One core insight into the history of technology asserts that technology can never operate “free from the constraints and complexities of the human context.”Footnote 1 Previous studies have demonstrated how technology changes and strengthens the control of capital over labour in the production process. The most noteworthy example is the invention of assembly lines in manufacturing technology which, to say the least, has transformed the fundamentals of capitalist production logic and organization.Footnote 2 More recently, scholars have begun to examine how information and communication technologies (ICTs) affect the division of labour, the nature of work, managerial practices and the production process.Footnote 3 For some, ICTs are regarded as a tool which enhances “control over processes of production” and intensifies the extent of workplace surveillance.Footnote 4 Others believe that, owing to their increased knowledge and share of information of new technologies, workers can act against technological innovation by various means.Footnote 5 Foucauldian analysts understand power and resistance in terms of their operation through “dispersed, more multiple, and disaggregated networks.”Footnote 6 As such, they have “diverted attention away from the grand narratives of class conflict and revolutionary struggle in favor of a focus upon more localized forms of resistance” and workers' daily practices.Footnote 7 As Foucault argued, while power puts its influence on the social body, it also encounters a “counter-attack in the same body.”Footnote 8 Since ubiquitous power penetrates into every corner of the workplace and constantly exerts its influence, its counter-offensive force, labour, is also seen as a source of continual resistance.Footnote 9 Workers, according to Foucauldian scholars, can always find a way to circumvent and challenge managerial control and “construct alternative, more positive identities to those provided, prescribed, or circumscribed by the organization.”Footnote 10 The resistance of workers against capital's control over them, exerted through the use of technology, is not a novel topic. For example, Ong has provided a comprehensive and thought-provoking discussion on worker resistance against control by capital,Footnote 11 and work by Lee Ching Kwan and Pun Ngai, among others, has revealed the complex phenomenon of class-cum-gender resistance on the shop floor in South China.Footnote 12
Since the power–resistance dynamic between capital and labour is spatially and historically situated,Footnote 13 and as managerial control operates within a particular context, worker resistance inevitably “varies across space and time,”Footnote 14 depending on the resources and means available to workers. The first generation of migrant workers in South China were depicted as “docile bodies” who were subject to the despotic regime of capital and could only utilize mainly individual means of resistance against capital. However, the new generation of migrant workers have been more eager to mobilize the law or use collective action to challenge the supremacy of capital directly.Footnote 15
Equally important, the control and resistance dynamics between capital and labour are being played out within rapidly changing conditions of the labour market. Since 2003, the Zhujiang (Pearl River) Delta 珠江三角洲 (hereafter PRD) has been afflicted by a labour shortage. In 2004, “Guangdong province had a shortage of two million workers.”Footnote 16 In 2005, over “two-thirds of corporations in the PRD had difficulty in recruiting new workers.”Footnote 17 Although the global financial crisis of 2008 had temporarily resulted in fluctuations of “the business environment and the displacement of many migrant workers,” it was estimated that the PRD was experiencing a shortage of around two million migrant workers in 2010.Footnote 18 It is within this context that the use of mobile phones was becoming widespread among migrant workers. As a multimedia communication device, the mobile phone combines mobile communication with texting, electronic games, photography, music entertainment and internet access.Footnote 19 China has the largest population of mobile phone subscribers in the world. By May 2011, there were over 910 million mobile phone subscribers in mainland China, with a penetration rate of 64.4 per cent.Footnote 20 In 2011, it was reported that about 78.8 per cent of migrant workers in mainland China used their mobile phones to access the internet.Footnote 21
A few recent studies have highlighted the growing importance of mobile phone use in shaping the capital–labour dynamics in China. Yang's study of migrant workers in the service industry showed that workers used mobile phones to feign presence as a means to resist long working hours and boredom at work, and to get job information.Footnote 22 Ngan and Ma's quantitative study of migrant workers in Dongguan 东莞 in 2006 suggested that mobile phone usage increased the frequency with which workers changed jobs, but did not help them to get better paid jobs.Footnote 23 Wallis echoed Ngan and Ma's view that, limited by their social networks, mobile phone usage did not offer opportunities for migrant workers in the service sector to move up the job hierarchy, but it did provide a new device for employers to extend their control over the non-working hours of workers.Footnote 24 Qiu highlighted the ambivalent attitude management have towards workers' use of mobile phones and their potential use for facilitating workers to organize collective protests.Footnote 25 While insightful, some of the previous studies are based on quantitative survey data that lack information about how the concrete contexts of production might shape managerial control and worker resistance around mobile phone usage. Other studies have either lumped workers from the service and manufacturing sectors together, or they have focused on workers in the service sector only. By using ethnographic data collected from migrant factory workers in Dongguan, South China, this study fills these gaps and explores how the organization of production and different characteristics of work tasks in the manufacturing industry shape control–resistance dynamics over mobile phone use on the shop floor. In contrast to previous studies, which have either discussed managerial control over the use of mobile phones and workers' resistance to it separately, or focused on only one of these two dimensions, our study discusses the developing interaction between control over, and resistance via, mobile phone use in a specific context. By so doing, we demonstrate how power struggles over/via mobile phone usage in the workplace are an ongoing process which is continuously constructed by the interactions, conflicts, struggles and negotiations between capital and labour.
In his landmark study of production politics, Burawoy distinguished two key production regimes: despotic and hegemonic.Footnote 26 In the despotic regime, managerial control is coercive and overt; hegemonic regime control is achieved through co-optation. He further argued that a key feature of the capital and labour relationship in a hegemonic regime is that workers consent to managerial control because there is room for them to play games (“making out”) within the rules set by the management. Likewise, the management often allow workers to get along with managerial control in a certain way in so far as workers' autonomy serves the management's purposes.Footnote 27 In other words, both control and resistance may be strategic rather than automatic, depending on the concrete organization of work. Even within the same factory, the organization of work of different departments may vary, thus generating diverse control and resistance dynamics.Footnote 28 This article will first illustrate how the despotic and hegemonic regimes regarding workers' mobile phone usage co-exist within one factory. Second, we show how management have developed different control tactics on mobile phone use for workers who are fixed at the work station and for workers who are mobile on the shop floor. Third, we will distinguish between two types of workers' resistance: workers' resistance to the managerial control of mobile phone use on the shop floor, and workers use of the mobile phone to resist capitalist exploitation.
Research Site and Data Collection
From 2000 to 2007, the accumulative total amount of foreign investment absorbed by the PRD was US$95.86 billion.Footnote 29 In 2007, the total value of exports from the PRD was US$354 billion.Footnote 30 These dazzling figures are the result of the sweat and toil of young peasants from provinces in the hinterland of China, such as Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi and Jiangxi. By 2009, it was estimated that there were 32.82 million migrant workers in the PRD.Footnote 31
The data of this study came from over 560 pages of field notes prepared during three months of participant observation between 22 May and 25 August 2007. During that period, the first author worked with workers in the assembly line and hardware departments of a Hong Kong-owned electronics factory (hereafter Da factory) in Dongguan. Dongguan is located in the north-east of the PRD and is host to over 15,000 foreign companies specializing in electronics and IT, textiles and clothing, furniture, toys, and chemical products.Footnote 32 Da factory specializes in the mass production of electronic calculators and organizers. Its clients include Sharp, Sony and Toshiba. In 2007, the factory had approximately 4,000 shop floor workers and over 1,000 other staff. The first author conducted participant-observations of the workers in Da factory. Although she wanted to share living quarters with workers during her fieldwork at the factory, the management placed her in a shared apartment with a senior technician instead. In order to dispel workers' suspicion towards her because of her residence in non-worker quarters, she spent all of her days off and non-working hours with the workers in order to build a rapport with them. Consequently, she was invited to stay with workers in their dormitories on five weekends. In addition to observation field notes, the data also included full verbatim transcripts of 25 formal in-depth interviews with migrant workers (two males and 13 females) and management personnel (five males and five females) in Da factory between 2007 and 2009. The appendix presents the demographic profiles of these 25 formal interviewees.
Production Politics in the Da Factory
Being a sub-contractor for multinational corporations, Da factory is at the mercy of periodic global economic crises and faces intense competition from other Asian economies such as Vietnam. In 2006, the gross profit margin of K Company Limited, the mother company of Da factory, was about 17.1 per cent.Footnote 33 In 2007, its gross profit margin decreased to 9.6 per cent.Footnote 34 When confronted with the price squeeze imposed by global capital, maintaining low wages and intensified control became staple tactics for maximizing productivity for labour-intensive factories in South China. Wages, in particular, became a focal point of disputes between capital and workers. In 2007, the basic wage in Da factory was 690 yuan per month, with overtime payments of 4.5 yuan per hour on weekdays and 6 yuan per hour at weekends.Footnote 35 The wages at Da factory, like most factories employing migrant workers, were much lower than the average wage of Dongguan citizens and urban workers, which in 2007 were 1,031 yuan and 2,940 yuan per month, respectively.Footnote 36
Long working hours, imposed overtime and heavy workloads were other sources of disputes in Da factory. During busy periods, workers on average worked 12 hours a day, worked nightshifts six times a week, and took only one or two days off per month. Workers' pay was based on a system of basic wage plus an hourly-wage for overtime. Output standards were set for each worker. In the hardware department, the daily output requirement for punch pressFootnote 37 operators ranged from 5,000 to 8,000 pieces, depending on their skills. Output calculating mechanisms had been installed to record the productivity of each worker. Production clerks recorded every worker's daily output and reported it to the supervisor at the end of each month. In the assembly line department, every assembly line was required to produce at least 300 products per hour. The line leader reported the production information on an hourly basis.
Output standards, recording and reporting arrangements serve as powerful mechanisms to control workers, who in turn resist with various strategies such as changing jobs (exit) and piecemeal shop floor transgressions.Footnote 38 In 2006, the labour turnover rate at Da factory was 9 per cent. The supervisor of the assembly line department estimated that turnover in her department in 2005 was about 30 per cent. In addition to exit, individualized forms of worker resistance, such as refusing to take on “bad jobs” assigned by the management, intentionally breaking factory regulations and flouting production discipline, and playing “deaf” to management instructions, were also frequent. Mobile phones, directly or indirectly, play a role in these struggles between capital and labour. However, the roles mobile phones play vary with different organizations of production. In the hardware department, work tasks are relatively independent. Every worker is responsible for producing one particular component of a product. The pace of work of one worker does not directly affect the pace of work of another. As long as workers finish their daily output quota by the end of the day, they can determine how fast they work. Workers complained about the working environment in the hardware department because the operation of over 30 punch presses generates a high noise level of over 90 decibels. However, management in this department allowed workers a certain autonomy in the production process to make up for this disadvantage. For example, workers in the hardware department usually took a 30-minute break after every two hours of work. During these breaks, workers could leave their work stations to use the restroom, drink water, chat with their fellow workers, and use their mobile phones.
Unlike the hardware department, output standards in the assembly line department are not set by day, but by hours, suggesting that the pace of work is a much more core issue in the assembly line department. In this department, the work pace of an individual worker is set by the conveyor belt. A line operator's tasks are closely connected with those of her co-workers. This interdependence means that one's slow movement could seriously affect the operation of the whole line. Thus, line operators are under close surveillance by line leaders and are under great pressure to achieve the hourly output. Line operators are not allowed to leave their work stations without the line leader's permission, even to use the restroom.
While most workers at the assembly line and in the hardware department are fixed to their work stations, there are mobile workers in each department, such as material handlers in the assembly line department and process quality controllers in the hardware department. In the following sections, we compare how control and resistance through the use of mobile phones varies as a result of these diverse organizations and types of work.
Mobile Phones: Technologies of Power
In Da factory, more than 90 per cent of workers were mobile phone subscribers in the middle of 2007. Mobile phone use during work hours was forbidden. According to factory regulations, a 50-yuan fine would be imposed on a worker found to be using a mobile phone during work hours. However, this sanction was not uniformly implemented. In the assembly line department, line leaders did not tolerate workers using their mobile phones during work hours. When they found a worker doing so, they either scolded or fined the worker. In some cases, the management even confiscated workers' mobile phones:
If you are caught [using a mobile phone] by the boss [the line leader], you will be fined. In the past, the fine was 5 or 10 yuan. But now, the fine is 30 or 50 yuan … Once a new recruit in our line answered an incoming call during work hours. Zhen [the line leader] fined her 30 yuan, in cash!
Female, aged 30, line operator in the assembly line department (ALD)We are not allowed to answer the call [in work hours]. Sometimes, our department manager makes rounds on the shop floor. Once, after he made his round, he confiscated three mobile phones.
Female, aged 19, line assistant in the ALDAlthough workers in the hardware department were officially banned from using mobile phones, managers usually turned a blind eye as long as it did not seriously affect their productivity. Workers in the hardware department could be seen sending text messages, gathering together to share multimedia messages with co-workers, and listening to popular music on the built-in MP3 player of mobile phones in the relatively quiet tea room. Many young workers even managed to surf the net and conduct online chats on their mobile phones when working. Girls sent text messages to their boyfriends describing their feelings and intense emotions.Footnote 39 For example, Mei, a worker in the hardware department, exchanged dozens of text messages every day with her fiancé who worked in another factory. Her mood at work varied, depending on the messages that she received from him. Her mood was uplifted after receiving a heart-warming message, which she shared with her co-workers; she became irritable if her fiancé failed to reply to her messages. Her co-workers commented that Mei was only “physically present” on the shop floor; in reality she lived in a “virtual world” belonging only to her and her fiancé.
Mobile phone usage also caused a collective effect among workers in the hardware department, who shared text messages of jokes, word puzzles, quizzes and games:
One afternoon a girl in the packing team of the hardware department received a riddle from her friend [through her mobile phone] and forwarded this message to me. The riddle consisted of 22 Chinese words and we were requested to put these words together to make some meaningful sentences. I started working on the sentences, and soon my neighbour, Lan, joined me, and without my realizing it, the whole packing team of 32 workers was working on the riddle. For 30 to 40 minutes, the packing team was enjoyably diverted. Everybody was concentrating on working out the sentences!
Excerpt from field note on 26 May 2007Xiu once sent me a joke via SMS. It was: “I want to change all the money I have into coins and give them to you. When you meet bad guys, you can use these coins to stone them to death. Let them know how rich we are.” She received it from her friend. I showed it to my neighbour, Lan. We all burst out laughing when reading it.
Excerpt from field note on 5 June 2007Rules concerning mobile phone use were not enforced uniformly and varied depending on whether workers were fixed at their work stations or mobile on the shop floor. Rather than banning process quality controllers (PQCs) and material handlers from using mobile phones, the management mandated their use as mobile phones were used as managerial control devices to track and locate these workers.Footnote 40 PQCs in the hardware department were responsible for checking the quality of components in the production process. Every PQC was usually in charge of seven to eight punch presses. According to quality control requirements, PQCs patrolled the shop floor and regularly selected some samples to check. The PQC foreman, Mr Zhang, had eight subordinates. One of his duties was to double check random samples to guarantee the quality. If he discovered any problem with the quality of the components, he informed the PQC responsible for the part and asked her to resolve the problem. Since his eight subordinates were scattered over different parts of the department, Mr Zhang usually used his mobile phone to locate them and issue orders. If he needed a PQC to report to him, he called her on her mobile phone. When the call went through, he let the phone ring for a while and hung up before the call was answered. When the PQC saw the missed call from Mr Zhang on her mobile phone, she had to report to his office immediately:
It is very convenient and fast for me to locate workers when they are patrolling the shop floor. I don't know where they exactly are. How can I find them? I give them a call. When they see my number on their mobile phones, they know I am looking for them.
Male, aged 30, foreman in the hardware department (HD)Similar control tactics were used by assembly line leaders to locate technicians and material handlers in the assembly line department. Material handlers were responsible for collecting various production materials from different warehouses, checking the materials, and distributing them to assembly line operators. Since it was necessary for them to visit different warehouses to get various materials, they spent less than two hours a day on the shop floor. The technicians moved around a lot because every technician was responsible for dealing with all the technical problems of two or three assembly lines. Before the popularization of mobile phones among workers, line leaders needed to send a worker to look for a material handler or a technician. Now, they just needed to make a call and the material handlers and technicians came to see them immediately.
In this sense, the mobile phone has become a micro-electronic panopticon.Footnote 41 It makes managerial control and surveillance of workers “discontinuous in its action” but “permanent in its effect.”Footnote 42 Material handlers, technicians and PQCs did not know when they would receive a call from their foremen or line leaders, and they had to be ready to be found by their superior at any time during working hours. Material handlers, when taking short breaks in the warehouse, were always frightened by the ringing of their mobile phones. When they received an unexpected call from their boss, they rushed back to the shop floor. On some occasions, line leaders also used mobile phones to locate workers who had left their workstations without permission. The omnipresence of managerial control over workers made possible by mobile phones provoked discontent among the workers:
He [the foreman] asked to have our mobile phone numbers and we gave him [our numbers] … Now he can call us whenever he wants to find us.
Female, aged 22, PQC in the HDWorker Resistance to Managerial Control of Mobile Phone Use
Even when managers and line leaders strictly prohibited workers from using mobile phones, as was the case in the assembly line department, workers managed to challenge this control covertly. In order to avoid being detected using their mobile phones, workers either switched them to vibration mode or turned down the ringing volume. When a worker had an incoming call, her typical reaction was to bend down, hide herself under her workstation, and answer the call in a very low voice while at the same time keeping a vigilant eye on the movements of her line leader and other management staff on the shop floor. When she noticed the line leader approaching her, she would turn off the call. Workers kept their mobile phones in the pockets of their trousers. When they read text messages, they kept only the screen of their mobile phone in view and left the other half of the mobile phone inside their pockets. This allowed them to slip their mobile phones into their pockets very quickly when they noticed that their line leader was nearby. Visits to restrooms were also commonly used by workers as an occasion to make/answer phone calls. When some workers had an incoming call, they would take the “leave permit card” and rush to the restroom to answer it.
From the Foucauldian perspective, the assembly line is a surveillance technology used by capital to dominate the worker's body.Footnote 43 Capital isolates workers from one another, by “placing a worker's body on a specific position of the assembly line and constraining its activities.”Footnote 44 However, mobile phone usage weakens, if not totally breaks, the bodily control and spatial segregation of workers imposed by capital.Footnote 45 Although their bodies are still constrained by the assembly line, workers are no longer isolated.Footnote 46 A mobile phone allows an assembly line worker to contact family members or friends who are physically absent, either for job information or for emotional support.
Meanwhile, resistance against managerial control over mobile phone use is also reflected in its symbolism of power and hierarchy. While the factory regulations forbade the use of mobile phones during working hours, managers were seen using them openly. There existed then a management double standard on mobile phone use. Except for receiving calls from their managers, mobile phone usage among workers was generally perceived as private and was therefore forbidden on the shop floor. The management's mobile phone usage, on the other hand, was defined as work-oriented and necessary for the production process, although they often used their mobile phones for entertainment purposes and private conversations. For example, Miss Zhen, a line leader, and her assistant, Jie, often shared music and multimedia messages saved on their mobile phones. Mr Wang, the manager of the assembly line department, called his friends during working hours to make social arrangements. This double standard over permissible mobile phone use caused resentment against management.
Our boss [Zhen] only forbids us from using mobile phones during working time. Why doesn't she forbid Jie? I saw Jie use her mobile phone on the shop floor many times. Why didn't our boss fine her?
Female, aged 17, line operator in the ALDThese inconsistencies also prompted workers' resistance. Once, when Zhen scolded an operator who was using her mobile phone, another operator rebutted in a low voice: “She is not the only one using her mobile phone.” Her words implied criticism of Zhen's mobile phone usage and her double standards.
While workers fixed at their work stations attempted to challenge managerial prohibition of mobile phone use, mobile workers such as material handlers and PQCs, who were required by management to use mobile phones, resisted by pretending not to hear the ringing of their phones. The generally noisy working environment at the factory enhanced the plausibility of this argument. Low battery and low credit were also reasons to “miss” the calls. Using the restroom was another excuse workers used when confronted by a disgruntled foreman unable to get hold of them. In some extreme cases, workers even refused to purchase a mobile phone in order to avoid managerial control:
My boss pressed me to purchase a mobile phone several times. I told her: “My salary is very low … If you promise to increase my salary, I will think about buying a mobile phone.” If I had a mobile phone, they could call me as they please. I would not have so much free time as I have now. Buy a mobile? They can control me at any time and I have to pay the money for their control. Without a mobile phone, I can take a break in the warehouse after I collect the materials.
Female, 19, material handler in the ALDWorkers Using Mobile Phones to Resist Capitalist Exploitation
In the hardware department, workers used mobile phones to challenge the power of capital in innovative ways. According to factory regulations, workers were required to seek permission for leave by talking to their manager in person. However, some workers preferred to send a text message requesting leave via their mobile phones. This behaviour presented the management with a new predicament. Given the labour shortage problem, the factory was perpetually short of workers and the management would go to great lengths to reject applications for leave. Workers were required to submit their applications for leave at least three days in advance and provide a valid reason. Those who asked for sick leave had to provide a medical certificate. Since workers knew that their request for leave would not be granted if they discussed it face-to-face with their manager, they resorted to sending text messages or calling from their mobile phones to apply for leave. If an order from management to workers could be given by mobile phone, the workers reasoned that a digital message was acceptable and legitimate. Following this logic, it was therefore reasonable for workers to use a digital message to apply for leave. Of course, the management did not like that:
I don't like workers applying for leave by giving me a call. A worker worked in the morning. She gave me a call in the afternoon and said: “I cannot go to work.” What's wrong with her? Some workers just don't want to ask for leave face-to-face. They are afraid of their application being rejected. Why? They cannot provide a good reason.
Female, aged 26, team leader in the HDBy sending the management an application for leave by text message, workers treated direct interaction with management as “an option,” but not “a necessity,”Footnote 47 and they provided seemingly justified reasons for seeking leave. In the PQC team in the hardware department, there were eight workers who requested leave via text messages in June 2007.
In addition to using mobile phones to overcome the hurdle for leave applications, job information circulated via mobile phones also facilitates workers' use of exit as a strategy to resist capitalist exploitation. Mobile phones connect workers to relatives and co-ethnics (laoxiang 老乡) scattered across the PRD.Footnote 48 These networks are not only sources of emotional support, but also conduits of job opportunities.Footnote 49 According to a survey, nearly 80 per cent of migrant workers in the PRD obtained their first jobs with the help of ethnic networks (laoxiang guanxi 老乡关系).Footnote 50 Members of migrants' networks are nearly all migrants themselves. Before the prevalence of mobile phones, their contacts with these networks were constrained by the circular migration of network members, and the workers' own physical isolation resulting from tight managerial control. During work hours, most workers are not allowed to leave the factory, and after work, their lives are often confined to their dormitories.Footnote 51 Not every dormitory has a fixed phone, and even if there is one (dormitories in Da factory have phones), it is often shared by many workers and can only receive incoming calls:
We have two fixed phones in our dormitory. But the problem is that you cannot make an outgoing call from it. The phones are only for receiving incoming calls. If we want to make calls using the fixed phones, we need to buy phone cards from our factory. But those cards are very expensive.
Female, aged 25, packing worker in the HDIn the past it was easy for us to lose contact with our friends. I hadn't contacted my best friend in high school since we graduated. But, recently, we connected with each other again because both of us have mobile phones.
Female, aged 22, PQC in the HDThe popularization of mobile phones has altered the dynamics of workers' networks. With mobile phones, migrant workers are now able to overcome the physical barrier of the factory gate.Footnote 52 In the past, in order to acquire information about prospective employment opportunities, migrant workers had to look for job vacancy posters on the front doors of factories.Footnote 53 Today, they just need to send a text message to their friends.
One of my friends was looking for a job. She sent me a text message to see if there was a job vacancy in our factory. Unfortunately, no job vacancy in our factory was suitable for her. I sent text messages to my other friends to see if they could provide some job information for her.
Female, aged 22, PQC in the HDAt 10 am, Gui was constantly sending text messages. I asked her: “Why do you keep sending text messages?” She replied: “I am sending text messages to one of my laoxiang in Shenzhen. She works in a factory in Shenzhen. I was asking her if there were job vacancies in her factory. She told me that her factory was recruiting. She also said they didn't do overtime work as much as we did. They get off work at 8 pm every day. At weekends, they have only six hours overtime work. Their monthly salary is about 1,200 yuan. I don't want to work in Da factory any more. I sent text messages to my friends and laoxiang. I want to know where I can find a good job if I quit my job here. Maybe, I will quit tomorrow and go to Shenzhen.”
Excerpt from field note on 24 August 2007The above anecdotes show that workers use mobile phones to seek job information, to compare wages, overtime, work hours and working conditions. Circulation of information on pay and employment conditions increases workers' awareness of trends in the labour market and working conditions in other factories, as well as the availability of alternative opportunities. Comparisons can often exacerbate workers' dissatisfaction with their existing conditions and lower their tolerance of bad working conditions. They can also increase a worker's resolve to exit:
There are numerous good factories and jobs. I can quit my job in this factory whenever I want. It is very easy for me to get another job. I don't plan to work here for a long time. Compared to those good jobs, my job in this factory is not attractive at all. Our pay is low. Our working conditions are horrible. I can find better jobs elsewhere.
Male, aged 27, technician in the HDFurthermore, migrant workers no longer confine their job searches to a particular city: job information is circulated across cities (for example, from Shenzhen to Dongguan) and regions (from the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Delta 长江三角洲 to the PRD). This expands workers' access to job information on a geographical scale and increases the number of alternative options dramatically.
Workers often send text messages to their friends to inquire about job openings … Workers' mobility in my department is very high. They are always thinking about quitting and job-hopping.
Male, in his 40s, department manager in the ALDIf they have less information about the job market, they will be less likely to move around. The only way to reduce their contacts with others is to move our factory to a place where mobile phones cannot receive any signals.
Employer in a garment factory in Dongguan, interviewed by the first author in 2005Access to labour market information may not necessarily lead to quitting. Nonetheless it has altered the psychology of workers, who now see quitting as a plausible and workable strategy of resistance, and they are prepared (even keen) to use it against capital. The threat to quit was frequently heard among workers on the shop floor:
If she [the line leader] dares ask me to do soldering, I will quit without any hesitation. The day she arranges me to do soldering is the day I quit my job in this factory.
Female, aged 19, line operator in the ALDIn a conflict between a young female PQC and Mr Cao, the supervisor in the hardware department, the PQC directly threatened to quit:
Do you think I will starve to death without the job in this factory? Couldn't I get a job in some other factory? Da factory is not the only factory in the world. Without this job, I would not die… There are plenty of jobs available for me.
Female, aged 21, PQC in the HDSince 2003, all factories in the PRD, including Da factory, have experienced a very high labour turnover.Footnote 54 In 2007, the assembly line department in Da factory was short of 200 workers while the hardware department was short of more than 20 workers. Certainly, quitting is a general strategy employed by workers and its structural causes lie in the broader employment relationship and the wider labour market. What we argue here is that the mobile phone as a communication tool has helped workers use this strategy more effectively, and in particular to grasp opportunities offered by a market with a labour shortage.
Discussion
Our comparisons between the assembly line and hardware departments, and between workers who are fixed at work stations and those whose job requires them to move around the shop floor, reveal a complicated picture of the roles mobile phones play in capital–labour dynamics. The pace of work, the interdependency between workers' pace of work, the temporal dimension of output standards and the kinds of tasks undertaken all influenced how mobile phone use was controlled/regulated by capital, and also, in turn, the patterns of worker resistance. Our data show that the managerial control over mobile phone use in the assembly line department depended on coercive tactics such as seizure of mobile phones and the imposition of penalties, and so bears resemblance to a despotic regime of control. On the other hand, the control tactics over mobile phone use in the hardware department are closer to our understanding of a hegemonic regime. In this department, managers “played along” with workers' games to compensate for an unbearably noisy working environmentFootnote 55 and to reduce worker turnover. The use of the mobile phone and its attached entertainment devices helped workers overcome the monotony and boredom of factory life. To some extent, workers in the hardware department energized and refreshed themselves through their mobile phones. Mr Liu, a supervisor in the hardware department, believed that listening to popular music via mobile phones could reduce work pressure and help people relax. In that sense, making a concession to workers on their use of mobile phones could be understood as a soft tactic used by management to buffer conflicts with workers, and to ensure indirectly that workers tolerate their exploitation by capital. Consequently, by showing how these two regimes can coexist within one factory, we have demonstrated the flexibility and fluidity of managerial control and their ability to respond to a rapidly changing labour market in a timely manner.
However, even if the management in the hardware department tolerated workers' mobile phone use, the mobile phone remained a contested terrain with workers constantly using it to challenge the boundaries of legitimate mobile phone use. Furthermore, workers also used mobile phones to resist more general capitalist exploitation through exit. While many scholars question the role of mobile phone usage in getting better jobs for migrant workers and providing them with a means of upward mobility, creative mobile phone usage in a situation of labour shortage may still significantly reduce workers' dependency on a particular employer and help them effectively use exit as a strategy against capital. Communications and comparisons about pay and working conditions in different factories also make workers better informed, exacerbate their feelings of dissatisfaction and increase their intention to quit. Of course, the role of mobile phones in facilitating workers' use of exit from employment as a strategy against capitalist exploitation is contingent on the fluctuations in the labour market, and the willingness of workers to resist.
Implications for Future Studies
While we believe our study provides rich data to explicate power struggles between capital and labour, we also acknowledge certain limitations. Our fieldwork was conducted during a period of labour shortage in the PRD. One cannot but wonder if the role of mobile phone use in shaping the power–resistance dynamics between capital and labour would be the same in times of excessive labour supply? An important question about workers' mobile phone use and collective actions has remained unanswered in this paper because of lack of data. Our ethnographic data suggested that job-related information circulated by mobile phones and comparisons of wages augment workers' intention to strike:
Everybody is angry and feels [it's] unfair. We know the minimum wage was increased in last September. But our salary wasn't raised accordingly. If other factories didn't raise their workers' salary, that was okay. But we know all other factories have applied the new minimum wage. Our factory is the only exception. We feel we are being cheated … We didn't expect our boss [the owner of Da factory] to raise our salary immediately. We gave him enough time to do the preparation. We waited and waited. After half a year, we lost our patience … We just felt we should do something. Everyone thought that way … Then we made a decision: Okay, let's strike in the afternoon. So, we were absent that afternoon.
Female, 19, line operator in the ALDHowever, we lack data to show that workers in Da factory used mobile phones to organize or mobilize their collective action. Within the confines of the compounds of factory buildings, information about strikes spread like wildfire and needed no further transmission. Furthermore, all strikes were ad hoc strikes that did not involve much sophisticated planning. Nevertheless, some studies and news reports show that workers do use the internet and mobile phones to organize strikes.Footnote 56 In the Honda workers' strikes in 2010, mobile phones were widely used to transmit strike information among Honda workers in different cities, to record the strikes, and to post the details of strikes online.Footnote 57 Strike leaders used online chat rooms to communicate with hundreds of workers, and workers set up internet forums and online bulletin boards to post information about their battle with the Japanese owner.Footnote 58 All of these have demonstrated that ICTs have played an important role in workers' collective actions. How does workers' resistance via ICTs, either collectively or individually, connect to class formation in China today? This is a question worthy for further investigation and more studies should be conducted to answer it.
Appendix: Demographic Information of Respondents
