Andre Yoskowitz
12 Jan 2012 22:55
Yesterday we reported that 300 disgruntled workers at Foxconn's Technology Park in Wuhan, China allegedly threatened to commit suicide following a pay dispute with their boss.
The company, which has 1.1 million workers and is a major supplier for Apple, Microsoft and other electronics behemoths, says it has resolved the issues, and most of the workers are back to work. 45 of those involved had resigned, however.
One of the workers who returned to the company says that following negotiations with the company and government officials, they will be given the additional compensation they had been promised. Foxconn employees 32,000 workers for that plant, alone, so the incident appears to have been blown a bit out of proportion.
Foxconn is notorious for poor working conditions and was a daily headline in the last few years as workers committed suicide to have their families collect death compensation that was worth over 10 years of standard work pay. The company was even forced to install nets around their campuses to catch would-be jumpers. Psychiatrists have been installed in the factories, as well.
The company's headlines have also been somewhat of a PR fiasco for their American partners, who are forced to have their name included in reports, whether or not the factory bosses followed their mandated working condition guidelines.
Foxconn is also looking to move their operations into western China, where there are more workers, and the costs are even less than they are now. Many of the current workforce travel from western China already. Foxconn plans to replace workers with robots and has already begun to do so.