Meet the people who assemble your iPhone

In the last decade, lifestyle-cum-hardware-cum-software-cum-entertainment giant Apple has had its share of negative headlines when a string of damning reports about working conditions in the massive Chinese production plants of its contractor, Foxconn Electronics Inc., went public (for the earliest example from 2006, see here).

The Taiwanese-owned company, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd, is the largest electronics contract manufacturer worldwide and Apple's chief supplier.

Gradually, the production facilities of Foxconn in the PR China gained notoriety for long working hours, low wages, insufficient overtime pay, frequent workplace accidents, overcrowded dormitories and, not to forget, underage employees. The firm attracted even more international media attention when several workers, most of them employed with the gigantic plant in southern metropolis Shenzhen, committed suicide by jumping off the roof.

To be fair, Apple is just one of the many clients of Foxconn; the customer list reads like the Who is Who of prestigious international technology brands, including Samsung, Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell or Intel, to name only a few.

And I am also quite sure that living and working conditions in different, especially smaller, Chinese factories aren't that much better either.

Apple management, fearing for its global image, reacted quickly and cancelled at least some contracts with notorious Foxconn. Looking for damage control and an alternative supplier, they settled for another Taiwanese contractor, namely Pegatron Corporation, with production lines on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Unfortunately, the company has repeatedly been accused of even more flagrant violations of local labour laws. I don't know exactly if the contracts between the two sides currently still hold.

Foxconn, at least, has given in to sharp criticism, adjusted wages, consented to new audits and promised improved worker protection lately.

The most expansive production site of Foxconn in the PR China is located in Longhua subdistrict of Shenzhen city, employing hundreds of thousands of workers in 15 factories.

Between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, Italian film-makers Tommaso Facchin and Ivan Franceschini visited the mammoth factory city in Longhua and interviewed young Foxconn employees from different provinces in their spare time.

The following video is an excerpt of the full-length documentary 'Dreamwork China' (55 min.) that has been screened at several international film festivals. It is part of a larger multimedia project that focuses on the new generation of Chinese migrant workers, their lives, self-perceptions, dreams and hopes for the future.

By the way, Italian blog Cineresie also offers four additional works; these concentrate on Chinese NGOs and activists, such as well-known Liu Kaiming, that are catering to the needs of the immense migrant workforce (all videos in Chinese with Italian subtitles).

It is hard to say if the young labour migrants presented in the video below really opened up in front of a foreigners' camera. At least one of the guys sounds more like Foxconn's press officer than anything else.

Nevertheless, the film succeeds nicely in bringing the much-neglected voices of China's vast army of factory workers to the fore.