In a prolonged piece detailing the hardships that employees in Apple’s provide chain can face, Bloomberg follows the story of a manufacturing facility worker at Flextronics international, a contract producer based totally in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur that produced digital camera parts for the iPhone 5.
ahead of the launch of the iPhone 5, Flextronics had to significantly ramp up manufacturing, hiring a 1,500 new workers by means of brokers and recruiters in Nepal, Malaysia, and surrounding areas. because factory jobs are extremely preferred, many households pay upfront charges to brokers to acquire the positions, resulting in loans that may take “imported” employees years to pay off, with factory managers controlling when workers are in a position to leave.
within a Flextronics manufacturing facility in fortress price, Texas. Courtesy of The Wall street Journal
For the iPhone 5 rollout, a recruiter working for Flextronics contacted four brokers in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, in late August and early September, urgently looking for 1,500 men to make cameras, in keeping with three of the 4 brokers. The drive to move so many males so fast used to be remarkable. “The recruitment agency used to be telling me, ‘we’d like these workers, it’s a must to send them by lately,'” says Rajan Shrestha, managing director of a small firm called Sharp Human instruments.
The frenzy to rent staff used to be how one Nepalese man, Bibek Dhong, found himself paying $250 and handing over his passport to a recruiter who promised him a good job. Dhong used to be compelled to pay any other $500 to a dealer (6 months of his wages from his former job as a dairy farmer) and sign a debt settlement declaring he would pay $400 more. Dhong was told to keep his broker fees secret, as Apple has a coverage that forestalls excessive fees with the aid of recruiters.
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