So when the firm built its Longhua factory in Shenzhen, it included onsite dormitories—good ones, designed to be better than what workers could afford on their own.

My wife and I stopped to talk to two peddlers outside the Foxconn plant in Longhua this August.

The Longhua workers interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek objected to various aspects of how they are treated but not in terms starkly different from the complaints many people have about their jobs.