Oct 20, 2020 23:00:00

Foxconn, the iPhone producer, leaves American factories and offices empty

Foxconn of Taiwan, which is famous for producing devices such as iPhone and Nintendo Switch, is constructing a manufacturing base in Wisconsin, USA. It is a manufacturing base built with a large amount of subsidies, but most of it is left empty, and if it is left as it is, 'the factory and work will be gone in a few years,' the overseas news media The Verge reports. I will.

Inside Foxconn's empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump

Foxconn announced a major business plan in Wisconsin, USA in 2018. Initially, Foxconn will invest $ 10 billion in the United States to build a liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturing plant on 20 million square feet of land that can employ 13,000 people. I was planning to do it.

Foxconn first mentioned the project in Wisconsin during a press conference just two days after Donald Trump took office. Terry Gou said the founder and CEO of Foxconn is, 'to build a factory $ 7 billion in the United States (about 740 billion yen), to hire 50,000 employees' and said it was all started ..

It's not uncommon for Gou to make this kind of statement, and in many cases 'boasting never comes true,' The Verge points out. In fact, Gou commented that he would build factories in Vietnam in 2007, Brazil in 2011, Pennsylvania in 2013, and Indonesia in 2014, but in reality most have not, and even if they do. Only factories that are much smaller than the original comment have been built.

Mr. Gou also commented that he would build a multi-billion dollar factory in India in 2015, but it has been announced that the factory will not be built in 2020. 'We have learned lessons about the state's belief in companies that promise large-scale investment,' said the Minister of Industry in Maharashtra, India, implicitly criticizing Foxconn.

Even in the project in Wisconsin, Mr. Gou's original remarks and the actual plan are far from each other. In a meeting with then-Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, Gou announced that he would gradually scrutinize the plan and eventually hire 13,000 people at the Wisconsin manufacturing plant.

As a result, the amount of grants that Wisconsin has paid to Foxconn has increased from $ 1.5 billion to $ 3 billion. However, no one really investigated whether Foxconn's proposed manufacturing plant was commercially feasible, sources said. 'For Wisconsin, Foxconn is one of the largest companies in the world. There was an assumption, 'I guess the reason.

In addition to a grant from Wisconsin, Foxconn has received a grant of about $ 800 million from Mount Pleasant, a small town where a manufacturing plant was planned to be built, and others. Including subsidies, we have succeeded in raising a total of over $ 4 billion (about 420 billion yen) from government agencies.

However, according to a new employee who will work at Foxconn's office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the office was planned to be renovated and used in a building built in the 1960s, but the renovation has not progressed at all. Instead, the employees are just watching Netflix without working and crying, 'It shouldn't have been this way.'

The Verge interviewed 19 employees involved in Foxconn's project in Wisconsin, and after investigating thousands of pages of public documents, concluded that 'Foxconn broke almost all promises.' It is attached. The building, which Foxconn calls a 'fab,' was originally planned to have a land area of 20 million square feet, but has eventually been reduced to about one-twentieth the size.

The following is a manufacturing plant built in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. 1 is a multipurpose building, with little manufacturing work since construction. 2 is a spherical building, which was originally supposed to function as a network operation center, but at the time of writing the article, it will be used as an office or event space. 3 is the factory where the main manufacturing equipment was planned to be installed, and it seems that this will eventually be used as a storage. 4 is a manufacturing facility that plans to manufacture parts for servers, and is expected to employ 300 to 500 people.

Not only were many of the factories left empty, but Foxconn's Wisconsin office was reportedly left almost empty in April 2020.

It turns out that Foxconn, which manufactures iPhone, has left a building in the United States for over a year, and a sloppy business situation is pointed out --GIGAZINE

Foxconn has received a large grant and announced a large employment plan, but the number of employees actually hired by Foxconn is insignificant. Below are the number of employees Foxconn actually employs in Wisconsin (red), the minimum number of employees required to receive a grant from the state government (orange), and the number of jobs Foxconn planned (yellow). It is a graph showing. Foxconn said it would hire 5,200 people by the end of 2020 and 13,000 people by 2022, but the reality is that as of 2019, only 281 people will be hired.

It has also been pointed out that even the employees Foxconn hired as of 2019 were actually just hired by the company to receive a grant from Wisconsin. A recruiter at Foxconn, who provided information to The Verge, testified that he was 'ordered from above to hire 260 people to receive grants from the state.'

Foxconn's Wisconsin office was quickly filled with people due to a temporary increase in the number of employees. However, since the employees were not given a clear job, many employees spent time without work, such as watching Netflix and playing games on smartphones in the office. However, as Wisconsin eventually rejected the grant application from Foxconn, Foxconn has fired many employees, and the first employee to work in the Wisconsin office was 'already. Almost none. '

Foxconn's business plan was also messed up, initially planning to manufacture LCDs, but the idea of using the land purchased for the factory as a 'fish farm' or 'boat storage' emerged. It seems that it has disappeared. Not only the business plan, but also the 'frequent change of leaders', 'resistance to spending money', and 'domineering corporate culture' are rampant inside the company.

The company's project was also called 'forming the Wisconsin' in the hope that Foxconn would set up a major hub for technology industries like

Silicon Valley in Wisconsin. .. However, an employee who actually worked at Foxconn said, 'I was there, but it's not real. That is, there is no such thing as Wiscon Valley. This I can never talk to again. That's because Wiscon Valley is something that can never happen, 'said the negative opinion.

The graph below shows the data that supports it. The graph below shows Foxconn's planned capital investment in a Wisconsin manufacturing plant (orange) and the actual capital investment (red). Initially, Foxconn planned to invest $ 543 million in 2018 and $ 2.76 billion in 2019, but the actual investment amount was in 2018. Is 99.1 million dollars (about 10 billion yen), and 2019 is 223.6 million dollars (about 21 billion yen), which is much smaller amount.

The average amount of subsidies in the United States is about $ 24,000 per job, but Foxconn hired only 281 people.

The Verge criticizes Foxconn's sloppy plans, saying, 'Foxconn has repeatedly failed and made far more destructive failures than just failures.'