Research highlights

• Bristol researchers interviewed migrant workers of 23 nationalities to prove exploitation in electronic manufacturing factories in Czechia.
• In partnership with Electronics Watch, two in-depth studies were conducted of management practices at FoxConn, the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer.
• Hewlett Packard, FoxConn’s biggest European client, conducted an external audit which concluded 5000 – 6000 workers were living in sub-standard conditions.  

New Asian electronics plants in Europe 

Alarm bells rang in the early 2000s when a host of Asian electronics firms set up manufacturing plants in Europe as the industry is notorious for poor working conditions.  

Worker exploitation, low unionisation and authoritarian labour relations had already been evidenced in many huge electronics multinationals in China.  

When some of these firms opened factories in central and eastern European countries like Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, trade unions and NGOs raised concerns about how they would treat their new workers.  

Investigations in Czechia 

Among the companies to expand into Europe was Foxconn, the world’s biggest consumer electronics manufacturer. Headquartered in Taiwan, it is perhaps best known – and highly scrutinised – for assembling Apple products at its Chinese plants. 

For Dr Rutvica Andrijasevic of the University of Bristol, whose research focuses on migrant workers, it was hugely important to explore the employment conditions at Foxconn’s new plants, where around half of workers are recruited from around the world. 

Together with colleagues from the University of Hong Kong and the University of Padua, Andrijasevic travelled to Czechia throughout 2014 – 2017 to investigate employment practices at two Foxconn factories. 

Staying alongside factory workers in their employer-provided dormitory, the research group were able to get a near first-hand picture of working life at the Czechian plants. 

A multi-national workforce 

They undertook an extensive series of interviews with 23 nationalities of factory workers, a colossal task that took an army of interpreters to overcome language barriers. 

These workers had come to Czechia from a range of fellow former Communist countries, including Ukraine, Mongolia, Romania, Bulgaria and Vietnam.  

They were employed not by Foxconn, but by temporary work agencies who satisfy manufacturers’ fluctuating labour needs by loaning out staff according to shifting demand on the production line. 

Foxconn themselves also agreed to be interviewed – after much initial hesitation. “For a long time, we repeatedly asked Foxconn management for an interview, but they kept saying ‘no’,” Andrijasevic explains.  

“But then one day, while we were doing research on Foxconn’s subsidiary in Turkey, their second-in-command suddenly got in touch and said, ‘I want to give my story.’ We were thrilled.” 

Exploitation 

The study provided the first data on employment conditions in Asian electronics’ plants in Europe.  

Despite national, EU and UN labour regulations to protect workers, it emerged that the temporary migrant workers were subject to exploitative working and living conditions by the temporary work agencies (discussed in Andrijasevic & Sacchetto, 2017). 

Non-payment of wages, illicit deductions from pay, and deception over hours and conditions of work by the temporary work agencies were just some of the issues revealed by the interviews.  

Female workers who fell pregnant were illegally dismissed and risked deportation to their home country. 

Workers faced the risk of homelessness due to the tied accommodation, which often provided sub-standard living conditions and made women particularly vulnerable. 

Electronics Watch and Hewlett Packard 

The study caught the attention of Electronics Watch, a leading third sector organization that helps public sector buyers (governments, local authorities and universities) to purchase ICT hardware from firms that comply fully with domestic and international labour rights. 

Electronics Watch recruited two members of Andrijasevic’s research team to conduct two in-depth studies of Foxconn’s management practices in Czechia.  

Drawing heavily on Andrijasevic’s initial research findings, Electronic Watch’s studies (2016 and 2017) concluded that Foxconn was indeed in breach of Czech Labour Code. 

Consequently, Electronics Watch and Andrijasevic continued their collaboration and examined the risk to workers in electronics assembly in Hungary.  

The final report, published in 2022, provides recommendation on key actions to mitigate those risks.   

A major turning point in Electronics Watch’s campaign came in 2017 when Hewlett Packard conducted a systematic external audit of the plants that assessed working conditions including, for the first time, those for temporary agency workers. 

The audit was especially significant given Hewlett Packard are Foxconn’s main customer in Europe. While they felt that the dormitories fell outside of their jurisdiction, their audit agreed that living conditions for the 5,000-6,000 tenants were sub-standard. 

Improved living conditions and workers’ rights 

The audit prompted several positive changes. First, Foxconn established a Compliance & Development Office in 2018 to improve working conditions by supporting foreign workers with their concerns, such as through better safety at work and access to health and schooling services. 

Living conditions in one of the dormitories also improved. This was refurbished and upgraded to address the former lack of privacy and cleanliness and provide basic standards, such as hot water and separate showering facilities for male and female workers.  

Andrijasevic also ensured that pregnant women were given more support. Collaborating with two local NGOs, Multicultural Centre Prague and Most Pro, she produced a website and leaflet in 2018, Pregnant and in need of advice?.  

Translated into Mongolian, Ukrainian, Russian, English and Czech, these inform women of their rights, and health and social security entitlements. 

“The website and leaflet have had a great impact,” Andrijasevic explains. “Most Pro have told me that foreign women workers are more informed about their labour and social rights, and are feeling more empowered.” 

Further striving to improve workers’ conditions throughout the wider electronics industry, Andrijasevic and Electronics Watch led a training session for managers of electronics firms' better safeguard temporary migrant workers. 

Instigated by the Hewlett Packard audit, Electronics Watch entered a formal agreement with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) in 2021. RBA are the world’s largest industry coalition dedicated to ethical practice in global supply chains.  

The purpose of this agreement is to address issues with working conditions throughout the global electronics supply chain of RBA members where products are manufactured for public procurement. 

The result of Dr Andrijasevic’s work has been a chain reaction of positive improvements to the working conditions of migrants in the electronics manufacturing industry. Following her work in Czechia, Andrijasevic is now working to reduce reliance on temporary work agencies or remove them altogether.