富士康工人:身在厂内,心在外

Can Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, keep growing and improve its margins now that cheap and willing hands are scarce?

如今又廉价又听话的劳动力可谓凤毛菱角，富士康这个全球最大的合约制造商，能否一直保持增长的态势？

TO GET some idea of the scAle of Foxconn’s Longhua campus in Shenzhen, in southern China, a visit to its massive central kitchens is all that is needed. They lie at the heart of this sprawling complex of factories, dormitories, sports facilities, banks and stores built by the secretive Taiwanese-owned firm. The food-preparation centre, spread over 12,500 square metres on four storeys, goes through three tonnes of meat a day as it prepares grub with military precision.

想知道深圳龙华富士康的规模，去它面积庞大的中心食堂看看足矣。这家神秘的台资公司是由许多厂房、宿舍、运动场、银行还有商场等不断扩展的综合设施构成，食堂在正中心，占地12.5万平方米，四层楼，每天要消耗3吨肉，他们准备食物的强度简直可以和军队一较高下。

The enormous scale is to be expected, given that Foxconn (also known by its parent company’s name, Hon Hai) is the world’s largest contract manufacturer. The Longhua campus, covering 2.5 square kilometres, employs 240,000 people. Across China, it employs 1.4m on 28 campuses . Nor, given the firm’s prowess at churning out gazillions of gadgets like Apple’s iPhones, does the kitchen’s efficiency come as a surprise. Tens of thousands on each shift pay for meals swiftly by swiping cash cards loaded with 400 yuan ($64) a month in food credits.

规模如此庞大也是必然，毕竟富士康是世界最大的合约制造商，也因母公司鸿海而名闻天下。占地2.5平方公里的龙华富士康拥有24万员工。它在中国有28个工厂，员工总数高达140万。再想想，既然它能生产出数目惊人的配件，比如为iphone生产，那它厨房效率之高也就不足为奇了。每一个班次有成千上万人刷刷刷的迅速刷卡打饭，每个月每张饭卡里都会有400元。

The only things more impressive than the size of the canteen’s woks—more than 1 metre wide—are the firm’s spectacular growth and outsized ambitions. In the past decade it has gone from being one of many invisible firms in the electronics supply chain to the world champion of flexible manufacturing. Barclays, a bank, forecasts that the company’s revenues will exceed NT$3.9 trillion ($134 billion) this year.

比食堂的锅——宽达1米——更让人印象深刻是公司迅速的扩张还有它的雄心壮志了。在过去的十年里，它已经从许多默默无闻的电子设备供应商中脱颖而出，夺得了弹性制造的桂冠。巴克莱银行（Barclays）预计今年富士康的总收入将会超过3.9万亿新台币。

Foxconn is investing heavily to expand in the interior of China. By the end of this year its newish facilities in Zhengzhou, in Henan province, will employ more workers than the Longhua campus. It is also expanding in Brazil and Mexico. There are rumours it might even open a factory in America, since Apple, its biggest customer, has just declared that it plans to have some of its Mac computers made at home. Rich-world companies looking to follow suit, “reshoring” jobs back home, are struggling to find enough skilled manufacturing workers; Foxconn could apply to Americans its extensive experience of training Chinese workers from scratch. It admits it is “exploring the opportunity”.

富士康公司在拓展中国内陆市场上投入巨资。今年年底它在河南郑州的新工厂招用的工人数量要比龙华工厂的还要多。于此同时，富士康在巴西和墨西哥的拓展工作也在如火如荼的进行着。作为富士康最大的客户苹果刚刚宣布计划将在美国本地生产Mac，就有传言称富士康可能在美国开一家工厂。发达国家的公司似乎纷纷效仿苹果想将产业“迁回本国”，却为寻找足够的技术制造工而愁眉不展；在训练“从零开始”的中国工人上，富士康有丰富的经验可以提供给美国。它承认是在“寻求机遇”。

More strikingly, Foxconn believes it can double in size yet again. Executives talk of becoming one of the world’s top 20 businesses. This is no fantasy: Barclays foresees Foxconn’s revenues growing by 15-20% a year in the coming three years. There are two main obstacles to sustaining such growth: finding and retaining good workers in China, and improving the firm’s anaemic profit margins. Both problems will only be aggravated by growth.

更引人注目的是，富士康坚信他们的工厂规模还能翻一倍。公司高管们谈论着如何跻身全球20强，这绝非痴人妄想：巴克莱预计在未来的3年里，富士康的总收入将以每年15%—20%的速度增长。实现这一持续增长的目标有两大阻碍：在中国寻找、留住优秀的员工；增加公司利润。而增长只会使问题恶化。

As good employees become scarcer, Foxconn is having to pay more attention to working conditions—an issue on which it has attracted much unwelcome publicity. A lunchtime visit to the Longhua campus suggests that nowadays life there is not so bad. Off-duty workers smoke and fiddle with their mobile phones on the kerb outside the production halls, snooze on the campus’s football pitch or sit crocheting together in their dorms. Employees on an assembly line making corporate IT equipment look bored senseless but the facilities are orderly and spotless—a far cry from South Asian firetraps.

优秀雇员越来越难得，因此富士康不得不着力改善工作环境——这一问题曾招来众人关注。午饭时间在龙华富士康转一圈，发现现在那里的生活也没多糟。下了班的工人有的坐在厂房外的道沿儿上一边抽烟一边玩手机，有的坐在运动场上打瞌睡，还有的在宿舍打毛衣。一条装配线上的工人，一齐装配IT设备，看起来乏味无聊，但厂房却井然有序，一尘不染，与南亚那些易着火的厂房截然不同。

When your correspondent requested an unscheduled visit to an assembly-line workers’ dormitory, officials immediately obliged and remained outside the dorm’s entrance. The women inside, who bunk eight to a room in basic but decent conditions, were unafraid and in good humour. People on campus dress in casual clothes, not company uniforms, and seem only about as discontented as the youth found in any Chinese city. Look closer, though, and you notice something jarring: enormous safety nets hung on many buildings to prevent suicide jumpers.

当我们记者突然要求随机走访装配线工人的宿舍时，富士康的管理人员立即同意并一直在宿舍门外等待。宿舍里有八张床，条件虽然简单但也算一应俱全，房内的女工人一点都不怯生，还十分幽默。厂内的工人穿的不是厂服，而是舒适的衣服，虽然面带不满，却与城里的年轻人没什么不一样。可是，走近一看，却能看到与周围不相符的装备：巨大的安全网悬挂在楼外，防止有人跳楼自杀。

That hints at Foxconn’s biggest challenge: demography. No longer can the firm rely on a steady supply of migrant workers grateful for any escape from grinding rural poverty. The country is rapidly ageing, and the pool of hungry young workers is shrinking. Besides expecting ever better pay and conditions, today’s new recruits want more fulfilling lives than those their predecessors put up with.

这却暗示了富士康最大的挑战：人口结构。从前，为了摆脱贫困，只要给农民工提供工作，他们就心存感激，忠心耿耿，现在却再也看不到了。中国正在迅速老龄化，又饥又穷的年轻劳动力正在缩减。如今的新进员工期望更加优厚的薪酬以及更加优越的环境，比起他们的前辈来说，他们希望更多的满足自己的需求，而不是默默忍受。

Until recently Foxconn was unyielding in its discipline and working practices. But two years ago a spate of suicides led to a global outcry that shook the firm. Since then, several outbreaks of worker unrest and noisy campaigns by activists have further blackened its name. In response, Apple requested that the Fair Labour Association (FLA), an American watchdog, audit its suppliers. A report issued by that group in March found that although Foxconn’s facilities were “no worse than any factory in China” there were violations of the FLA’s code of conduct.

直到最近富士康才坚守企业规章和职业操守。两年前，连续不断的自杀事件让公司震惊，在全世界也引起一片哗然。从那时起，爆发了数起工人动乱，让富士康的名声更臭了。苹果公司更是要求美国监督部门美国平等劳动协会（FLA）对富士康进行调查。FLA于3月份公布的一份调查显示，尽管富士康企业“和许多中国企业一样糟”，但是确实多处存在违反FLA规定的情况。

Peter Deng, a manufacturing director at the firm, recalls that a decade ago Foxconn gave only one or two days off per month and there was no limit on overtime—“and the workers didn’t mind.” Now, the firm claims to limit overtime and to insist that workers take a day off every week. It is also increasing wages and, after scandals, limiting the use of interns (about 2.7% of its workforce). In August the FLA said that Foxconn was “ahead of schedule” in improving conditions.

富士康公司制造主管Peter Deng回忆说，十年前，富士康每月只准休息一至两天，加班倒是没有时限——“工人都不在意”。可是现在，公司要求限制加班，而且坚持每周给工人放一天假。在连环跳楼事件和其他丑闻爆出后，富士康给工人们加了工资，限制实习生人数（约占总劳力的2.7%）。八月，FLA说富士康在改善条件方面做得很好，“远远超出计划”。

Fine, but if Foxconn wants to keep booming, it must do far more. The canteen visit hints at three ways it plans to improve workers’ lives.

富士康做的不错，但它要想一直保持繁荣，要改善的还有很多。经过这次食堂访问可以看出改善员工生活的方法主要有一下三条。

First, automation. It takes just three people to prepare the eight tonnes of rice consumed at lunch. The assembly lines are next. Terry Guo, the company’s flamboyant chairman, has vowed to build “one million robots” in an effort to eliminate mind-numbing tasks and move towards fully automated plants. The challenge is that tastes change quickly in consumer electronics. By the time bespoke robot kit is ready to automate a given factory line, the product mix has changed, making it obsolete. Scepticism is warranted, but insiders believe the firm is just a year away from breakthroughs that work at scale on commercial lines. Such “Foxbots”, and related services, could even be sold to other firms.

第一：自动化。准备午饭要吃的八顿米饭，仅仅需要三人。下一步是装备线。如明星般耀眼的总裁郭台铭（Terry Guo）立下誓言，说要造“100台机器人”，减少乏味的工作，最终达到建设完全自动化的工厂。这一想法的困难在消费者对于电子产品的需求变化太快。待到装配线上的工人全都变成自动化的机器人时，产品结构又会发生改变，这些机器人就报废了。定会有人对此保持怀疑，但内部人士相信，公司要不了一年就会在商业装配线上做出突破。这些“富士康机器人”以及相关服务甚至可以卖给其他公司。

Second, a bit of freedom. Workers can now skip the canteen, instead swiping meal cards at food courts on campus or going off campus to eat. They also now get a housing allowance, letting them choose between staying in dorms or (as 70% now do in Shenzhen) living off campus. There is more of a social life, too: a young employee, recently arrived from remote Xianyang, talks blushingly about her evenings with handsome co-workers at the Cyberfox, the campus internet café.

第二：更加自由。如今工人们可以不在公司食堂里吃饭，在食堂周边的小吃区同样可以刷卡消费，或者还可以去工厂外吃饭。现在他们也能领到住房津贴，可以住宿舍（在深圳70%都在宿舍）还可以住在厂外。社交生活也丰富了许多：一位新来的咸阳工人，红着脸诉说着在工厂网吧Cyberfox和帅气的同事聊天的夜晚。

Third, outsourcing. The dorms, catering, security and much else at Longhua are now run by outsiders. Louis Woo, special adviser to Mr Guo, insists this is not to save money but to improve workers’ quality of life: “they simply do a better job than us.”

第三：外包。龙华富士康的宿舍、食堂、保安等都由第三方运作。胡国辉（Louis Woo），郭台铭的特别顾问，称他们不是在节约成本，而是改善员工生活质量，“这方面他们做的比我们好。”

Foxconn’s net margin has already fallen from above 6% a decade ago to around 2% now. It risks being squeezed further as the firm splashes out to attract and retain new workers. The trouble is, Foxconn is stuck in the hyper-competitive middle of the electronics supply chain. Upstream, the designers of components make enormous margins, as do the firms downstream that market the finished products. But midstream gadget assemblers do not. In China, it costs Apple a few dollars to have an iPod assembled, which it then sells for $299.

富士康的净利率已从十年前的6%多跌至现在只有2%左右。公司花费巨资吸引并留住新员工，这就可能会有更低净利率的风险。问题在于，富士康卡在高速竞争的电子供应的中间环节。上游是部件设计商，他们能获得丰富的利润；下游是成品销售商，同样获利颇丰。只有想富士康这种配件装配的中间商没有多少利润可言。在中国，苹果仅需几美元就能装配一台ipod，但售价却高达299美元。

Could Foxconn’s push towards cheaper inland provinces boost margins? Not for long. Because of tax holidays granted to its new plants, the firm’s effective tax rate will drop from 25% in 2011 to 16-18% this year. But the gains will soon be eroded by higher inventory and logistics costs (because of the more remote locations), rising pay and fading subsidies. Within a few years, argues Alberto Moel of Sanford C. Bernstein, an investment bank, the shift will bring “no net benefit to gross margins.”

富士康能像中部省份进军寻求高利润吗？可以，但不是长久之计。富士康的新厂虽在免税期，富士康的有效税率将从2011年的25%降低至今年的16%-18%。但是由于增长的库存和物流成本（因为工厂低处偏远）、工资增长、补贴减少，获利很快会被蚕食一空。投资银行Sanford C. Bernstein的Alberto Moel认为，不出几年“基本不会盈利”。

Dull work, but not dangerous

工作虽无聊，但是很安全

Still, Mr Guo does have a strategy for increasing margins. First, he is moving upstream. In March he announced plans to buy a stake in Sharp, a troubled Japanese technology firm, and to help finance Sharp’s glass-panel research. (When Sharp’s shares later plunged, he waffled when asked to reconfirm the stake-buying.) Already, almost everything Foxconn makes has glass display screens—and this week it was reported to be working with Apple and Sharp on a new range of high-definition televisions. Foxconn wants to learn how to make screens better and cheaper. By using its manufacturing savvy to scale up any breakthroughs, it plans to boost Sharp’s sales—pocketing a share of the gains. Other such deals are likely.

即便如此，郭台铭还是在增加利润上有其战略。首先，他正跻身上游。三月，他宣布计划购买身处困境的日本技术公司夏普（Sharp）的股份，资助夏普对平板产品的研发。（后来夏普的股票暴跌，当被问及是否确定购买夏普股份时，郭台铭闪烁其词。）富士康产品的屏幕几乎无一例外都是玻璃的，本周就有报道披露，它将会与苹果和夏普一道研制新一代高清电视。富士康想知道如何制造物美价廉的屏幕。凭借自己在制造业的经验，进行新突破，帮助夏普增加销量——从其获益中分得一杯羹。富士康还会进行类似的交易。

Mr Guo is also pushing downstream into retailing. He does not want Foxconn to create its own consumer brands; the idea is to use the firm’s supply-chain muscle to help its branded customers promote their products, by guaranteeing retailers that they will get their supplies on time and on demand. To help with this, it has taken stakes in several retail chains in China, including the local operations of Media Markt, a German electronics seller.

同样，郭台铭也在潜到下游的销售业。他并不希望打造属于富士康自己的消费品牌，而是希望利用富士康强大的供应链，通过向销售商保证可以按时按需完成供应，帮助品牌消费产品提高销量。为了实现这一目标，郭台铭投资了几家中国的连锁店，包括德国电子设备经销商万得城电器（Media Markt）。

Foxconn says branded manufacturers, especially Western ones with poor penetration in smaller Chinese cities, will benefit from its promotion of their products, shops will be able to hold lower inventories and consumers will enjoy lower prices. Analysts are doubtful. But if this takes off over the next five years, the firm also plans to tighten its links further with retailers by letting them tap directly into Foxconn’s internal e-commerce portal.

富士康说，他们不仅可以帮助那些名牌制造商（特别是对于外国的名牌产品却在中国的二三线城市占有份额较小）提高销量，使之从中获益；能帮助商店获得较低的存货支出；还能让消费者享有较低的价格。分析家对此表示怀疑，可是一旦这一计划在未来五年里付诸行动，富士康还计划加强与经销商的关系，将它们直接纳入富士康内部电子商务平台。

These moves may pay dividends in the long term. But Mr Moel argues that quicker returns are to be found in the company’s core manufacturing operations, for instance by making more parts in-house. Foxconn is increasingly making components such as batteries, lenses, speakers and touch panels. It has scope to improve the efficiency of its production lines, especially on new campuses purpose-built for automation. The firm could also try demanding higher prices. There are signs that it is ready to move away from a low-price strategy, instead stressing reliability and high-volume capabilities.

从长远看来， 这些举措可能会给企业带来盈利。但Moel认为富士康的核心制造会进行更快的转变，比如生产过多部件。富士康正在越来越多的生产诸如电池、镜头、扬声器以及触摸板之类的部件。不但如此，它们还在提升生产线的效率，特别是在那些为了自动化生产而建造的新工厂。同时，富士康还可能太高价格。种种迹象表明它已经准备好了从廉价战略转向高可靠性和大批量生产力战略。

Can Foxconn really persuade Apple, the world’s most powerful electronics firm, to cough up more money? That risks alienating a customer that accounts for 40-45% of its revenues. But as the world’s largest outsourced manufacturer grows even bigger, it is becoming ever more indispensable to Apple as well. In the end, that is the best thing Foxconn has cooking.

富士康真的有能力让全球最大电子商苹果公司愿意支付出资更多吗？这样做有可能会让苹果公司不再选择富士康，可是富士康总收入的40%—45%均来自苹果。随着全球最大的外包制造商越来越壮大，富士康对苹果来说也是越来越重要。所以，说服苹果公司加价才是富士康心中所想。