Foxconn Labor Disputes Disrupt IPhone Output for 2nd Time

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Bloomberg via Businessweek

Foxconn Technology Group, the assembler of Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhones, had to stop production for the second time in as many weeks after factory-line workers at one of its plants protested against increased pressure.

Foxconn employs more than 1 million workers in China and has suffered in the past three years from suicides, riots and strikes. To improve working conditions, Chairman Terry Gou raised pay and allowed inspections by outside observers. The employees, who work up to 12 hours a day, say the difficulties of meeting Apple’s demands for quality and abuse from guards set off the latest incidents.

One of the company’s factories in Zhengzhou, China, lost two shifts on Oct. 5 after workers became frustrated trying to prevent scratching on the casings of the iPhone 5, according to two people familiar with the matter. A dispute occurred between the production and quality teams at the factory, the company said. Some 3,000 to 4,000 people who walked off the job at the plant, have since returned to work, according to advocacy group China Labor Watch.

“Labor disputes are a fundamental issue unique to Foxconn,” said Brian Park, a Seoul-based technology analyst at Tong Yang Securities Inc. “Foxconn is infamous for high suicide rates, and that means the intensity of labor is that much higher.”

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-07/foxconn-labor-disputes-disrupt-iphone-output-for-2nd-time

[backscatter712]

1. That's what Apple deserves for using slave labor! n/t

[onehandle]

2. Google, Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, Samsung, Asus, HP, Sony, Intel, and more use the same factories.

Whatever you posted with, was made by Chinese laborers.

[TDale313]

4. Sadly true. n/t

[cprise]

5. But they don't make the same demands or the same profit margins.

The workers have become acutely aware of it.

[FredisDead]

7. Do the Chinese slave laborers

strike riot or commit suicide because of the demands of those other companies?

http://imgur.com/a/LTob5

[onehandle]

8. Do the other laborers produce such a high visibility product media-wise?

We don't hear about the chain link fence factory where workers lose fingers, hands, legs and lives through accident or suicide at a staggeringly higher rate.

Yet it's available at Home Depots and Walmarts here from coast to coast.

The workers know Apple is high visibility. Hopefully, their actions will result in change in China, but there are worse factories to work in over there.

The workers are learning how to get attention. That's a good thing.

Hundreds Threaten Suicide At Microsoft Supplier Plant In China

Some 300 Chinese Foxconn employees who manufacture X-box 360 machines said they would throw themselves from their Wuhan, China, plant if demands for lost wages were not met.

China Jasmine Revolution, an activist revolutionary organization with a name borrowed from the Tunisian revolt that set off the Middle East unrest, reported that employees made their demands for a wage increase for 100 employees on Jan. 2.

Management at Foxconn — the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a crucial link in the supply chains of Apple, Dell, Nintendo and Song — responded with an ultimatum. Employees could quit with one month’s compensation awarded for each year with the plant or go back to working.

Many employees quit, but Foxconn allegedly dishonored the agreement and awarded former employees nothing.

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/01/10/hundreds-threaten-suicide-at-microsoft-supplier-plant-in-china/

[FredisDead]

10. Where are these Chinese workers

that are blaming Microsoft for the harsh working conditions at Foxconn?

Apple has a long history of approving the use of slave labor.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1046612/ipod-maker-admits-breaking-chinese-labour-laws
Foxconn's PR then made life worse for Apple by saying that a team from the Cupertino based outfit had investigated its operations and given it the thumbs up.

========================================

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/careers/3329638/microsoft-says-foxconn-protest-not-linked-to-working-conditions/

Microsoft investigated a workers protest at its contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, and found that the dispute in Wuhan, China had nothing to do with working conditions, and was related to staffing assignments and transfer policies, the company claims.

[FredisDead]

11. Apple's New Foxconn Embarrassment

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/09/12/apples-new-foxconn-embarrassment/

As Apple launches its much-anticipated new iPhone 5 today, news reports about conditions at the company’s manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn Technology, are fueling renewed criticism of the labor practices that go into making Apple’s popular products. Yesterday’s New York Times had a detailed report about vocational students who were being virtually forced to work at Foxconn plants producing iPhones and their components. At the same time, a journalist at the Shanghai Evening Post (translated by m.i.c.gadget.com) went undercover and worked for 10 days at a Foxconn factory in Tai Yuan, where the iPhone 5 was being manufactured. He wrote about filthy, smelly, cockroach-infested dormitories, numbingly repetitive work and pressure to put in maximum overtime.

Foxconn has acknowledged it uses student interns but says they work at its plants by choice and can leave their jobs at any time. Foxconn also said in a statement related by the Times, that students make up just 2.7% of its workforces of 1.2 million, and that schools “recruit the students under the supervision of the local government, and the schools also assign teachers to accompany and monitor the students throughout the internship.”

But the Times story paints a different picture. Two worker advocacy groups in China said they had talked to students who reported being forced by their teachers to assemble iPhones at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzho, in north-central China. Also, according to the Times, Chinese media reported last week that vocational schools in the eastern Chinese city of Huai’an required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to make up for worker shortages. One report said the Huai’an students were making cables for the iPhone 5.

“They said they are forced to work by the teachers,” Li Qiang, founder of the Chinese advocacy organization China Labor Watch, told the Times. Li added that the students didn’t want to work at Foxconn, but their teachers told them that if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t graduate.

[davidwparker]

6. As a long time Apple fan, I am agreeing.

Raise the prices even more and build iPhones in Alabama, Miss., and places in the deep south. I would rather pay more and employ the people here.

If I had Apple stock, I would be inclined to sell it. Slave is right.

[gordianot]

9. Alabama, Mississippi and other GOP dominated States seem to advocate similar labor practices.

You could make up the difference in shipping costs. Only problem American investors in Chinese facilities like Bain would lose out. We could do this here at least American slavery would have less of a racial basis, how about fundamentalist Christian slavery this time around? Eliminate birth control provides more fresh meat for various Republican enterprise.