After a string of
highly localized suicides at Foxconn's manufacturing campus captured the world's attention --
again -- the company has decided to increase worker wages by about 20 percent. Foxconn says that the pay raise had been planned for some time but did not say when it would be implemented. Mind you, a 20% bump in the third quarter is not unusual as Foxconn ramps up production for the holidays. In fact, Foxconn has given raises by as much as 50% in the past according to Vincent Chen, analyst at Yuanta Securities in Taipei. At the moment, Foxconn entry-level line workers are paid 900 yuan (about $131.80) per month -- remuneration that exceeds the local minimum wage in the area. And that's
before bonuses and that
oh-so tempting overtime pay are factored in. It's also worth noting that Foxconn is said by a factory worker surnamed Wang, to pay 100,000 yuan (about 10 times a worker's annual base salary) to families of suicide victims -- a sum he says has tempted some to their death.
Update: CEO Terry Guo is being
quoted as saying that Foxconn plans to relocate some facilities and about a fifth of its Shenzhen workforce (that's about 80,000 people based on the 400k estimates tossed around) to western parts of China so that the workers can be closer to their families. Meanwhile, Sony, Nokia, and
Nintendo, all Foxconn customers, have joined
Apple, Dell, and HP in expressing their public concern over the working conditions in Foxconn.
posted May 28th 2010 6:34AM
Most of the tards on here have no idea what they are talking about and yet continue to flap their gums. Foxconn has a bit of a reputation for being run like a military camp, but their campus is clean, living conditions are decent, and the pay is not out of line. Shenzhen is huge, it has developed and undeveloped areas. When Foxconn was built it was in the middle of nowhere, now it has other factories around it, one of them being the famous Huawei.
The problem is simply this... young workers come to Shenzhen to fulfill their dream of getting rich, much like people flock to New York or Hollywood to become rich and/or famous. However, brutal reality soon sets in with the day in and day out routine of assembly work.
The need to send money home is real. That is the culture here. Give back to your family who raised you. Family money is family money, not individual money. The first worker to commit suicide (over the lost iPhone prototype)... his family was given a one-time payment of nearly $53,000 USD and annual payments of around $4300 USD to support his parents. Compensation for death is given here, as the family no longer has the offspring's income to rely on. Now granted, he was an executive, but all of the dead employees' families are/will be compensated. It is sad to think that some people value their lives less than a decade or more of wages, but that seems to be the case here. Add a little of "herd mentality," and you have a good indication why the suicides.
As for those who think the wages are so low, keep in mind none of these workers are from Shenzhen where real estate and the cost of living are high, they are from the countryside. All of their living expenses are paid for. Money goes back home and is saved and spent there. Foxconn is in Shenzhen because logistics are best for raw materials and shipping. This area is the electronics manufacturing hub of the world. I live in Luohu, downtown Shenzhen. My Chinese gf has no university education, she works making milk tea in a nearby store. She works 10 hours a day, with 2 days off a month. Her salary is 1650RMB, or $240 USD. That is 85 cents USD an hour. And that is in one of the most expensive parts of China. Oh and her first three days of training were unpaid. That's the reality of China. I think she would love to go work for Foxconn if she wasn't living with me lol.
@paxman
I agree with you. Before the world's rattle around the low wage sweatshop thing about Foxconn, please understand they are one of the BEST paid LOW WAGE / LOW EDUCATED labor you can find in China. I just can't believe many still live in their little utopia bubble thinking everything in the world is simple and equal. Well, when you point finger at Foxconn as being low wage, please understand that in China, they are one of the best employers. If you are some country side worker with no education, once you get in, you get food, high wage (compared to countless other companies), educated (they have an education facility inside), and benefits from Foxconn.
But the Chinese people, mostly no morals and no religious belief, believes that they deserve everything when they get the job. For example, a girl at Foxconn who was trying to jump off the building was found having personal relationship issues. The people at Foxconn called her mother over and the girl is still trying to jump. There was a saying in Foxconn, "one jump feeds your family". If you died on site, you get high compensation for your entire family.
Many of you and the press have no idea how well treated these workers are considering the standard they have in China. When Foxconn enters a city/vicinity many other big companies/factories worries, because all these low educated worker will want to go work for Faxconn so these big factories will have to raise their wages to keep their labor.
Please stop saying Foxconn is treating their workers badly because you don't understand how it works in China, you have no right to judge them and you ain't seen nothing yet if you say they are sweatshop workers.
@hh83917 I have to agree, its all relative.
Compare their income to cost of living to Thailand or the Philippines and its great! You have to remember these aren't rocket scientists taking these jobs, and they do fight for those jobs, as they are desirable compared to the alternatives.
Socialism spreads poverty from the bottom up, and its going to take a few generations of capitalism to spread the wealth.
We experienced the same thing in Western industrialization.
But they are making better lives for themselves than they ever would have back on the farms with back breaking manual labor and no hope to amass any savings to really purchase much of anything.
i think those workers have to work 20% harder or longer.
It's sad that Foxconn is the only place for thousands to work and have a living.
$131.80?/mo. Thats great money!
Killing yourself is like winning the lotto too!
To me it seems like either option is f-a-i-r-l-y AWESOME!
So apple makes products whose internals are made by slaves. Well done wall street for embracing and encouraging that kind of cost cutting measure.
@aavexplorer
this is what americans call globalization.