For more than four years, Margarita Estrada assembled and tested computers at a Foxconn factory in the central Mexican city of Guadalajara. Preparing 120 CPUs an hour for shipping was a “stressful” job, the young woman says. Part of Estrada’s duties involved training the large numbers of new workers. Despite dire employment opportunities in Mexico, many new employees never return after a day or two. “People didn’t last,” Estrada recalls. In her stint at the Taiwanese-owned plant, Estrada’s wages went up from slightly more than $8 to about $10 a day, plus hard-to-attain production bonuses, the former worker says.

Yet even after years at Foxconn, Estrada never became a formal employee of the electronics industry giant. Instead, Spyga, a temporary employment agency, employed her and most of her co-workers on the shop floor. “There were few people working directly for Foxconn, about five of them." Estrada says. "That’s all.”

In 2007, Estrada was laid off and offered $300 in severance pay. Suspecting the amount fell below Mexican legal standards, she knocked on the doors of Cereal, a Jesuit-founded labor advocacy and watchdog group. After some back and forth with two sets of employers, she eventually walked away with nearly $2,000 in severance pay.

In Guadalajara and the Mexican electronics industry in general, Foxconn's employment set-up is the norm.

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