Forum Views ()
Forum Replies ()
Read more with google mobile :
Migrants elbow for Foxconn jobs despite labor probe
|
Edition:
U.S.
Africa
Arabic
Argentina
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Latin America
Mexico
Russia
Spain
United Kingdom
Home
Business
Business Home
Economy
Technology
Media
Small Business
Legal
Deals
Earnings
Summits
Business Video
The Freeland File
Markets
Markets Home
U.S. Markets
European Markets
Asian Markets
Global Market Data
Indices
M&A
Stocks
Bonds
Currencies
Commodities
Futures
Funds
peHUB
World
World Home
U.S.
Brazil
China
Euro Zone
Japan
Mexico
Russia
India Insight
World Video
Reuters Investigates
Decoder
Politics
Politics Home
Election 2012
Issues 2012
Candidates 2012
Tales from the Trail
Political Punchlines
Supreme Court
Politics Video
Tech
Technology Home
MediaFile
Science
Tech Video
Tech Tonic
Opinion
Opinion Home
Chrystia Freeland
John Lloyd
Felix Salmon
Jack Shafer
David Rohde
Bernd Debusmann
Nader Mousavizadeh
Lucy P. Marcus
David Cay Johnston
Bethany McLean
Edward Hadas
Hugo Dixon
Ian Bremmer
Mohamed El-Erian
Lawrence Summers
Susan Glasser
The Great Debate
Steven Brill
Jack & Suzy Welch
Breakingviews
Equities
Credit
Private Equity
M&A
Macro & Markets
Politics
Breakingviews Video
Money
Money Home
Tax Break
Global Investing
MuniLand
Unstructured Finance
Linda Stern
Mark Miller
John Wasik
James Saft
Analyst Research
Alerts
Watchlist
Portfolio
Stock Screener
Fund Screener
Personal Finance Video
Money Clip
Investing 201
Life
Health
Sports
Arts
Faithworld
Business Traveler
Entertainment
Oddly Enough
Lifestyle Video
Pictures
Pictures Home
Reuters Photographers
Full Focus
Video
Reuters TV
Reuters News
Article
Comments (0)
Follow Reuters
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
YouTube
Read
Romney clawing his way back in Republican race
1:24am EST
Was Einstein wrong - or was the cable loose?
22 Feb 2012
Putin praises Cold War moles for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets
22 Feb 2012
'Seinfeld' Actor in Critical Condition After Apparent Suicide Attempt (Report)
22 Feb 2012
Whitney Houston Open Casket Photo Graces National Enquirer Cover
22 Feb 2012
Discussed
178
REFILE-Al Gore takes aim at ”unsustainable” capitalism
176
Santorum says Obama agenda not ”based on Bible”
147
Romney’s struggles fuel talk of brokered convention
Watched
Mona Lisa double painted simultaneously
Tue, Feb 21 2012
Nine-year-old quizzed over shooting
Wed, Feb 22 2012
Amateur video claims to show bodies of Western journalists killed in Homs
Wed, Feb 22 2012
Migrants elbow for Foxconn jobs despite labor probe
Tweet
Share this
Email
Print
Related News
HP, Dell watch rising China labor costs for Apple
Wed, Feb 22 2012
Apple shareholders to meet as stock at record high
Wed, Feb 22 2012
Chinese firm seeks halt of iPad sales in Shanghai
Wed, Feb 22 2012
Apple's iPhone loses China market share
Fri, Feb 17 2012
U.S. teens learn robotics, windmills as factories lack
Fri, Feb 10 2012
Analysis & Opinion
The Book of Jobs
Céad mÃle fáilte for the new Chinese leader
Related Topics
Tech »
iPad »
By James Pomfret
LONGHUA, China |
Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:44am EST
LONGHUA, China (Reuters) - Apple's top manufacturer in China, Foxconn Technology, is having no problems luring fresh workers to churn out ever more gadgets, despite the firm's reputation as a tough employer that has put it under a thorough probe into its labor practices.
On a smoggy day in a gritty industrial suburb of Shenzhen, thousands of job seekers, many migrant workers from the countryside, massed outside the north gate of Foxconn's gargantuan factory at Longhua, taking part in an epic recruitment drive to supply factory hands to meet relentless production quotas for iPhones and iPads globally.
As police sealed off roads in the area, recruiters lined up the young men in ranks, peppering them with questions before shepherding small groups into a building to register and undergo physical and psychometric tests.
"As you can see, everyone wants a job here," said Wang Jintao, a 19-year-old from central Hubei province. "I've been coming here every day for two weeks now. Perhaps today will be my lucky day."
The thousands of migrants now flocking daily to Foxconn's recruitment center at Longhua is a sharp contrast to other smaller factories in southern China that have competed viciously to find workers since the Lunar New Year holidays in late January.
Despite the publicity generated by a spate of worker suicides in 2009 that exposed a strict, militaristic production line culture, Foxconn is viewed by many workers as a tough but rigorously organized and fair employer in the harsh industrial landsape of the Pearl River Delta.
"The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm," Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) told Reuters in an interview on February 15. In comments to Bloomberg a few days later, Van Heerden appeared to take a less rosy perspective on Foxconn, saying it had "tons of issues" to address.
The Washington D.C.-based FLA is currently carrying out an Apple-sanctioned extensive study of work conditions at Apple's top eight suppliers in China, including Foxconn, the world's largest manufacturer with close to 1.2 million workers in China alone.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has described the probe as an "unprecedented" audit to mitigate longstanding criticism of the maltreatment of workers at some suppliers.
Working conditions at Foxconn, whose flagship unit is Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industries group, have in particular been a constant thorn in the company's side.
"NO TIME TO BREATHE"
Hu Baoqiang, a young migrant worker who assembled iPhone 4s at Foxconn's sister industrial plant at nearby Guanlan, said the line pressure was suffocating in his small task of placing metal covers over chips at a rate of some 1,000 phones an hour.
"It wasn't a very difficult job but you had to keep doing it without rest. It felt like there wasn't even time to breathe," he said outside the Foxconn gates, as other workers crowded around, nodding in agreement. "The supervisors are always watching you. The pressure was very great."
Even so, Hu was looking for work at Foxconn in Longhua.
While Foxconn has put a positive spin on news it was raising wages of its Chinese workers by 16-25 percent from this month, many workers at the Longhua plant said management had simultaneously imposed fees for once-free dormitory rooms and food, eroding their take-home pay. China has set a target for at least 13 percent growth in wages until 2015, as gnawing inflation for consumer goods and food further corrodes blue collar savings.
"The pay rise is useless," said another worker surnamed Xiang. "We just pay more for other things."
In a February 17 statement announcing the wage increase, Foxconn said: "As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn's China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments."
Analysts such as Feng Yu of Sinolink say the impact of the wage rise on Foxconn's profits was unlikely to be significant, with wages only representing around 10 percent of the production costs of high value-added technology manufacturers. Foxconn's moves inland to tap lower labor costs had helped.
The average monthly wage of China's 158 million migrant workers in 2011 surged 21.2 percent from 2010 to 2,049 yuan, with wages higher in the more developed coastal areas like Guangdong.
At Longhua, an electronic board outside Foxconn's recruitment center advertised the basic wage of an ordinary worker in Shenzhen at 1,800 yuan ($290) per month. Recruiters briefing candidates on the streets, however, said factories in northern China like Taiyuan would only make 1,550 yuan a month.
Compal, a contract PC maker for clients like Dell, Acer, Toshiba and Hewlett Packard, said it adjusted salaries each year and the current base salary at its facilities in Kunshan, near Shanghai, was 1,200 to 1,300 yuan. Wintek, which supplies touch panels to Apple, Nokia and HTC, also said it paid above the minimum wage of the provinces in which it operates.
Despite the criticism Foxconn has faced, for many it is still a dream factory job, more stable and with wages, career prospects and living conditions superior to many smaller plants, which have struggled with rising costs and dwindling orders from Western consumers amid continued global economic uncertainty, particularly in Europe.
"The suicides were bad," said Liu Fanghua, a 23-year-old job hopeful from Wuhan. "There's pressure but it's just a state of mind. And if things get bad we can always just quit."
(Additional reporting by Huang Yuntao in Hong Kong, Terril Yue Jones in Beijing and Clare Jim in Taipei; Editing by Brian Rhoads and Alex Richardson)
Tech
iPad
Related Quotes and News
Company
Price
Related News
Tweet this
Link this
Share this
Digg this
Email
Reprints
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment on reuters.com.
Add yours using the box above.
Edition:
U.S.
Africa
Arabic
Argentina
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Latin America
Mexico
Russia
Spain
United Kingdom
Back to top
Reuters.com
Business
Markets
World
Politics
Technology
Opinion
Money
Pictures
Videos
Site Index
Legal
Bankruptcy Law
California Legal
New York Legal
Securities Law
Support & Contact
Support
Corrections
Advertise With Us
Connect with Reuters
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
RSS
Podcast
Newsletters
Mobile
About
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Copyright
Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider
An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution
A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance
Our next generation legal research platform
Our global tax workstation
Thomsonreuters.com
About Thomson Reuters
Investor Relations
Careers
Contact Us
Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.
Other News on Thursday, 23 February 2012 Judge to rule on Mubarak case on June 2
|
Argentine commuter train crashes, killing 49 people
|
FCC urges Internet companies to safeguard Web
|
Exclusive: Palo Alto Networks, other tech firms tee up IPOs
|
EU seeks legal opinion on global copyright
|
IBM eyes cybersecurity market with new platform
|
Lindsay Lohan pleases judge on home stretch of probation
|
Oscars 2012: A year of comfort
|
Adele breaks Whitney Houston's chart record
|
Obama sings the blues with Jagger, B.B King
|
Short films fill tall order as Oscar nominees
|
Iran talks failure sparks confrontation fears
|
Taliban urge Afghans to kill invaders amid new protests
|
Assad forces renew barrage on Syria's Homs
|
Baghdad bombings kill at least 20
|
Bomb kills 13 at Pakistani bus station
|
Australian PM Gillard calls for leadership vote
|
Philippines' Arroyo pleads not guilty in poll fraud trial
|
Putin praises Cold War moles for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets
|
Argentine commuter train crashes, killing 49 people
|
Apple, Google, Amazon, smartphone makers sign privacy accord
|
PayPal gets new rival in offline payments race
|
Migrants elbow for Foxconn jobs despite labor probe
|
White House unveils plan to protect online privacy
|
HP profit plummets, CEO urges patience
|
Rivals blast Verizon's bid for cable airwaves
|
HP, Dell watch rising China labor costs for Apple
|
Jennifer Aniston puts name in star on Walk of Fame
|
Lindsay Lohan pleases judge on home stretch of probation
|
Simon Cowell says learned to keep his mouth shut
|
Actor who had role on Seinfeld shoots self
|
Kodak is out of the picture at Oscars
|
Wrestling scion joins Disney in the ring in China
|
Insight: Divided by common foe, Israel and U.S. tangle over Iran
|
U.S. threatens sanctions on Somali peace spoilers
|
Thousands back Putin's presidential bid in Moscow
|
Hamas sets new terms for reconciliation with Fatah
|
Tunisia, Egypt Islamists signal bigger religion role
|
Court says Apple can still sell iPads in Shanghai
|
Study aims to bring Great Barrier Reef to living rooms
|
Philips says police investigating its cyber attack
|
Tyler Perry steps out of Madea into Good Deeds
|
UK's It's a cracker comic Frank Carson dies at 85
|
Oscars 2012: A year of comfort
|
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights