nowadays want other things in life, they want fun,” says Mr Liu.

刘坤表示:“如今的农民工希望生活中有些其它东西,他们希望有乐趣。”

Foxconn has tried to adapt, building sports facilities, libraries and internet cafés on campus. With banks, post offices, retail and restaurant chains, the streets of the compound feel no different from those outside.

富士康已经在尝试适应这一变化,在园区内修建了运动设施、图书馆和网吧。园区内的街道 两旁有银行、邮局、连锁零售店和餐馆,感觉与园区外的街道没有任何不同。

But while Foxconn is clearly not running a sweatshop, there is still little time and energy left for recreation.

但尽管富士康无疑并非在运营一家血汗工厂,工人们还是几乎没有时间和精力用于娱乐放 松。

Production lines run on two 12-hour shifts. Each shift includes time for one meal and two hours of overtime. Several workers interviewed during a factory visit on Friday said they were also doing overtime each Saturday.

富士康的流水线实行两班倒工作制,每班12个小时。每个班中间可以吃一顿饭,另外还要 加班两个小时。在上周五参观该工厂期间,一些接受我们采访的工人表示,他们每周六也要加班。

Mr Lü complains that the company agreed to raise wages since lunar new year in February, but had yet to follow up.

吕鹏国抱怨称,公司此前答应自2月份春节起加薪,但迄今尚未兑现。

Liu Liping, a female worker at Foxconn, says she rarely ever leaves the Foxconn campus because things are too expensive outside.

富士康一位女工人刘丽萍(音译)表示,她几乎从来不出园区,因为园区外的东西太贵。

But others struggle to get used to life inside. Mr Liu says that a newly installed helpline is spotting desperate and confused staff pondering suicide almost every day.

但其他人则很难适应园区内的生活。刘坤表示,一条新安装的帮助热线,几乎每天都能发现 一些感到绝望、头脑混乱的员工在考虑自杀。

“There is certainly a strong copycat factor in the recent events,” says Michael Phillips, Director of the Suicide Research and Prevention Center at Shanghai Mental Health Center.

上海市精神卫生中心心理危机干预中心研究室主任费立鹏(Michael Phillips)表示:“最近的事件中,显然存在明显的盲目模仿的因素。”

Mr Phillips also points out that contrary to findings in western countries, almost half of all suicides among young people in China happen impulsively.

费立鹏同时指出,与西方国家的调查结果不同,中国年轻人的自杀行为中,接近半数是出于 一时冲动。

This raises the risk of “infection”, especially on campus where everyone's lives resemble each other so closely.

这造成了“传染”的风险,尤其是在所有人的生活都如此相似的工业园区内部。


译者/何黎

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