The new generation of factory girls born in 1995 said: Foxconn does not believe in love, Kunshan is full of "single masters"

Text | Cao Shiwu, Li Buzhui

Editor | Zhuo Ran

In 2020, migrant workers quickly became a trend that swept the Internet Hot words, at the end of the year, we found a group of "post-95" migrant workers and tried to find some answers from them about the life, work and future of the younger generation of migrant workers.

Among them are the "Chinese Garden Masters" who went out to work at the age of 19 and moved around many places, relying on "daily pay" part-time jobs to get by; Fei, a rural girl who struggled with the agency and even missed visiting her sick mother because of it.

Among them are Sichuan guys who dropped out of junior high school and traveled across half of China to work, but were disappointed with their lives due to endless mechanical labor; there are even some who just want to find a girl. The original intention of being a friend, but after joining Foxconn, his dreams were disillusioned and he became an assembly line worker.

While "involution" is sweeping the workplace and campus, this group of young people outside the mainstream have gone from having great longing for working life to being lost in the assembly line. What kind of struggles and difficulties did they experience during the mechanical work process?

The following is the true story about them:

For "high rebates"

I can't go to see my mother who is hospitalized

Xiaoyan is 22 years old from Luoyang, Henan Province

My family is in a rural area on the outskirts of the county. Not many people in our village can go to college. At most, I went out to work after finishing high school. Like everyone else, I went to Wujiang, Suzhou to work when I was 19, taking on the responsibility of supporting my family.

In the past three years, I have only returned to my hometown once - I got three times the salary for overtime work on holidays.

I am usually very frugal. I rent an old farmhouse, but it is cheaper. I can't bear to buy skin care products, so I only have a bottle of facial cream that costs less than 10 yuan, and I just wipe it on after washing my face.

I will give all the money I earn from working to my mother. She is in poor health and always needs money for medical treatment and medicine. Such a frugal life is not uncommon around me. At least a few of my good friends also live in "poor" like me.

I have a fellow villager from Xinxiang, Henan. I call her Sister Tingting. She is over 30 years old and is still unmarried. She has always wanted to buy a house and take root in the city. She has been saving money in the past few years while working, and she rarely buys new clothes and shoes. But Sister Tingting’s savings can never keep up with the rising housing prices, so her dream has not yet come true.

In order to make more money, during the peak recruitment season of the factory, I would resign from my current factory and go to an agency to find a job with high rebates.

The so-called high rebate is to sign a labor dispatch contract with an employment agency and send them to the factory to work in the name of dispatch. After the work is completed, the factory will send a sum of money to the intermediary, and the intermediary will then call us after deducting the service fee.

This approach allows the factory to quickly recruit a large number of employees during the recruitment season. For me, it allows me to make more money.

In this way, I once received more than 7,000 yuan in rebates in 3 months at a food and beverage factory. Plus three months' salary, the money I earn is equivalent to twice as much as what I earn from working in a factory.

However, there are many unscrupulous agencies in Suzhou. After working full hours, you either cannot get the rebate, or they use various excuses to deduct the rebate, and finally get the money. , far less than what was negotiated before joining the job.

Most employees do not sign legal labor contracts with employment agencies, but only verbal commitments from both parties. In this labor relationship, workers are at a disadvantage. . Therefore, once something like this happens, you can only consider yourself unlucky.

Last year, one of my little sisters introduced me to an employment agency. They were recruiting a large number of employees for a paint factory. The agency said that if you work for two months, you can get a rebate of 10,000 yuan.

This number is the highest among all the rebate work I have done. Without any hesitation, I quit my job and went to this paint factory.

Because I was in the peak period of orders, I basically didn’t get much rest for two months. I was like a walking zombie - I worked when I woke up, and I couldn’t sleep when I was tired. Wait until the leader speaks before taking a break.

That factory produces various water-based industrial paints, water-based tile paints and PS plastic paints. I have never heard of them, but it does not affect my ability to work here.

I am only responsible for a small link in my production line, and other operations have nothing to do with me. When working in a factory, everyone is like a screw, just drive it towards the position they are responsible for.

This has led to the current high turnover of factory personnel, making it difficult to retain people, so "high rebates" have been created just to retain people.

On the 47th day of working in the paint factory, my mother's condition worsened, but I was still 13 days away from receiving the rebate, and I was reluctant to give up the money.

Those two weeks were like a year. When I was working on the production line, I was always worried about receiving a call from my hometown telling me that my mother was gone. Because we are not allowed to carry mobile phones when we are working. As soon as it was time to take a break, I immediately rushed to the lounge and checked the messages on my phone.

Every day when I get home from work, I take off my paint-stained work clothes and smell a pungent smell. Before I even have time to wash my face and take a shower, I can’t wait to call home and ask. Mom's condition.

My father always felt that my job was not stable and honorable enough. Every time he called home, he would always suggest that I go home. This time my mother got sick, which gave him another reason to let me go back to my hometown. However, my attitude is very clear, I need a job and I need money. I am not coveting the speed and fashion of the city, but for me, this is the best place to make money and support my family.

After two weeks, the agent told me that the paint factory had not settled the service fee with them - they wanted to withhold the money from me.

I had no choice but to call the police and tell the police that I urgently needed the money to go home and treat my mother. After the police left, the agent found out that I had bought a ticket to go home the next day and started delaying my trip again.

That night, I once again felt that life is too difficult, especially for girls like us who have no education and are weak. It seems that anyone is qualified to bully us.

The agent saw that I was crying hysterically and did not want to cause trouble. He deducted 2,000 yuan from me and gave me 8,000 yuan. I couldn't afford to bother with the agency for the two thousand yuan. I had to get the money back home as soon as possible to treat my mother.

When I got home, I settled the medical bills with the hospital. My mother’s condition also improved and she would be discharged from the hospital in a few days.

Life seems to have become a little more peaceful.

It is not easy to find a girlfriend in Foxconn.

Many middle-aged women work in the factory with their sons.

Xiaoxin Male, 1998, Foxconn General Engineer Taiyuan

This is my fourth month of working at Foxconn.

After graduating from vocational high school, I went out to work. In the first two years I traveled all over the country. I worked as a waiter at a KTV and delivered takeout for a period of time. I also changed several cities in the process. I had no plan or purpose, and I didn't save much money.

This year I feel that I am no longer young, and I can’t just hang out like this. I want to go back to my hometown to develop. My hometown is Luliang, Shanxi, and there are not many job opportunities there. Young people go to Taiyuan, the provincial capital.

People who work in Taiyuan usually either go to construction sites or work as apprentices. I couldn't bear the hardship, and there was no suitable job for a while, so I joined Foxconn in Taiyuan as a general worker. Factories like Foxconn provide room and board and stable wages, making it easier to save the money you earn.

Picture | Workshop working environment

There are generally several ways to get into Foxconn, you can be introduced by employees inside, or you can If you go to the factory for recruitment yourself, more people come in through labor agencies.

Most general workers have a junior high school or vocational high school education, and those with a college or bachelor's degree are basically cadres.

My basic salary is 2,100 yuan, the normal working hours a day are 8 hours, and the overtime time is 2 hours. Work six days a week, Sunday off.

Foxconn’s overtime pay is 1.5 times the salary, Sunday overtime pay is 2 times the salary, and legal holidays are 3 times the salary.

Generally speaking, working hours and overtime hours are relatively fixed, and overtime wages can also be settled normally. However, during the peak production season, it is possible to work without a break for half a month.

Picture | Workshop environment

At Foxconn, everyone looks forward to working overtime, because there is no money to be made without working overtime. .

If it is during the off-season, there is less overtime work, and many people will not be able to work for long before "taking the bucket and leaving".

The reason why it is called "leaving with a bucket" is because the workers have relatively few possessions. When they leave their jobs, they take a plastic bucket and put various daily necessities in it and carry it with them. You can leave as soon as you put it on, which is also jokingly called "running away with a bucket".

The production off-season and peak season are basically determined by the number of orders received by the factory. Generally speaking, Foxconn began to enter the peak order period in May, and it stabilized after the Apple conference, and gradually turned into the off-season.

The park provides board and lodging, and you live in an eight-person dormitory. There is a staff restaurant for meals. The food and lodging expenses will be deducted from the salary every month, 400 yuan for food and 110 yuan for accommodation. Yuan.

But I prefer to live in the park. After all, the environment and living facilities here are much better than outside. There are restaurants, cinemas, basketball courts, badminton courts and other venues in the park.

But I rarely go to these venues. The daily entertainment for me and most of my colleagues is to play games.

There is a coworker in our dormitory who was born in 1999. His King of Glory has reached 100 stars in the King Rank. He often told us that he most wanted to be a professional e-sports player, and he always said that he would continue working for a while and participate in professional e-sports trials.

Working at Foxconn may be similar to life in school. I have never been to university, but I heard that universities also live in communal dormitories. There are people from all over the world in our dormitory, with the most people from Shanxi Province and some from surrounding provinces.

Part of the reason why I entered the factory was because I heard people said it was easy to find a partner here, and I thought I could find a girlfriend and get married. But when I came in, I found that this was not the case.

The male to female ratio in the factory is 7:3, and most young girls look down on working in the factory. Among the general workers currently recruited, many female employees are women in their thirties and forties, and many women and their sons even work in the factory.

Today’s girls have seen a lot of the world and will not be easily fooled by wage earners. I've tried chasing a few girls, but to no avail. According to my observation, girls in the factory are willing to fall in love with handsome and junior leaders. Things like finding a good partner in the factory and a man finding two girlfriends are already a thing of the past.

Foxconn has a very high employee turnover. Most people can only work for three or four months, and then leave after saving enough money. There are even many people who come back to work during the peak order season and then quit their job to do other things during the off-season.

Foxconn is not a job suitable for a long time. It’s okay to save some money, but you won’t learn anything. Someone in my hometown has opened a snack bar, selling spicy duck necks and making a lot of money. When I save enough money, I also want to try to open a store myself.

Traveling across half of China to work

The longing for the future is being wiped out step by step

Xiaolong is a 22-year-old Sichuanese

After finishing junior high school, I stopped studying. I've been wandering around in my hometown, wasting away my time. The largest city I have been to is the county town of my hometown. Until one day, my father told me that you should learn to earn money to support yourself. Otherwise, how will you fill your stomach when your parents get old and die? Therefore, as soon as the New Year of 2019 was over, on the recommendation of my father, I followed my fellow villagers to Kunshan.

In order to save money, we took the dilapidated green train, bought hard-seat tickets, and changed trains once in the middle.

The train was moving very slowly. I almost fell asleep all the way. I woke up several times and opened my eyes to see that the train was still running. I felt like my hometown was like Kunshan. There are several worlds between them.

The train finally entered Kunshan. The station was very short and old. It didn’t look like the facilities that a big city should have. It made me wonder if this city had the legendary tourist attractions. So developed.

The fellow called a black car. The driver said that Kunshan is very good. He had nothing when he came here, but now he has bought two houses. "There are factories and jobs everywhere here. There is no shortage of money at all. It just depends on whether you have the ability to make money."

I thought that I must work well, buy a house and a car here, and bring my parents to live in the city.

We live in a town in the south of Kunshan, and the rent is 1,650 yuan a month. There are many factories here, the streets are full of foreign accents, and the most popular ones are local restaurants from all over the place. Every night, people speaking various dialects sit in various small restaurants chatting and eating.

There is also a relatively high-end shopping mall in the town. Every weekend, the cinema, KFC and supermarket are full of people. I don’t have much money in my bank card, so I can’t imagine where these people get the money to go to the movies and eat fried chicken. However, the feeling here is that life is very comfortable, but you have to be rich.

When I came here, the decadence I felt in my hometown immediately disappeared. I want to work hard and work hard to make money.

A fellow villager introduced me to their electronics factory.

On the first day of work, the company’s personnel provided intensive training to our new employees. It was a training room about the size of two middle school classes, filled with young people in their twenties like me, with far more men than women.

The personnel trained us for a day, mainly talking about the company's development history, work discipline, salary payment, etc. We hope that we can stay and develop in the long term.

"What a fart, you're a liar," I heard someone from behind curse.

Employees working in factories are extremely mobile, especially in larger companies. Colleagues working on the same production line may have new faces next month. For factory personnel departments, maintaining employee stability is one of the most important tasks. Therefore, many companies will cooperate with employment agencies or human resources companies to keep the flow of personnel flowing and not disconnected.

This factory implements all dust-free operations. HR asked us to transfer 100 yuan each to her to buy dust-proof clothing. She said that this amount would be reimbursed when we resigned. money. I was dubious and finally handed over a hundred yuan. However, five or six young people at the scene refused this request and were driven away by personnel.

Those who paid the money were divided into five departments and ten groups. I was assigned to the No. 4 assembly line. The person in charge was a line leader named Li, who assigned us jobs.

I have been working for a month. Although I am very familiar with the production line, the product qualification rate cannot meet the requirements of the line leader, and I am scolded by him almost every day. I even began to fear going to work. For me, going there to work was like going to a grave. The complex product structure is very difficult for me as a newbie in the factory, so the product qualification rate has not been rising.

The line leader forced me to work overtime unconditionally on the grounds that I could not complete my performance, and I was not entitled to overtime pay. But my basic salary is only 3,000 yuan, but I have to work here from 8:30 in the morning to 1:30 in the evening.

When my product qualification rate improved, the line leader arranged for me to work the night shift instead of the day shift.

Because I always wear dustproof clothing, one day, a large area of ??red rash appeared on my skin, which was extremely itchy. I asked the line leader for leave and wanted to go to the hospital, but the line leader asked me to finish my work first.

At that time, I thought, I am sick and the line leader wants me to continue working, so what is the difference between me and the machines I operate? Instantly aroused the inner anger.

In fact, because I have been working overtime some time ago, my head is dizzy and my mood is low. My "hate" for the line leader has long taken root.

In anger, I ran to the human resources department and filed for resignation.

I searched for jobs for several days, but none of them suited me. The money in my pocket is getting less and less. Because my fellow villagers and I share the rent together, I can afford to rent the whole house. If I don’t have money to pay the rent, my fellow villagers probably won’t be able to accommodate me.

The longing on the green train and the encouraging words of the black train driver were all wiped out at this moment.

I am what others call the "Master of the Chinese Garden"

I have low self-esteem, but I am very happy

Xiao Wu, 21 years old, Gansu Silver Man

I came out from Gansu to work when I was 19 years old, and I have worked countless jobs in 3 years.

My first job was in Hefei, Anhui, working on the assembly line of a home appliance factory. The overtime work in that factory was endless, and after I couldn't work for more than two weeks, I couldn't stand the "ruthless exploitation" and resigned with a salary of more than 2,000 yuan.

The second job is still in Hefei. At that time, a small company was recruiting people. When I entered, I realized something was wrong. I felt that I was doing a pyramid scheme, so I ran out as if I was running away that day.

During my time in Hefei, the impression this city gave me was that it was very rustic, as if it were an old man without the vitality of young people. So I decided to leave Hefei and come to Guangdong.

In order to make money, I took any job I could find, and most of it was assembly line work with a daily payout. I have worked in clothing factories, watch factories, and furniture factories in Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Zhongshan. There are 360 ??lines of work, and I have been involved in almost a dozen types.

When I was working in Zhongshan, I made a very good friend, Brother Biao. His hometown is in Guizhou, and he left his hometown to make money. He was in a similar situation to me.

One day, he told me that I would take you to a good place. I asked where, and he said he would know as soon as he went. In this way, I followed Brother Biao to Kunshan.

When I first came to Kunshan, I felt that it was the same as Dongguan and Shenzhen, without what Brother Biao called "fun". Brother Biao said, that’s because you have never been to China Garden.

In this way, last year I followed Brother Biao to Kunshan China Garden. Only when I came here did I realize that Kunshan is really interesting. Before it was regulated and renovated, this place was simply a happy paradise for a "paralyzed god" like me.

When we first arrived in Kunshan, my friends and I had almost 4,000 yuan in hand. We decided to play for a few days before looking for a job.

During that time, we played games in the Internet cafe day and night, ate, drank and had sex in the Internet cafe. We didn’t see much sunshine outside for about seven or eight days. The Internet cafe is full of young people like us, crowded together. We have no worries about what the future will be like. The word ideal is just a word to us. We live in the moment, play in the moment, and enjoy the moment. Such days are free and easy.

Here, if you are hungry, you will eat instant noodles, if you are sleepy, you will fall on a public chair on the roadside, if you want to play, you will go to an Internet cafe for a few days, if you have no money, you will Go to the factory to do daily work for a few days.

After playing day and night for a week, I was really tired and wanted to sleep in a hotel room. Brother Biao said the hotel was too expensive, so we went to a nearby community and rented a room for daily rent. There was a big sign at the door that said "Daily rent, 25 yuan a day", which was ridiculously cheap.

After entering, we realized that it is cheap for a reason. The house with three bedrooms and one living room is divided into 6 spaces, with bunk beds in each space.

My friends and I slept here for four days, watching the landlord keep bringing new people in and out, even the bed below me. You know how many people have changed.

After we have played enough and slept enough, we go to do the daily work. There is a lot of work in the Chinese Garden. We work in factories that make the most money, and we can earn about three to four hundred a day.

Once we went to a pharmaceutical factory to conduct human trials of drugs, which cost 500 yuan a day.

Before we were injected with drugs, we signed a responsibility letter with the factory that was similar to a life and death certificate. I don’t know if this so-called experiment was formal or not - it was for money anyway. I could risk life and death, but luckily nothing went wrong in the end.

Although life is not comfortable, life here in Kunshan is really free and comfortable, which is what Brother Biao said - the fun part of this place.

Sometimes, when I look at the people commuting in the morning and evening rush hours in front of the factory, I feel that they are too tired, and I don’t envy them at all.

Until one time, I went to the skating rink with Brother Biao and met a girl named Xiaowen. I decided to chase her at that time.

We added each other on WeChat, and I chatted with her in the evening, bragging that I was a manager in SS (a well-known factory in Kunshan), and that I earned more than 8,000 a month, or so Money received.

I was a scumbag at that time, so I wanted to get Xiaowen first. After all, I had never had anything like that happen to a girl, and I really wanted to give it a try. I planned to go through all the procedures for a relationship between a man and a woman as friends with Xiaowen, and then break up, so that we could get together and part ways.

After chatting for more than a month, Xiaowen finally agreed to be my girlfriend. As a girlfriend, Xiaowen brought bread and snacks she made for me to eat. At that moment, I changed my mind.

I felt that in this world, besides my parents, there was a stranger who loved me. It was at that moment that it triggered my inferiority complex.

I am what others call the "Chinese Garden Master" who is at the bottom of society. I have no house, no car, no stable job, and I exude laziness. It was also at that moment that I decided to stop being a paralyzed god, stop hanging on the wall, find a stable job, and work hard.

(Note: Hanging on the wall means there is no fixed job, like hanging on the wall, no need to be decadent. A word in the circle of great gods)

It was also at that moment that I understood the group of people wearing helmets and riding electric scooters busy commuting to and from get off work at the factory gate.