Foxconn expands employee monitoring efforts to screen for new coronavirus infection

Workers at Foxconn factories in China are subject to strict new surveillance measures to protect against potential future outbreak of COVID-19.

At one of the company’s facility in Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million in north-central China, workers are assigned to small crews of 20 and required to stay together throughout the workday.

The groups live together in dorms on the Foxconn factory campus, eat meals together, travel to the factory floor together, take breaks together, and return home after their shifts, which management says will help them quickly isolate  new cases of COVID-19.

Foxconn has implemented strict new employee monitoring policies as its factories across China have resumed operation, assigning workers to groups of 20 who move together from campus dormitories to the factory floor

At the beginning of each new shift, workers are issued fresh face masks and have their temperature checked, according to a report in The Washington Post.

At lunch they’re required to scan themselves in at individual seats in the cafeteria, each of which are marked with QR codes to keep track of who was where and at what time.

‘There are boards on the tables between people so we don’t see each other or talk,’ one Foxconn worker, who asked not to be identified, told the Post.

The factory has been equipped with thermal camera checkpoints to monitor workers with elevated temperatures, and factory windows are required to be opened three times a day for at least 30 minutes.

Before entering the dormitories after their shifts, crews leave the coats and bags in a special area where crews disinfect them.

Employees are required to scan a QR code to register which seat in the cafeteria they ate their shift meal at, to help company management trace all the people a newly infected worker might have exposed

Workers are issued a new face mask before leaving their dormitories at the beginning of each shift, and after they return their bags and jackets are left in a decontamination room where a separate cleaning crew cleans them

Foxxconn claims its factory campuses are also equipped for chest X-rays and nucleic acid tests to diagnose workers with preliminary symptoms.

The company also says it will manufacturer as many as two million face masks a day for its million-plus employees.

The measures are part of a set of nationwide guidelines for the country’s various businesses allowed to resume work as the country begins to emerge from its COVID-19 lockdown.

China’s State Council has crafted a ‘One person, one file,’ policy that requires employers to register daily health reports for each active worker at a business.

Foxconn says it will manufacturer two million face masks a day to keep its million-plus workers supplied with fresh protective equipment

Foxconn says it will also have chest X-ray machines and nucleic acid tests at its factories in order to rapidly diagnose any workers with symptoms of COVID-19

Many of the country’s policies were modeled after an American system of pandemic response called Hierarchy of Controls dating back to the 1950s, which recommends that the ‘highest feasible level of control should be used to control every hazard.’  

According to David Levine, a business professor at UC Berkeley, the radical measures aren’t just meant to ensure the safety of workers but to prove to Foxconn’s business partners that its products will be safe to handle and distribute. 

‘Manufacturers are going to have to convince consumers of the safety of their products,’ he said. ‘You need procedures in place.’