Arbitrary dismissals, fake arbitration testimonies? Foxconn female workers face many difficulties but continue to fight

[沼泽士兵]

Tang Zhenfang shares her experience on social media

In 2017, Tang Zhenfang joined “Sanying Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.” and worked on the Foxconn production line. She worked 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and was twice sexually harassed on her way home from the night shift. These experiences led her to choose day shifts.

On January 10, 2024, the line leader informed her that her last assessment was the lowest grade “C”. What does this mean? It turns out that Foxconn employees are promoted and receive a salary increase every three years. “Currently, I am ‘Employee 2’, with a basic salary of ‘2950’. In 2024, I should be promoted to ‘Employee 3’, which should logically mean a raise of ‘50-500’.” However, the “C” grade assessment now means no salary increase or year-end bonus, and Tang Zhenfang cannot even receive her normal basic salary. She firmly refused to sign the performance appraisal form and argued with the department head and line leader for a week afterward. Meanwhile, these capitalist lackeys used various means to insult her, telling her to “drop dead!” The department head said, “If you cause any trouble, I have nothing to do with it. If you can do it, do it; if not, leave. I’ve worked long days with you out of humanitarian reasons. Do you believe I will transfer you to night shift?!”

Later, in the workshop, Tang Zhenfang was harassed by leaders at all levels, including constant phone calls to her family claiming she had suicidal thoughts, or sending people to monitor her working 12 hours. She also protested by printing and posting her complaints in the workshop. Subsequently, the line leader even sent people to block her, using violence to physically confront her.

After failing to resolve the conflict in the workshop, Tang Zhenfang turned to the Foxconn union for help. However, the union’s “mediation” results were consistent with the workshop’s opinions. Dissatisfied with the “negotiation results,” she continued to defend her rights for several days. However, Foxconn regarded her union activism as “absenteeism” and hurriedly dismissed her! The dormitory manager shouted at her, “You’ve been fired. Hurry up and take your things, or I’ll throw everything out!”

Why did Foxconn target Tang Zhenfang so aggressively? The performance grade of C seems to be aimed at suppressing salary increases, but if we think about it: under the C grade, not only is there no raise, but even the basic salary cannot be maintained. For a worker who has been in the factory for over six years, this is a huge blow to drive her to quit. When Tang Zhenfang reported this, the department head’s first response was to complain about the “humanitarian” reason of working day shifts for her over the past few years, and then he used night shifts as a coercive condition. It’s clear that Tang Zhenfang’s inability to comply with the capitalist’s schedule to work night shifts is seen as inferior labor. The past few years, she still provided value in the workshop, but when it came to salary increases, capitalists no longer wanted to pay more for such inferior labor. Therefore, they dismissed her based on an unreasonable performance evaluation, forcing her either to accept being a beast of burden or to leave. Let’s not forget, according to her account, she was confirmed to work day shifts by witnesses including the line leader, department head, and director, but now the department head believes that refusing to work night shifts is a gross violation of bourgeois morality. It was only out of “humanitarianism” that she worked day shifts, which shows how hypocritical bourgeois humanitarianism is!

On February 29, 2024, Tang Zhenfang posted on Weibo trying to tell her story of illegal dismissal and seeking help from lawyers and other professionals.
The help-seeking Weibo was posted at 12:33 pm that day and quickly reached 200,000 views. By around 8 pm, the You Song police station in Foxconn’s location called her. Afraid, she did not answer. Later, a colleague told her that the police had contacted them and asked her not to post anything further.

Tang Zhenfang did not give up. She applied for labor arbitration, but unexpectedly, Foxconn provided a “key piece of evidence”: a “staff discipline briefing sign-in sheet” signed by her. This seemed to prove that she had acknowledged the rules, making her dismissal legal. However, she immediately noticed that the handwriting was not hers! She had never signed this document and demanded a handwriting analysis. But arbitrator Yin Jun, faced with this contradiction, clearly favored the capitalists, first asking if she wanted an analysis, “If it turns out to be your signature, no matter how you argue, it’s useless,” then verbally insulted her lawyer: “Why are you still defending her? She’s been absent so many days, and she’s committed such a big mistake by not going to work. Lawyer, don’t be so full of justice. Today’s society is such that only enterprises can afford your wages. They can’t afford your salary, so you need to see the reality. Otherwise, they won’t guarantee your situation next time (this last part is almost a threat)… We have so many cases piled up here; a company can dismiss an employee for any reason, and if they don’t find one, they’ll find another…”

But this did not scare Tang Zhenfang. She persisted in appealing, and the court hearing began on the 7th of this month. She exposed Foxconn’s crimes on various social platforms, hoping to attract attention to her case, but faced various blockades. Her Weibo account was deleted, videos could not be posted on Xiaohongshu, and WeChat live broadcasts were repeatedly reported. “Foxconn” became a sensitive word. During her live broadcast on April 7, she used animal code names to describe the court proceedings. She called herself “Mother Hen,” brought a group of supporters, hoping to pressure the “dead duck” by attending the court, but was stopped at the court entrance by police.

This reality taught Tang Zhenfang a lesson: unions are unreliable, arbitration is unreliable, and social platforms are used by Foxconn to suppress her voice. She realized she could only rely on workers themselves to fight for their rights. As she said in her live broadcast that night: “People must rely on themselves; workers’ rights can only be fought for by workers themselves, even if no one lights the way for you.” The court trial was sure to be filled with sharp struggles. Even if Tang Zhenfang ultimately fails in her fight, it does not mean the bourgeoisie is powerful. Their atrocities will make countless Tang Zhenfangs see the hypocrisy of bourgeois humanitarianism and the false protection of workers’ rights. It will inspire the working class to realize that without overthrowing this reactionary bourgeois government, they will never achieve true liberation!

[烽火Flame]

Marx & Engels once said: the liberation of the working class can only be achieved by the working class itself. From Tang Zhenfang’s wage claim incident, it can be seen that the working class is brave and skilled in struggle. She is not afraid of collusion between labor arbitration committees and capitalists, not afraid of false evidence fabricated by capitalists, and not afraid of repression by bureaucratic agencies; she is adept at using legal weapons for her own benefit, and also employs certain illegal means to rally friends and relatives for support.
This fully proves that, compared to those little leftist figures who spend all day inventing “revolutionary theories” verbally, the working class makes much more progress in actual action. Often, at the beginning of the integration of socialism and the workers’ movement, we should learn from workers and peasants, not the other way around.
However, Tang Zhenfang’s struggle ultimately did not succeed. The fundamental reason lies in the lack of unity among the working class; workers cannot defeat the bourgeoisie relying solely on individual strength. To truly achieve lasting unity among the working class, political exposure and propaganda, Marxist ideological guidance, and leadership by revolutionary parties are indispensable.

[鞍文燎]

@Swamp Soldier

As she said during her live broadcast that night: “People must rely on themselves; workers’ rights can only be defended by the workers themselves, even if no one lights the way for you.”

After seeing this sentence, I truly feel that the liberation of the working class is a matter for the working class itself. The reality is indeed like this: workers will realize through struggle that praying to gods or officials is useless; in the end, everything depends on themselves. This female worker also realized during the struggle that the so-called laws, police, and unions of the bourgeois government are all unreliable. Currently, the bourgeois government can use its so-called legal means to achieve victory, but in reality, it is just drinking poison to quench thirst, merely creating conditions for its own demise. Why do I say this? Mainly because in recent years, with the outbreak of economic crises, Chinese social contradictions have intensified sharply. Farmers, industrial workers, service industry practitioners, and even students across the country are dissatisfied with their oppressed conditions and are actively protesting through demonstrations, strikes, and walkouts. Among these, especially the wage disputes and strikes of workers have become particularly prominent and have grown rapidly in recent years. As a result, the bourgeois government has begun to play both sides—on one hand, feigning to set up some legal channels to deceive workers into entering, such as reports of wage arrears, social conflict mediation centers, etc.; on the other hand, increasing the force of violent agencies, directly brutalizing workers during strikes. In this context, whenever individual workers are owed wages, fined, dismissed, or otherwise severely oppressed by the bourgeoisie, those capitalist lackeys—security personnel, police, managers, and even some capitalists—point their fingers at the workers and say, “Go through legal channels!” These people seem to have found a more useful phrase than directly insulting workers, so whenever workers come to them, they use these words to silence them. The reason they speak to workers like this is because they understand too well—know too well—what the legal procedures of the bourgeois government actually are. If a worker is illegally dismissed, the first problem they face is losing their livelihood and income. Capitalists comfortably lie in their pleasure dens, easily firing workers with a word. But workers cannot stop fighting for their lives; even if dismissed, they must find ways to survive—working daily wages, part-time jobs, or relying on relatives and friends. However, after collecting evidence and applying for arbitration, the result is often that the case may be delayed for half a year. A case worth a few thousand yuan might have to wait six months for a court date. Even if the court rules in their favor, they might not get the money, and even more absurdly, because the labor bureau has no legal enforcement power, the employer can simply refuse to pay even after a ruling. If workers pursue the money, capitalists can still say, “Go through legal channels!” and point them to the “application for enforcement” process. That’s how it is: capitalists violate the law at will, and only after workers endure hardships and obstacles can they force the government to impose sanctions on them. But whether enforcement actually happens is uncertain—just like the case of Foxconn female workers in the news, where legal agencies collude with capitalists to cheat workers, leaving workers with nowhere to appeal. Now, the exposure of the Foxconn female workers’ case has attracted great attention, and even if the bourgeois government tries to cover it up, it cannot hide everything. From the current perspective, it seems that Foxconn and the bourgeois government have won—the female workers lost their lawsuits, and all their social media accounts have been monitored or banned, with a white terror hanging over them. But in the long run, only the bourgeoisie itself is likely to lose. Because from now on, more and more people will stop believing in the so-called “legal procedures” touted by the bourgeois government, and will see clearly who these procedures favor and protect. More and more people who recognize reality will find ways to unite and fight back against the bourgeois government in their own ways, using more radical methods. By then, it will no longer be just a few labor bureaus, mediation centers, courts, arbitrators, judges, and mediators using that “legal process” to block thousands of workers and peasants, but instead, thousands of workers and peasants will unite to surround these lackeys and their capitalist masters.