Is Foxconn’s Corporate Dystopia Coming to Pennsylvania?
The walls of Foxconn’s factories in China are adorned with quotes from the company’s chairman, Terry Gou, presumably intended to motivate workers:
“Growth, thy name is suffering,” “Achieve goals or the sun will no longer shine,” and “Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.”
Is this the kind of workplace we want in Pennsylvania?
A proposed deal with the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer being hailed by President Trump and Wisconsin Republicans — including that state’s virulently anti-union Gov. Scott Walker — includes $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies and a blanket exemption from state environmental protections.
Republicans are trying to sell the deal to the public with claims Foxconn will invest $10 billion and create up to 13,000 jobs.
Walker has words for skeptics of the deal: “go suck lemons.”
According to Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, Pennsylvania might be next. “I think they are interested in not just the Wisconsin location but in looking at other areas across the U.S.,” Fitzgerald told the Post-Gazette. “Pennsylvania is well positioned to be competitive in that process.”
But Foxconn is not a corporation that deserves a warm welcome to the Keystone State.
Foxconn became infamous after 18 employees in a Chinese Foxconn factory where iPhones and iPads responded to the company’s dystopian working conditions by attempting suicide. Fourteen threw themselves from rooftops and succeeded. An additional 20 were talked down.
Foxconn responded by forcing employees to sign an anti-suicide pledge that included a blanket agreement not to sue.
The pledge led to more criticism, and was subsequently retracted. Foxconn then installed nets to catch jumpers. The company also raised wages 20 percent, to the equivalent of roughly $350 per month.
A New York Times investigation detailed the some of the worst conditions. Foxconn workers have been poisoned by chemicals used to clean iPhones. Explosions have racked two iPad factories, killing four and injuring 77. In 2012, Foxconn admitted to employing underage workers in violation of China’s laws against child labor.
Foxconn’s environmental record is not much better than its record with workers.
In 2013, the company was criticized for polluting rivers in China. (Foxconn denied the allegations.)
Nitrogen trifluoride, a chemical used in the LCD manufacturing process, has been found to have climate change impacts as much as 17,000 greater than carbon dioxide.
In light of the Wisconsin legislation’s blanket exemption of Foxconn from state environmental protections — which will permit construction to proceed without an assessment of the project’s environmental impacts — the pollution allegations are particularly alarming. The legislation also exempts Foxconn from demonstrating the sustainability of how it will use water, which is expected to be drawn from Lake Michigan.
President Trump claimed to personally have lobbied Foxconn chairman Terry Gou to build a factory in the U.S. “I would see Terry, and I’d say, Terry, you have to give us a couple of those massive — these are massive — places that you do such great work with,” said Trump during a press conference at the White House announcing the Foxconn deal.
Sen. Pat Toomey also has lobbied Foxconn. He wanted the factory that’s going to Wisconsin to be built in Pennsylvania.
It should be obvious that engaging corporations like Foxconn in a deregulatory race to the bottom and returning the United States to an era of robber barons and company towns will worsen conditions for middle and working class communities while fattening bank accounts of the corporate class.
An editorial at Bloomberg — hardly a bastion of left-wing opinion —warns against states that provide big companies with incentives to lure jobs. Giant corporations, “come back again and again, as blackmailers tend to, seeking yet more blandishments. And nothing stops them from walking away when times get tough.”
Walking away is exactly what Foxconn seems to have done in Harrisburg. In 2013, then-Gov. Tom Corbett announced Foxconn had plans to build a $30 million research facility in central Pennsylvania.
The facility was never built.
If Pennsylvania lawmakers truly are more concerned about helping the public than they are about offering handouts to corporations, they’ll take the incentives they’re using to lure Foxconn and invest them in smarter ways. Direct investments in infrastructure, education and safety net programs, for example, would strengthen Pennsylvania and raise the quality of life for its workforce, creating jobs without the need for a corporate intermediary.
“Growth, thy name is suffering,” need not be a motto that Pennsylvania embraces.
Rick Claypool is a research director for Public Citizen.
