A Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, Central China's Henan Province File photo: VCG
Yang Xianjun, a 30-something worker at a furniture factory in Dongguan in South China's Guangdong Province, describes his job - rubbing products with sandpaper for eight hours a day - as "boring, monotonous and stressful."
"Sometimes I feel like a robot, and you know the repetitive process can make people depressed and anxious easily," Yang told the Global Times on Tuesday.
He is among 200 workers at the factory, and most of them watch short videos on the app Douyin or soap operas to relax and relieve their pressure, according to Yang.
But Yang still recalls a time when he just could not "get over that feeling" in March last year, the factory's busiest season: "During that period, I just wanted to find someone who would listen to me, help me, give me guidance and advice."
Over the past few decades, as China became a rising manufacturing power, Guangdong, a major manufacturing hub and the frontier of the country's reform and opening, attracted millions of workers like Yang. They left their homes, mostly in third-tier cities or small towns and villages and rushed to the province for jobs producing made-in-China products to be sold in every corner of the world.
Yang could have benefited from someone like Zhang Zaihong to help him get over these "bad feelings," address his concerns, and cheer up. Zhang, who works as a full-time psychological counselor in the Shenzhen-based Foxconn, the world's biggest iPhone assembling factory, has been a "professional listener" for workers' troubles and concerns for over nine years.
There are currently about 20 full-time counselors and more than 600 part-time counselors, employee assistants and social work assistants serving Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, according to Zhang.
A big job
Zhang and her colleagues are busy.
Their work not only includes routinely launching mental health education campaigns by producing and disseminating videos and arranging psychological health tests for new recruits, but also providing psychological help for workers - a job too big for part-time psychological consultants to handle.
Every week, Zhang and her colleagues receive about 70 workers who come to the consultation room for help. Zhang said that Foxconn began to organize a professional counselor team around 2009.
In 2010, 14 workers reportedly jumped to their deaths at the company's Shenzhen plant. The tragedy drew much attention during that time, and that is also when factory owners in Guangdong and across China began to realize the importance of psychological assistance at the factory and started recruiting professionals like Zhang.
"It is quite necessary to create a role for psychological consulting at factories, as most frontline workers are not local residents in Shenzhen. They have left the native places they are familiar with, and this may cause an emotional impact for them. Besides, the fast-paced life tempo could also make them anxious. They really need someone with professional expertise to guide them," Zhang told the Global Times on Tuesday.
"Their psychological problems are mostly centered on three areas: love and marriage, troubled relations with parents and children, as well as concerns over their careers and self-doubt."
Yang, the furniture factory worker, said that he also has felt increasing pressure recently due to the country's industrial upgrading efforts. His factory brought in a new set of machines in October last year, which reduced the number of workers needed on a single production line from five to just two.
"I could sometimes chat with my fellow workers when there were others working with me on the production line. But now I have to keep pace with the 'cold machines,' and driven by them eight hours a day, it turns out I'm the only living person around me," Yang told the Global Times on Tuesday. "I think psychological assistance is really necessary and has become more important as factories increase their mechanization level - especially for workers who need to operate machines every day and need to talk to someone after work."
To help workers relieve their psychological stress, Zhang and her team have purchased two devices that can either play music or provide meditation guidance as workers lie down on a sofa.
The devices can also monitor patients' physical indicators such as heartbeat and breathing.
"We also decorated the consulting room in warm colors to help them open their hearts," Zhang said. She added that curing someone with severe psychological issues is very difficult and requires a lot of effort. Sometimes it can take more than two years, Zhang said.
Foxconn now provides three channels for psychological counseling: face-to-face, a hotline and a website. The hotline's number, 25885, has a special meaning as the number's Chinese pronunciation is similar to "love me, then help me."
Zhang noted that detection and prevention are also important duties for her and her colleagues. She has trained workshop managers on how to tell whether a worker is struggling with mental health based on his work performance and emotional changes. "We also teach managers how to take care of workers they have found to be psychologically unhealthy. If they cannot solve the problem themselves, they will report to us and seek our help."
Zhang and her colleagues have also set up service points near workers' dormitories to better serve them.
"We have created some interesting and interactive psychological tests and games to attract workers. For example, we have devised a 'sand play' game. If a worker places mini sand models into the shape of a weapon, I would identify him to be in an angry mood and guide him to reduce these negative feelings," Zhang explained.
More demandWhile most factory workers the Global Times talked to said counselors are necessary in the country's manufacturing factories, industry insiders said counselors are not common in factories in Guangdong,
"Only huge factories like Foxconn could have such a complete system to care for the psychological health of staff," Wu Lanlan, a 38-year-old Dongguan-based factory worker told the Global Times on Tuesday, adding that some companies, such as Apple, request their assembly factories to establish psychological health departments.
Wu has worked for four electronic factories in Dongguan and Guangzhou, including a big one with more than 1,000 workers making Sony products, but none of them had a counselor.
"Normal electronics factories only have departments called 'staff assistance centers,' which receive workers' complaints about work environment, staff relations or opinions about production line managers. Workers also must complete psychological tests before being recruited," Wu noted.
"But, you know, the center could not 'assist' workers at the psychological level - they are more like a 'decoration,'" Wu said.
Factory owners also have their own concerns and challenges when it comes to recruiting psychological consultants, especially owners of small and medium-sized factories.
"We only have 30 workers in the factory, and since a counselor needs to be trained or have certain experience in the sector, recruiting a counselor is even harder than recruiting an experienced worker," a Dongguan-based rubber factory owner surnamed Xu told the Global Times on Tuesday. "That's not realistic."
To become qualified as a counselor is not easy. According to Zhang, full-time counselors at Foxconn are required to hold at least a university degree in psychology, and they must also have been awarded a national certificate for counseling.
Zhang herself holds a master's degree in psychology and has a national certificate in psychological counseling.
Xu said he tries to eliminate those who cannot withstand an intensified work pace during the interview process, limits shifts to seven hours and ensures workers enough break time.
"The emergence of psychological counselors in factories, a service that was previously neglected, reflects the steady growth and rise of China's great manufacturing power, as well as progress in the country's social development," Zhang Hongbin, who runs a private counseling practice in Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu Province, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
"As China continues to open up and Chinese society and factories develop, psychological consultants will only be more in demand in the future among all walks of life," said Zhang.
"I hope there could be a third party, such as a counseling practice, that we could cooperate with and offer professional training and help for our workers regularly," Xu said. "That would perfectly solve our problems and those of others who encounter the same difficulties."