Exclusive Look: Where The staff Who Made Your iPhone Sleep At Night [Shenzhennotes]

Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen, China, is home to about half of its 420,000 workers. They make lots of our gadgets and computers, then walk to dormitories on the 2.1-kilometer-square campus. I got to seem inside.

This dorm is without doubt one of the older ones on campus, built near the beginning. It’s a men’s dorm-women have separate facilities-and populated mostly by entry-level workers.

Since a spate of eleven suicides earlier this year, every building on the Foxconn campus is draped in netting. It’s far morbid but seemingly effective; there were no suicides since the nets were installed in May.

Hallways remain institutionally empty, kept dim to save lots of energy, keep the temperature down, and to allow workers who keep a late schedule to sleep with less interruption throughout the sunlight hours.

A dorm room. Eight workers sleep in four bunk beds in a room concerning the size of a two-car garage.

Toiletries kept on a shelf in mugs.

A television viewing room is accessible on each floor. I joked with the Foxconn executive who was with me that of all of the places on the earth which could probably have the capacity to get bigger television screens installed, it was probably here at Foxconn, who make televisions for the area’s largest brands.

Workout equipment inside the spaces between buildings.

In a more recent dorm, a sink is shared on the balcony, where workers can wash their clothing and themselves. Management of the living quarters has recently been outsourced to an area operations company in an try and address concerns about an employer managing living conditions of its workers. It’s unclear how outside management will fundamentally alter the nature of on-campus living.

This special report is a partnership between Gizmodo and WIRED Magazine.

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This post is tagged: address concerns, living quarters, magazine source, television screens, television viewing, workout equipment